29 December 2011 Post Christmas, Pre New Year

This month has been busy busy. December usually is. After hosting my own Christmas lunch, I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Uncle Erkel Chocolate Bars from my brother. They arrived on a stormy evening in Perth and I promptly opened them up and surrounded myself with chocolate. 

I took some to work the next day and they demolished 6 boxes worth. I have handed them out to friends as Christmas gifts, and now after all the celebrations I have only 4 boxes of boxes so that is about 24 boxes left. I am sure that will keep me going for a while.

I survived my work's Christmas Party. We all went out for lunch to the Melbourne Hotel. It was nice enough but it seems that they go for the maximum meat and very little veg these days. 

Before I forget, we went and watched 'Puss in Boots', and I thought it was great. Very cute, enough adult jokes to keep it going and some very cat like behaviour.

The following week after the work Christmas Party, I went for my first off-site training. I headed up to Paraburdoo for three days to teach mainly vac/grad students. It was my first time in Paraburdoo and my first time on an Iron Ore site too. Here I am all dressed up, it certainly felt normal putting my steal caps back on. This photo was taken at about 4:30am before I had to catch my flight up North.

Christmas Eve and we found ourselves heading back to Melbourne to spend the week with Reece's family. Christmas day was a nice lazy pace. I found myself being the recipient to many cooking related gifts, with cook books, timers, aprons, oven mitts and kitchen knives. Reece gave me a Zeke stuffed toy and some awesome Portal coasters. 

We then found ourselves in the eye of the storm as Melbourne was hit by a freak Summer storm, with hail getting to the size of large marbles. Reece's parents suffered a broken skylight and some dints in the family cars. We were then subjected to 90mm of rain, luckily Grant had got up on the roof and covered the broken skylight with a tarp. Our flood damaged stuff under the house was again put upon by rain, but on closer inspection the following day, the boxes bore the brunt of it and only a couple of magazines had to be tossed and some things were damp. We need to replace quite a few boxes though. Yay to unpack and pack up again. Though I found my circular needles that I found I was missing, so I have put them in my suitcase to take back. 

We didn't end up going to the cricket this year. We had meet up with Katie and Vic and their friends for a few drinks on Monday night at 'The Melbourne Supper Club', it was truly Melbourne experience and Katie and I did polish off quite a few glasses of red. Reece took me for a nice scenic trip on the way home, so we ended up at a park overlooking the city at 1am. It was very pretty. 

Yesterday Reece, Amber and I headed to the Botanic Gardens. It was very popular as the day was a cracker. The cafe was busy when we stopped for lunch. Amber and I got our lunches fine but Reece waited for an hour and still no luck, so I demanded a refund for him and we moved on. 

I will just finish the blog for the day with some photos from yesterday.