Christmas

At 6am sharp on Christmas Eve, we awoke to the dulcet tones of the mobile alarm and the goose outside the tent and packed away our sleeping bags, tent and air mattress - never to see them again, with any luck!
We trumped into town with our packs, located our bus and boarded with no issue. We were on the way to our luxury Christmas delight!
The bus was busy, the driver repetitive with his rules and regs, but we made it through to Auckland and actually arrived 16 minutes early, at 3.30pm. The drive had three short stops for food/loo usage, although they were so fast they prevented me from re-tasting the Best Veggie Burger in the World, at Dino's Diner. Doh.
We checked into the Suites and had a moment to enjoy the space, the walls, the actual flat ceiling...as well as the immense view down to the sea and of the Sky Tower because we are on the 16th floor! It is so insanely high above the city!
After admiring our apartment, we headed to the supermarket to join the rush of people doing last minute grocery shopping and bought enough food to equip a Roman General with a private dinner party's worth of feasting food. Soo good! Once back, we decorated the apartment and got the Christmas music going. We bought ourselves pizza from Dominoes as our Christmas Eve feast - not for lack of food, but because we had been deprived of pizza for a month or more. Oh, it was good. We both ate our entire pizza and spent the rest of the evening laying about watching carols on tv and holding our stomachs.

Christmas morning dawned hot, sunshine and deep blue sky. We had pannettone, actual butter and Alex a bacon butty for breakfast, along with delicious chai lattes. Then, we ripped into our stockings. I had a giant bubble set, a silver tiara and bangles with tinkling bells. Alex had dominoes and a foam shooter and coloured airspray pens. We continued to open presents throughout the day and had an awesome time playing about. We had a shotting competition with the gun set Alex gave me  as kids toys go, this thing is practially a lethal weapon, shooting darts well accross the room and aiming at targets. I got a collapsible hula hoop and Alex was entranced by his rubix cube. We snacked on mince pies and then took a lunch break, enjoying antipasto and crudites platters, with oven-fresh bread, dips and iced tea. Yum. We used the airspray pens to tattoo ourselves (these have now faded to large, bruise coloured blotches...) and I built many different cars using my new click-together building blocks. We had a pavlova for tea and then watched the Madegascar Xmas Special and Happy Feet on tv.
We finished off the day (and our ability to walk without waddling) by having Christmas Dinner, baked gammon, roast kumara and potatoes, cranbarry sauce, veggies, vege chipolatas and stuffing - the works. So good. So stuffed afterwards. Settling ourselves in comfy chairs, we called home as the clock moved to Boxing Day.


Boxing Day, a cool 28 degrees after yesterdays heights above 30, has seen a continued trend in the 'Eat, eat and eat' theme. We are taking it easy before heading into town for a stroll among the crowds thronging the sales. We might even get to eat Christmas pudding tonight, as we just couldn't manage it yesterday!

We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!