MWNews 39

Christmas is over. I have posted the pictures so you should be getting an email about them soon. I didn't do as many as last year because I had to keep Maeghan opening presents or she would have just played with her new kitchen set. You cannot see it in this picture, it is off to the right, but I had to build it during the night and have it set up for her in the morning. More about the building process later. I did manage to film the beginning when the kids came in, but I have not looked at that yet, so I do not know how it turned out,

Juanita wanted to have everyone have breakfast before they opened presents, so they would not be getting hungry during the process. We bought the kids a special treat for breakfast, Fruitloops. They never get fruitloops because they are so expensive over here, over $8 a box, so it was something of a treat. The kids were too excited to eat, so that plan did not go well. We were going to then lead the kids in and let them see all the presents. We did not set all the presents out until after the kids had gone to bed.

It got confusing at that time as I was suppossed to be in the room ready to film but they led them in before I could get there. so we had to tell the kids to go back out and the first reactions, I did not get on tape. We thought Maeghan would immediately run to her kitchen but everyone was sitting down, so she sat in her new chair. It is the Pooh chair in the picture. The little lounge is for William, since Maeghan already has one. Maeghan sat in her chair and looked around. She started to get up and go to her kitchen, but Michael was in the way and he told her to sit down. We had to tell Michael to leave her and let her go to the presents so that is probably on the tape. She started opening the doors and looking inside everything and told us she had to cook breakfast for everyone and asked if we wanted coffee. She loves her new kitchen.

After that, Angela started handing out presents. Naturally, she did it wrong and just handed them all out at once. That is another reason I did not get many pictures as I had to help Maeghan, and open my presents, and then try to find time to take pictures. I know everyone always hated the rule of one present at a time, but all at once was not much fun, so next year we will have find some compromise.

Maeghan was really excited. I have never heard her squeel and laugh and get excited all at the same time. She loved everything. A lot of it she had already seen as she was with us when we bought it and it was stored under the bed and in the closet. She has been going by all the presents for a long time and telling us which ones were hers and which ones were Anna's and which ones were for someone else. She had begun to get upset lately because we would not let her play with them and it was getting frustrating for her. As we gradually wrapped each one, they would dissappear and she would ask us where her presents had gone. When she opened them at Christmas, she would say my so and so is back or now I get to play with it. I will list all her presents, or some of them, later.

It was hard to keep her opening new presents. She would want to play with each of them as they were opened. If I did not take them out of the box or packageing they came in, then she would go back to playing with her kitchen. A lot of things that she was really excited about in the stores and she was always wanting to play with when we had them 'hidden', are not getting played with now because she spends all her time cooking in her kitchen. And it is amazing how much she knows about cooking. She asked everyone if they wanted coffee/tea last night and when we said yes, she took out her pretend hot water jug, (an electric kettle) and filled it from her sink, (not real water), then placed it on the stove and got the cups out. She then poured coffee/tea in each cup and brought one to everyone. She then took her jug and put it back in the cabinet.

She was also cooking a duck, yesterday, in the microwave. We got the kids little stuffed animals to put in their stockings and hers was a duck. She said she was cooking the duck for dinner. She cannot really reach the microwave, it is too high for her, but she went and found her stool from her bed and used that to climb up and get things in and out of the microwave. She cooked the duck for most of the day. She would go check on it periodically. She would open the door, then set the duck down and poke it with her fork, and then put it back in and push the buttons on the microwave and let it cook some more. She knows which part of the kitchen is the oven and which is the fridge. she discovered that she can lift the sink and get into the cabinet underneath. She found something that way, I don't remember what, and she was really happy she had found it. Right now, she is making things for the baby. Juanita's mother is pretending to be the baby. Whenever Maeghan walks away, Beverly will scream like a baby crying and tell Maeghan she wants something. Maeghan thinks this is hilareous. She runs across the room and gives Beverly a dummy. When Maeghan walks away, she will spit the dummy out again and start crying and Maeghan will run back and give it to her again.

