[Smurfysmurf]

It just struck me as kind of funny, that on the other side of the world the kids are probably unpacking their gifts right now on Christmas Morning,
and here we are at the dawn of Christmas Eve

I have to get ready in a minute to go to the Christmas Eve service that starts in an hour..It is always very nice and festive for a Baptist church

then my folks come up to my place and we have our traditional German Christmas Eve celebration....eating potatoe salad with Wieners...(my salad is not half as good as my Granny's but it'll have to do ) and then we unwrap the gifts...


tomorrow afternoon I go to their place after hopefully everybody else is gone and enjoy some Ham and baked beans with my folks and probably we play a game of cards...
the most interesting part tomorrow should be trying to convince my mother that I need to go to Germany in March and her convincing me that I can't live up here by myself

[Rachel]

Hi Maureen, I agree, it is mad when you think about it. I am just getting ready to go and have a bath and then bed so I can get up early in the morning to see if he's been.........

Hope you have a lovely time with your family. Ours will either be a wonderful success with everyone rolling about after eating and drinking too much or all hell will have broken out by late afternoon. I shall let you know.

Enjoy.

[steveparkes]

Half an hour to go..I'm off to bed to let santa work his magic way Happy Christmas everyone

[KiwiSchlumpf]

Yeah well over here we have had xmas... and at the risk of spoiling the surprize for all those just waking up now, the gift third from the end in the red wrapper... that is socks! The real surprize is what the xmas elves snuck into the egg-nog!

Sorry I feel suspense is a major cause of stress and you shouldn't be stressed on xmas... yeah right tell that to those who do all the entertaining or who have kids (luckily not me).

merry xmas
Daryl

[Bunno Smurf]

yeah right tell that to those who do all the entertaining or who have kids (luckily not me).
Daryl

Well I did the entertaining and have kids so I was fairly stressed.

We stayed up late last night to watch Santa set up the swing set he delivered. He left some mighty fine snow prints leading up to it and so did the reindeer. The reindeer ate half the carrot we left and Santa only left a few crumbs and the dirty dishes from the milk and cookies. We almost forgot to leave them out. I snuck in to see if Eloise was still awake to see if she wanted to help and there she was on her knees looking out the window. I said "What are you doing??" She said, "Santa?? Flying sky???" We'd had a look at the Norad site and watched Santa fly over NZ. She was looking out the window trying to see him fly over our house. So cute.

[Tojo]

Children are really cute about such things aren't they. Even though Daniel is now 10 he still doesn't want to give in to his intuition that Santa doesn't actually exist. He still writes a Wishlist list for Santa & charged downstairs this morning to see what Santa brought from his English relatives (all the presents from Germany were opened last night).

The children love getting 3 lots of presents from Santa, once on 6th December (Saint Nicholas Day), once on the 24th (German Xmas Day) & again on the 25th (what I consider to be Xmas Day) - I wish we'd had that


I hope you all got what you wished for from Santa

[KiwiSchlumpf]

I snuck in to see if Eloise was still awake to see if she wanted to help and there she was on her knees looking out the window. I said "What are you doing??" She said, "Santa?? Flying sky???" We'd had a look at the Norad site and watched Santa fly over NZ. She was looking out the window trying to see him fly over our house. So cute.

Oddly the NZ airforce was doing the same thing... they gave up pretending to intercept Santa (or anyone else for that matter) when the government sold their aircraft. Now they are hoping that a kind low flying Santa will leave them something capable of flying as fast as a domestic animal (be it reindeer or sheep) fired from a canon. Quoting sources close to the government, they said "that will be the day pigs fly" ... the airforce hurriedly pressed pigs into service.

Actually the Norad site looks much more modern than the radars the airforce has... watch out on ebay for some 1960s radars ex- NZ airforce, slightly used, no manuals and with high postage. I reacon they will upgrade to using the Norad Santa site from 2007.

In a strange twist of fate the army also want to buy new canons! apparently the airforce borrowed them and they smell somewhat of domestic animal droppings!!! odd coinsidence I say!