Christmas Eve 2006

Greetings! I'll warn you that this is one massive post, and some of the videos are big!

So, going back through Christmas Eve yesterday, we had:

Christmas with Kristin's parents, brother Karl and his wife Peta, at Uncle John and Aunty Roz' house after attending a church service at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Novar Gardens.

Simeon got a cute T-shirt from Karl and Peta (seen here with Grandma aka Lyn):

... and here's the scene of devastation (ie present opening)

Amongst the wrapping paper etc, here's a video of Simeon brrm-brrming around. Simeon makes this little engine noise with his lips when he's "motoring around", crawling about looking for things to play with.

Then in the evening, after attending the Christmas Eve service at 4:30pm at Warradale Lutheran Church (where Ellie is a part-time youth worker). We then went home and put the children into pyjamas before a beautiful Christmas Eve meal:

Here I am giving Simeon his tiger toy from Karl and Peta - he is our little "tiger" and even roars like one!



Simeon is unfortunately more of a thumb-sucker than our other children:




We enjoyed a candle-lit dinner of a scallop-and-bacon caesar-style salad ...



I experimented with our digital camera to try and capture the occasion at the dinner table (first video 7.7Mb).

Simeon wasn't missing out, getting some banana:

[SIMEON HIGH CHAIR]

Then unfortunately Mum was not online to see us eat on video in front of her a fruit and chocolate fondue. In the second video I toast a marshmallow on one of the advent candles!

Joshua was enjoying the good food:

After dinner it was time to open presents (these videos are huge, on average about 120Mb big. Do not try and view on dial-up!):

Simeon loved his Thomas the Tank Engine present - it made a loud noise when he banged on the box!

I have to warn that somewhere here I am telling Jordan to "nick off". Now, Jordan wasn't there and in fact it wasn't even Jordan. The story is that we had our laptop on the pool table with the webcam recording, waiting for Nannie and Poppie (my mum and dad, Anne and Kevin for everyone else!) to come online (on MSN Messenger) from Chengdu, China (which they later did) so that we could have a video chat. I had the volume up loud so we'd hear when they were ready in China. However Ellie (on Jordan's MSN account) was keen to know when they were available too, so she, Jordan and Kay (Jordan's mum) could also video chat. So there I was trying to open presents with the kids, and all I could hear was the "doo doo doo" noise of someone wanting to chat. I thought it might be Mum and Dad but realised it was just Ellie typing more stuff. So sorry Jordan / Ellie for yelling in one of these videos!

Merry Christmas everyone!