Our First Christmas at Fossils Retreat

Our first Christmas has come and gone at Fossils Retreat. Fortunately, we both started holidays at the beginning of the Christmas week, which enabled us to start cooking, baking, shopping, getting beds organised and creating bedrooms out of previous storage rooms in the house. The domestic animals were very quick off the mark to recognise that holidays had started and get into the summer holiday spirit ...

Madge relaxing on a spare bed after a hard morning's work hunting rabbits, birds, tailess lizards and tiny field mice

Scruffy checks out that we have indeed removed every Christmas ornament from this box

We got the 8ft Christmas tree up and placed and got the last of the ornaments up 2 days before Christmas Eve.

Scruffy checking out that we have placed all the Christmas tree lights symmetrically around the tree

After heading down to Wellington on Christmas Eve to take Jennifer's mum out for a Christmas lunch, two family couples arrived that night and stayed over; Denise made fantastic waffles and fruit and yoghurt and/or cream for breakfast; one couple departed for Christmas lunch elsewhere; and 3 more family couples and 2 kids arrived around midday on Christmas Day. For a change, the gale-force north wester winds abated and we were able to open the french doors into the kitchen and dining room and sit outside, which enabled all to improve on their summer tans. We had a great Christmas Dinner about 4 o'clock on Christmas Day which was even more remarkable (as somebody commented) in that no family arguments at all ensued. The family all departed early afternoon on Boxing Day to go to their respective homes, and Denise and Jennifer did absolutely nothing for the rest of the day apart from feeding pigs (very disappointing left-overs - zilch, in fact) early that evening.

We also decided that if we were ever going to restore our fridges to their natural states, we had better get some friends in to help get through the leftovers, which we did on the evening of the 27th, having spent at least some hours constructively - finally getting another gate made for our house fencing - which makes it an awful lot easier to carry down pig buckets to Porker Villa than climbing over the fence as we were used to. We still have lots of friends and family planning to visit over the next few days, which we are looking forward to immensely.

The Christmas tree finally up and lit, decorated muchly with some of Jennifer's selection of American Christmas ornaments - the fairy angel seems to be a little tipsy after Christmas Day but she has now recovered and resumed her rightful upright position at the top of the tree