A list of things Maeghan got were her kitchen, a blackboard/chalkboard/fetboard aisle thing. A cash register, which she calls her computer. It has a scanner on it that beeps when you press a button. She likes to press and hold the button down so it makes a noise all the time. She got dishes and utensils and electric things to go in her kitchen. We got her a little toaster that has plastic toast with it and it turns out, we got her a set of things that has the exact same toaster in it. So now, she has two toasters. She thinks that is really neat. She got her plastic hot water jug and a writing board like an etch a schetch or something like it. She got a couple of new outfits. Not many but we have been buying her knew clothes for her for a couple of months now, so she has plenty. I can't remember what else she got. I know she got a flashlight and a ducky and some lollies in her stocking. No fruit and no airplane and no cards, but she got some stickers because she loves stickers. She always gets those from ballet.

Speaking of ballet, real quick. We went to get the photos they had taken for the ballet class. The ones where Maeghan was not smiling. She was still not smiling but the teacher's mother told us they had had really high expectations for the show from Maeghan. They said she was suppossed to be the star of the show as they thought she was the only one who was going to do the routines right and her being so small, everyone would have fallen in love with her. Of course, we know how it turned out but it is a shame that no one got to see our special little girl in her first play. We have all seen it, at home, but no one else ever did, besides the teacher. She was still the best one, even if she was crying and didn't actually make it up on stage. But enough of that, we were talking about Christmas.

I am not sure what everyone else got, either. With angela passing out the presents, and giving everyone all their presents at once instead of one at a time, there was not a chance to see what everyone else was doing. I know I got Juanita five sets of clothes and a bracelet, but I did not get to see her open any of them. all the other presents we got the kids and everyone else, I didn't get to see either, except for the occasional gift here and there.

Maeghan kept me pretty busy, squeeling all the time and saying her presents are back and oooh and ahhh and that's mine and all the other things she was getting so excited about. The ones she said were back were the ones she had seen all the time and had disappeared when we wrapped them. She would say my computer is back or my dolly's toys are back or if she was not really paying attention when I opened one of hers, she would say that's mine when I showed it to her and want me to open it so she could play with it. I can't really explain how excited she was getting each time. She really loved it all and she really loves her new kitchen.

Now, to tell the tale of me having to build this new kitchen for her, it took about six hours to complete. I started at around 10 in the evening and did not finish until 4 in the morning. Ok, maybe it was not quite that long, but it sure seemed like it. It wasn't really hard, except for the first bit where you had to put things together while holding it all upright, but there were a lot of pieces to put on. There were only 17 steps in the instructions but the first one took over an hour to complete and at that point, all you had was the refridgerator put together. I then had to put all the doors together and there are at least 5 of them, each with a different handle and different hinges. Once it was able to freely stand on its own, it was easier, but then I had the problem of either getting up and walking around it each time I wanted to add a new piece or turning the whole thing around so the piece I needed was on the side I was on. I think I should have been moving around the whole thing instead of lifting it up each time and moving it, but it is too late to reaslize that now.

Since it is a couple of days after Christmas, I can let you know I am enjoying my underwear. I haven't have a chance to wear my new socks yet as it is stinking hot over here and I have been wearing sandles. That has been one of the hardships of having Christmas down under, it is hot during the winter and cold during the summer. The part I miss most is shopping when it is freezing outside. Not that it is ever freezing where we come from, but it is at least cold and everyone is wearing coats and warm clothes. I like going shopping in the cold where when you get inside the store, it is a relief to be out of the cold and you can sit down and have a hot drink and enjoy watching the people walk by. And, the people seem a little more friendly during the cold when they are shopping. Not a lot, maybe, but to compare it to shopping when it is 100 degrees and everyone is hot, sticky and crabby from the heat, it is much better to have Christmas during the winter. Then again, everything about Christmas over here is about snow and winter and it being cold for Christmas, you just have to pretend it is not hot enough to leave you gasping for cold water. We still have a coffee when we go out and the best places to be are in the shopping centers, because they are air conditioned, but it is not really the same. I told everyone I was going to turn our airconditioning way down, so everyone would wake up cold and frosty, but I didn't do it. Mainly, because I was too tired after putting together Maeghan's present, but partly because it would have caused some kind of artic tremor to have cold weather during Christmas down here.

