Our Last Aussie Christmas

I will always remember Christmas 2018 for two big reasons:

It was our first Christmas as a family of four.

And it was our last Christmas in Australia because... we are moving to Canada in March!

The decision to move has been a long time coming. We’ve gone back and forth about if/when we should leave Melbourne since Ella was born. Having baby number two really made our decision for us. We just really miss being around family, and Australia is SO FAR from everywhere else in the world. 24+ hour flights to get to either England or Canada with two kids is too long, not to mention costly. Moving to Canada will also bring us closer to Andy’s family, as the seven hour flight between Toronto and London seems like nothing now.

Even though going to Canada is going home for me, I am trying to treat it like a new adventure. After all, it's been 13 years (!) since I last lived there. I left Canada as a 24-year-old in January 2006, having finished my last year of university as an exchange student in Sweden 8 months earlier. I well and truly had caught the travel bug, and was looking for my next adventure. I knew that teachers were in demand in London so it wouldn't be hard to find work. And London is a fantastic base from which to explore Europe and even northern Africa. I originally thought I'd spend a year in London, working and travelling, before heading back to Toronto to "settle down". I never once thought it would be 13 years before I’d return, complete with a British husband and Australian children! 

We’ve had to jump through a few hoops in preparation for the move. Andy’s spousal visa application required a lot of documentation and took a months to get together. All documents had to be copied and sent by mail to Immigration in Canada. It made me appreciate the system in Australia which allows you to scan and upload documents - much easier and way more efficient! It then took a further five months for the application to be processed and approved (which is actually pretty quick for this type of visa).

Andy has also had a hard time being registered by the Ontario College of Teachers, which was a similar scenario to when we first moved to Australia. He has to do a short university course before becoming fully registered, but luckily that can be done online for three months starting in January. 

Both kids are Canadian citizens by descent. I did have to apply for citizenship certificates before getting their passports as they were born abroad (another six month wait for those). We now have all the official documentation to get into Canada so that stage of our move is complete, thank goodness! All that is left to do is sort through our belongs and decide what to ship and what to sell/donate. We aren’t moving any big items like furniture so hopefully that job won’t be too overwhelming. 

We are planning on spending our last few months in Australia relaxing and enjoying the city we’ve called home for the past six years. Andy finished work a few weeks ago, and I resigned while on maternity leave, so we have plenty of time to pack up and enjoy. My parents are coming over at the end of January. We will leave our Brunswick rental for a beach house in Rye, on the Mornington Peninsula, for our last five weeks. I’m looking forward to spending time with family, and living a simple life of lazy beach days and BBQs. 

Once we get back to Canada in March we will start to look for teaching jobs for the following September. We are very lucky that we will be able to live with my parents while getting ourselves settled back in Canada so we are just enjoying our brief period of unemployment without too much financial worry (yet!).

Anyway, back to Christmas. We had a quiet one at home, just the four of us. Part of me was a bit sad that we didn’t have any family to share the day with (a sense heightened just a little as we FaceTimed with relatives in Canada and England), however the other part of me remembered just how lucky we are to have two healthy, gorgeous children to spend our day with. And some of our friends even told us they were a bit jealous of our low key Christmas, as we avoided all the stress that can come with the holidays.

Still, I wanted to make Christmas fun for Ella now that she is old enough to enjoy it. On Christmas Eve we all opened gifts of new pyjamas to wear that night. I left buying these a bit too late - I REALLY wanted some matching onesies for Ella & Ollie but I couldn’t find anything I liked in both their sizes. (Plus, I was trying to spend as little time as possible in shopping centres before Christmas.) Next year I’ll start hunting for these a bit earlier! We left out a mince pie and a drawing from Ella for Santa, plus a carrot and some water for the reindeer. 

Once the kids were in bed Andy and I finished wrapping presents while Home Alone played on TV in the background. Once the presents were ready, we settled in to watch the Christmas episode of Gavin & Stacey with a glass of wine. The night before we watched Love Actually which is definitely my favourite Christmas movie. 

On Christmas morning Ella was super excited to see that Santa had been to our house. Of course we ate some of the mince pie and carrot to add to the effect, which Ella loved. It’s nice to relive the magic and wonder of Christmas through the eyes of a three year old. We kept it pretty small this year as we definitely do not want to collect any more “things” before the move. But to Ella this was actually a lot of presents and perhaps this should be our new normal. In North America (those that are privileged) can tend to go overboard at Christmas, and while I have nothing but happy memories from my childhood, we could probably cut down on the amount of gift giving in our family. I have vivid memories of volunteering with our church at Christmas to sort through donations of food and presents for local families in need and remember loving it. I definitely remember that experience more than individual gifts I received. So next year I’d like to start doing something like that with our family (though perhaps Ollie will sit that out for a few years...)

We let Ella open one present and then sat down to eat our breakfast of french toast, bacon, bircher muesli and fruit salad. Oh, and champagne and orange juice for Andy and me - traditional Christmas morning drinks in my family! (We usually also have coffee with Bailey’s in it as well, but I’m afraid that’s a bit too much alcohol in the morning for this breastfeeding mama. Next year!)

Once we’d eaten it was finally present time. Ella was able to recognise everyone’s names on each present but that didn’t stop her from opening them all anyway. Oh well! She had a good time and was pretty excited about her new swimsuit, pool noodle and doctor’s kit. In fact she wore her swimsuit with the pool noodle tied around her waist all day, nevermind that we weren’t going swimming.

The week before Christmas I took Ella shopping to get a present for Ollie and daddy from her. We went to Kmart - what a mistake!! She had a huge meltdown because I refused to buy her a doll she wanted. I don’t blame her really, even I get sucked in looking at all the toys/clothes/house items they have there. Also trying to explain that it was nearly Christmas and she would be getting some presents in a few days is a pretty abstract concept for a small child. After letting her cry “I want it to be Christmas RIGHT NOW!” she finally calmed down and we picked out our things for Ollie and Daddy. I suggested we get a game for Andy, I thought a great family tradition could be a new game every Christmas that we can all play together. We settled on the game “Fishing World” which I remember from my childhood.

Ella thinks it’s an absolute hoot.

We spent lots of time FaceTiming our families that morning while Ella showed them her new toys. In the afternoon we made some yummy gingerbread cookies.



Later on we went out to the park for a picnic. It was pretty warm out that afternoon, and the picnic started out pretty disastrous as Ella started to have meltdowns over everything. Eventually Andy took Ollie back home to have a nap and I stayed at the park with Ella. She seemed to calm down and we had a lovely time playing together in the sand pit. After about an hour, we had a leisurely time walking back to the house, stopping to look at lots of flowers, insects and birds along the way. I love walking places with Ella when we are not in a rush. She is so curious about everything, it’s great to be able to stop and wonder about things with her instead of trying to hurry her along.

We didn’t do a big dinner with the kids as we’d eaten at the park. Instead, once they were in bed, Andy and I had a pork roast that had been cooking all day in the slow cooker. That, paired with a glass of rosé on the balcony, was a lovely end to our Christmas.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to going back to having Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere again. Christmas in summer just never feels that “Christmassy” to me. I miss the snow, mulled wine, the lights during the dark nights and the cosy feeling that goes along with it all. But I'll always remember this year fondly and probably miss the simpleness (and nice weather) once we are back in the great, white north!