Merry Christmas!!

First off a big congratulations to Angie and Robert with the arrival of their new baby, Colton Jessy … I mean, Colton Robert Darger. Well done Robert and Ang, and welcome to the family, little Colton. So we’ve passed through our second Christmas season down under, and we have to admit that this one was definitely more bearable than the last. Attribute it to having seen family less than 2 months ago, or the fact we’d already been through it once before … but there is also the added element of the weather cooperating slightly more than last year. Whereas last year was near, if not over, 100’F, this year we hovered between the 60’s and 80’s. What a welcome break! We even had a day of overcast, rainy weather which made it feel like a Seattle Christmas! So it was nice to have a bit of variety.

Ironically enough, the first time I felt like it was really the Christmas season was the Friday before when I stopped off at the plaza to get some gifts. Everything was all decked out on the traditional Christmas garb with the holiday music playing. Kind of sad when that reminds you of Christmas, eh? Of course, the next day Kelli decided she wanted to do a turkey/Thanksgiving type dinner because we were having the missionaries over and the last time we had them over was on Thanksgiving and we had to have burritos because our oven was broken. So I went from the commercial Christmas type atmosphere to cooking stuffing over the oven in summer-like weather only 2 days before Christmas. Talk about a play on the ‘culture senses’. I’ll never be the same :)

Aussies in general are not into the spiritual side of the Christmas season. You rarely see Christmas spelled out, it’s usually X-mas, which drives me nuts. There are also very few of the traditional Christmas shows on TV. Just the evening of Christmas eve they put a few Christmas-type shows on, although I don’t know if ‘Ernest Saves Christmas’ actually qualifies. We did manage to find Home Alone 2 which sufficed well enough.

We did some caroling with the youth program a week before Christmas. It was different to do it in shorts and a t-shirt, but we had some great experiences. We would start at some of the members’ homes and then they would escort us to some of their neighbors. The spirit was pretty strong and we had a good experience together. Indeed, music has been the link to the spiritual side of Christmas this season. We sang songs with the kids some evenings and read Christmas songs. Kelli picked up some more (we had one already) Aussie Christmas books from the bookstore and they will become Jones family traditions I’m sure for the years to come.

Speaking of traditions, we thoroughly enjoyed our fondue of grapes, strawberries, bananas (or dapples as Hunter calls them) and pretzels – minus the fondu pot of course. Kelli put together a mean batch of toffee via Mom’s ‘secret’ recipe that turned out very well. We also made sugar cookies which went about as smooth as smooth can be when doing it with a 6, 3 and 1 year old. We had the Christmas Eve pajama opening which was actually a double experience because Kelli bought some as well as G. Jones sending some down from the States. And we also had a couple new experiences. G. Jones sent some hot chocolate packets down which we had one evening. They were scrumptious, except I couldn’t bring myself to drink hot chocolate in our weather so we improvised into some cappuccino type drink by throwing some ice cream in. Call it Aussie Chocolate or something … but it was good. The evening of the kids were so excited in their new pajamas and Kelli got on the internet and looked up the Santa tracking software from ‘noradsanta.com’. It uses google earth to show where Santa is throughout the night. Around 9 in the evening he was up around the Marshall Islands and on the map you could see Australia. Savannah was so excited that he was so ‘close’ that she told Collin, “Hurry! We need to go to bed before he gets here!” So they went outside and dumped some reindeer food (glitter mixed with oatmeal) out on the grass so the reindeer would have something to munch on while Santa was doing his thing.

They went to sleep in Savannah’s room on the floor and Hunter acted like he wanted to sleep with them, until I turned off the light and left the room. Then he screamed and came running out – at which point we just put him alone in his own room, in his own crib and he went to bed without any problems whatsoever --- go figure. Both kids didn’t stay up too long – they were both asleep by 10 and we were done with our business by 12. I went straight to sleep and Kelli ‘claims’ I was snoring up a storm in no time (she was too excited to go to bed :)

The kids slept until nearly 7 and we had to send Hunter in to wake them up. We had a great time opening gifts, most of which were focused on Australia (Australian BBQ apron, kookaburra porcelain statue, water guns, bubbles, and Shrek ears/bike jersey!) After the kids had a hay day playing with all of their gifts we packed them into the van and drove the half hour to the beach. It was windy and fairly cold, plus the tide was way out so it was pretty stinky as well … so we didn’t stay too long. We did stop for a minute on the pier to throw our fishing lines in the water and just happened to see dolphin swimming right underneath us. That was pretty cool. We battled the flies for a few minutes while eating lunch at the playground and then headed home. A very nice family in the ward invited us over for dinner and we had a great visit. They cooked some meat on the ‘barbie’ and had a traditional Aussie Christmas evening which was very relaxing in the company of friends. We missed being with family this year as well as last, but we have had some great experiences which are memories for years and years to come.

In interesting and funny stories, Kelli came downstairs with Hunter the other night when he couldn’t sleep. She didn’t have her glasses on, but from across the room she could see a moving black blur on the wall. She got out the camera and snapped a picture of a ‘local’. Apparently these big black spiders have been pretty popular in the area this year, although the Aussies haven’t seen too much of them before. Savannah has also had a few moments. Last week she was riding her bike and ran into one of the poles around the porch that supports the house. After falling over she got right back up and then started to smack the pole as if it was the pole’s fault. She promptly got back on her bike and continued on her way. She was also playing a song on the piano one evening and asked Kelli if it was ‘right’, to which Kelli responded, “Yes, it sounds right.” Savannah retorted back, “I don’t want to hear if it sounds right, I want to know if it IS right!” Yes, quite the spunk.

Merry Christmas to you all and we hope everyone has a stupendous 2008!