CHRISTMAS DAY 2006

We all met at Norman's home (that's Julie's dad), then went over to visit Simon, Caroline and William. Santa had left a huge pile of gifts under the tree for everyone. How good is Santa?

After heading back to Norm's the men got busy with the Rotisserie. They cooked turkey, ham, chicken and loads of baked vegies. While the cooking was happening we devoured massive platters of fresh prawns, chips, crackers, dips, cheeses, from just about every country in the world, red and black caviar, plus a mass of sliced deli meats. Don't you just love Christmas food? Fantastic isn't it?

To keep up a family tradition, we had the usual assortment of Christmas games, quizzes and hunts. All with classy prizes for the winners.

Meg arranged the Great Christmas Treasure Hunt, with cryptic clues for each person. And the most beautiful Christmas boxes, filled with tiny bottles of wine, chocolates and bon-bons. There was a box for everyone. Well done Meg!

Then we had the Great Christmas Scavenger Hunt, where everyone had to find 20 weird items to claim the prize. Julie finished first, but a challenge from Meg was upheld. Sorry about that Jules.

The Great Santa Sack Race was a great success. No broken bones resulted, although I'm sure Norm will have a few bruises after his nasty fall. David and Meg caught it all on video. I'll give you the link when it's been uploaded to You Tube. It's sure to be a hoot. Can you imagine me in a sack jumping around like Skippy under attack? Well as Dave and Meg where hot with the camera, it's coming to this movie house soon. Keep watching!

The Bauble Guessing Competition was interesting. Norm organised this one. Now as many of you know, Norm was a big shot with the CSIRO before his retirement last year, and he knows a thing or two about weights and measures. For added interest he stuck a tube in the centre of the container before he put the tiny chocolates in.

Now I have to admit that we're a highly competitive lot. And we love to win. So there we were, being very smart people, all cleverly working out area to volume ratios. We knew we'd crack the code. We knew a thing or two about maths. But we were outsmarted.

Our calculations were totally useless because none of us noticed the central tube. Which, of course, reduced the volume greatly. Good one Norman!

Julie's Christmas Trivia Quiz caused a few protests, but they were soon sorted out by careful Google clarification. I love the Trivia Quiz. I always find out the most amazing stuff about Christmas. I think David was the winner. Anyway he received the award, so I guess he was.

We didn't get to do Amy's Candy Cane Relay Race, because it got dark and we were all too full to run anymore anyway.

Congratulations to all the winners. And thank you all for taking responsibility for your allocated game/quiz/hunt.

For anyone new to our Christmas antics let me explain how it goes. I send an email to each family member to tell them the game, quiz, or hunt, they're responsible for. They have to supply all the apparatus required to conduct the event, plus the winning prize (or prizes).

I desktop publish really classy certificates/awards for each event and all winners are given a noisy ovation when they receive their awards. We catch most of it on video then burn up the You Tube super highway, big time. One year we have a tinsel tug-o-war (a heavy rope covered with heaps of tinsel), but there were near death experiences so we've deleted it from the games list. I think it was replaced by the tinsel three legged race.

Kate and Amy are pretty good at this game. If you watched the barefoot bowling video you would have seen them bowling together with their arms and legs bound with tinsel. They entered as one player for that round. Interesting women indeed!

Well that's enough about Christmas. It was a great day. And of course those videos will be coming soon. Stay tuned to Fleming Movies for the time of your life.