I might not have mentioned it but you probably guessed that Angela and the kids stayed for Christmas. Not by their own choice but through circumstances they seemed to ignore. (They did not have money for tickets and we did not give it to them.) So they are were here for Christmas morning, all except Jarvis who is still in Brisbane with his father. They did manage to leave Christmas night, at 6, so I had to have everything cooked and ready for lunch so they could have a chance to eat and then get ready to get on the train. The train would have gotten there the next day, but as we all knew was going to happen, Angela has failed to call us to tell us they arrived or anything, again. Last time, she went up there and we did not hear from her for three weeks, and her mother was in the hospital that whole time and did not get a phone call from her daughter to ask how she was or to tell her they got there ok or to ask about the baby or her mother or anyone else. Not that we hold that against her but I guess this means she remains consistant with the no contact.

We have no idea when or if she is coming back. She tells so many stories, it is hard to keep track of what her next one will be or is suppossed to be. I am really impressed she can manage to keep them all straight but then again, she doesn't really do that good of a job and you just have to ignore what she says most of the time and just follow what she does.

Natalie and Adam are here, although Adam did not spend Christmas with us. He went to his sister's or something and Natalie came here. As you can see, we had a really big Christmas, not as big as last year but they might have been about the same. It was so hard to tell, as I have mentioned once or twice, we did not get to see each other open presents, only open the ones we had. Its that whole one present at a time thing again. I think next year, I will have to insist on it, but then again, we will probably not be here for Christmas, so I will have to follow whatever rules are set up at the home we are at.

A couple of final things before I finish. We still do not know when the operation is and we will not find out until the second week in January. It could be at anytime but I am sure I will only have about a weeks notice before I have to go in. And then, there is the possibility that I could be bumped up or down in the list, depending on how many emergencies they have. I have heard tails of people checking into the hospital and then having to wait four or five weeks to have their operations. It just depends on what else is going on at the time. I did find out that I will probably not get paid for the recovery time I will have to take. It is still being discussed in the HR department, but the problem is the policy says one thing but when we called to confirm, they said another. So I will have to have my manager work it out. And since he is not in for the next three weeks, I will probably have to pursue it myself. But no matter, I can take leave time to cover it, I will just have to borrow from next year to cover the entire period. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

All in all, we had a very nice Christmas. We ate a lot and got drunk Christmas night, not really, but it was not for lack of trying. I made a really nice dinner from the leftovers the next night and we are just about finished with all of that. In fact, as i write this, I think they are finishing it off now. We did not have any of the traditional things we would normally have for Christmas or Thanksgiving because they are all warm weather foods. We had turkey and ham and shrimp but we only had salad and deserts to go with it. No dressing, no potatoes, no sweet potatoes, nothing that you would have to cook in the over, except the turkey. For dessert, we had cheesecake, which turned out yuckky, and something called trifle, and a big thing called pavlova, which is just a big sugery, meranguey, fruit topped thing. I didn't have any of that stuff but it all looked good. We didn't have enough shrimp as I set out one packaged of cooked and one package of uncooked and didn't realise it until it was too late. so we only had two pounds of shrimp instead of four.

I suppose that is enough for now. I have a lot of other stuff going on but if these get too long, they get boring. This is my last day off work for the holidays. I have to work the rest of the week and next week and on until I have the operation. I was suppossed to be off next week but I have to save my vacation time so I cancelled it. We are planning on doing our New Years eve boat ride again this year. We went out one year, I can't remember which but Juanita's parents were here, and rode all the ferrys in Sydney harbour during the day on New Years eve. We left before the crazyness started, which is usually around 4 in the afternoon. They start closing off the streets at 3 I think but since we are taking the train, it should not be a problem for us. I am going to have to check that the trains are running at regular times that day and check that they are not going to raise the price for the all day ticket, but it is really the best way to see the harbour and it is really cheep to do it that way. You can take the guided tours, Juanita and I have done that, but it is not really any better than being on the ferries. We saw the aircraft carrier that was over here for a while that way. I don't remember if I told you all that or not. I think it was the Kitty Hawk but I don't really remember. We took a guided harbour tour for that and they took us right up to the ship and everything.

Ok, I am really going now. Too much information and too much stuff to pass on in one go. I will make up for it the next time. Until then, I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and I hope everyone got to see everyone else and do all the things they wanted to do and receive all the presents they wanted to get.

Talk to you soon