Despite my perpetual laziness, there have still been some interesting occurrences in the past month and a half. First of all Matt and I were able to host a large Thanksgiving dinner with four other couples on a Saturday. It was quite a busy day with a baptism in the morning, Thanksgiving meal in the afternoon, and a youth activity in the evening. Matt gave a talk at the baptism while I stayed at home figuring out how to cook a perfect turkey. Luckily the meal turned out well including my turkey and surprisingly 10 people at one large extended square table allows for many good conversations. It was actually hard to get people out so Matt could get to his youth roadshow that evening on time. s
Our cat Shade is also getting a lot bigger! He is now over 4 months old and we have been finding plenty of new tricks for him to perform. We are still working on toilet training which has led to a very messy toilet seat and a couple of accidents, but he is doing well.
We went to a fancy ball for the stake one night and discovered that although we were an hour late since we fed the missionaries beforehand, they hadn't started yet! We waited around and chatted with the few people from our ward that was their and eventually they got started. My friend Erika from the ward and I tried to grab some food and were politely told it hadn't been blessed yet. So we danced a little and finally they blessed the food. We learned that night that maybe balls aren't our thing, and that our stake is comprised of mostly polynesians. At least Erika and Mike Barnett were there so we had fun chatting with them.
Closer to Christmas we went to two ward parties. One was for our ward, and the other was for my old ward that I went to before Matt was here in Australia. The Greenwich ward had a lady with two small donkeys for everyone to pet and they had a spectacular Christmas tree.
Both parties were a lot of fun, but I learned there is one Christmas tradition here I don't like - pavlova. It is a meringue type dessert with fruit and I did not like it. Also fruit cake and fruit pudding is common here and I don't like those either.
Early in the month I was told to arrange a Christmas program for sacrament and I had been practicing O Holy Night on the piano nearly every day to perform on the 22nd. It was difficult to arrange it all and get people for musical numbers, but all went well on the day of...except for my part. I was so nervous that I played the wrong notes frequently, I didn't project my voice very well, and my right legging was shaking so bad that it was hard to keep it on the piano pedal. It was easily worse than any time I had ever practiced it and I was the last performance! I was mortified, and I was so grateful for my honest husband that was willing to tell me it was bad when everyone else just commented how it is so hard to play and sing at the same time. There were also the few that somehow heard something other than me and stated I had the voice of angel..haha. Anyway I was just grateful that it was over and that at least the other musical performances by the YSA and the sister missionaries were wonderful and brought the spirit.
On the bright side....that day was when they announced my new additional calling in the Young Women's! I'm so excited and so was one of the youth Amelia who later people commented about her huge reaction upon the announcement. This next year is going to be awesome!
The whole month we have been watching various Christmas movies, but it still didn't feel like Christmas so we decorated our cat tree with tinsel and put lights around our living room. It helped a lot and when it came closer to Christmas we had a blast!
The day before Christmas Eve we went to the Sydney temple to see the fantastic lights and the Life of Christ display. They had many giant prints of various paintings depicting the life of Christ. Outside they had different sets showing the story of the birth of Christ, as well as a large image of the statue of Christ.
The day after that I spent all day cooking for Christmas. I made two batches of cinnamon rolls, banana oat muffins, and two batches of oreo truffles. It was a LOT of cooking. For the rest of Christmas Eve we went over to Brock and Kaytlin's for games on the Xbox and Wii. It was a great night although I guess it wasn't very centered on Christmas.
Christmas morning Matt and I got up early and opened up the presents we got each other. Normally we don't do presents, but since my family wasn't doing presents this year it wouldn't feel like Christmas without something to give to someone you care about.
After that we went straight to making the ebleskivers, french toast, eggs, and sausages for our large breakfast with all seven of the sister missionaries. They all helped set everything up and it was a wonderful morning. It was the first every Christmas for the two Chinese sisters and I hope it was a memorable one. We got them all gifts of coloured pencils and a small notebook so they would have something to open as well.
Many of the missionaries needed to use Skype including the two elders that came over later. So up until nearly 3 pm we had missionaries rotating on our two laptops calling home. Luckily with my Skype account the US missionaries could call home for free to make sure their family was available and online. Our only Aussie sister couldn't get Skype to work but luckily should could still use FaceTime on my phone! Yeah for technology!
While some were talking with their families upstairs, we played games with the rest downstairs. We played a game called Martian Fluxx and surprisingly I won most of the time!
After we said goodbye to all the missionaries we went over to the Bishop's house to have a late lunch/early dinner with them and play more games. We were so exhausted that we left by 6pm and went home to watch our favourite Christmas movies - The Grinch, and The Muppet Christmas Carol.
The day after Christmas is called Boxing Day here and is kind of like the Black Friday in the US where there are massive sales at many stores. We had no plans for shopping however, and had previously planned on going to the beach that day. Reports of rain and electrical storms hindered our plans with friends so instead we decided to go to the zoo. Surprisingly by the time we finished talking to our family it was a beautiful sunny day outside and our zoo trip didn't require an umbrella.
So that's about it! Here are some recent photos we took of our little family. Happy New Year!
