Christmas and New Years
It's 2024! Holy moly, how did that come around so fast?!
Christmas was a pretty quiet affair for us this year. My parents spent the holiday in California with Mike and Ashley, as they were with us here in Melbourne last year. Not only that, but the weather here was terrible. It rained all day, only clearing up around 5pm - definitely not the weather we've come to expect here for Christmas, but I suppose it can't be hot and sunny every year.
We tried to tell the kids not to wake us up before 6:30am on Christmas morning, but of course I heard them giggling together just before 6am. Ollie crawled in bed for a cuddle and when I told him it was too early he replied in a very earnest voice "but I'm just so excited!" and how can you argue with that?
We tried to get them to pose for a nice photo in front of the tree but Ollie can't help but be silly for the camera! Andy and I quickly made our coffees and then gave in to the madness that is children on Christmas morning.
Ollie was thrilled with his new Hot Wheels toy, which is ridiculously big and I already regret having in the house, haha. But whenever he was asked what he wanted for Christmas he replied "a car", so we didn't have much to go on!
My parents got Ella her main gift, a netball ring, so she can practice her shooting and get ready for her second netball season starting in February.
For breakfast I made a french toast casserole, which Andy and I thought was delicious. The kids wouldn't even try it though!! They don't know what they were missing, I would totally make this again.
In the afternoon we went to Taryn and Verge's for Christmas. We were joined by another family who have a son in Ella's class (he is actually the only student who Ella has been in the same class with every year, including next year). All of us are expat families so it was great to come together to celebrate Christmas together. Taryn and Verge have their parents visiting, who we've come to know well over the past few years, mainly as they've become friends with my parents... "grandparent friends" we call them. I'm sure they were a bit disappointed that my parents weren't around this Christmas, as we had a really great time with them for the holidays last year.
The kids kept busy playing with Charlie and Theo's new toys, decorating gingerbread cookies, and eventually going outside to play in the park next door once the rain finally cleared up.
We all pitched in and brought dishes for the Christmas meal, which was AMAZING. I was on salads, making a charred corn salad and a Greek chickpea salad, both of which were excellent and I'd make again (actually I've made the chickpea one multiple times now).
Although a Christmas without any close family feels very different we had a very fun afternoon and I feel lucky that we've made friends that we can share this holiday with.
The week between Christmas and New Years was a mix of lazy days at home and days out with friends. We spent Boxing Day with the van Beeks, who hosted a Christmas dinner for 36 people this year! Crazy! They had a lot of leftover food which we happily helped them eat and spent the day just chilling out on their back deck.
We also caught up with old friends of ours, Denise and James. They had a son in Ella's class in prep and we clicked with them right away. It probably helped that Denise is English and James is Canadian, so right away we had lots in common! They sadly (for us) moved to Townsville at the end of 2021 for Denise's job, but were back in Melbourne for a few weeks for a visit. It was wonderful to catch up with them - it's such an easy friendship and it felt like we'd just seen them yesterday - not two years ago! We spent a day in the city with them, meeting at the NGV to check out the Triennial - a huge exhibition that happens every three years at the NGV. The last time we went was back in 2018, which I wrote about here. The whole gallery is taken over by over 100 works of art and it's completely free. This was actually the second time I've visited, the first was with Ollie at the beginning of December when he was finished daycare but Ella was still at school. The pictures below are from both visits.
Ollie loves the children's area, which is based on a children's book by Jean Jullien. Children can walk around collecting "trash" from the sea and then put it in the rubbish bins, which give them a little thank you message. Both times we've been Ollie has wanted to stay in here forever and has to be dragged away!
This series of digital artworks by the art group Smack was very intriguing. The work is called Speculum and the three depict the Garden of Eden, Paradis and Hell. The artworks move and change and Ollie and I sat here for ages pointing out all the strange things going on.
Some rooms we zoomed through so I didn't get a chance to really see what the artwork was about!
Just inside there is a huge digital fireplace, which you can see through the outside water wall:
The performance artist Smac McCreanor impersonates emojis... it is incredibly impressive. I believe she has a big social media presence. The kids loved watching this.
Even after two visits to the Triennial I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface and I really want to go back and visit on my own - it's great going with the kids but they don't always want to stop and look at the same things as you!
After the gallery we went for lunch at Arbory Afloat, a floating bar and restaurant on the Yarra River.
Next up was a play at a park, and then we all drove back to Kew to get gelato at our favourite local gelato shop, which we used to visit frequently with them when they were living in Melbourne. Ah the memories!
On New Years Eve we drove to the Healesville Sanctuary, a zoo specialising in native Australian animals. We were lucky to watch some very active koalas, and even see a little baby koala crawling along a branch.
There are some good nature play areas which the kids enjoyed playing at, along with splashing in a creek. Healesville is a very beautiful zoo, the environment and enclosures are very natural. It wasn't super busy, so was a peaceful way to spend the day.
We didn't have much planned for the evening. Last year we went to one of the "celebration zones" in the city with the van Beeks and my parents and watched the early fireworks at 9:30pm. We thought we might be able to see these from a bridge near our house that has a good view of the city. Unfortunately the 9:30pm fireworks are not as big as the midnight fireworks, so we didn't end up seeing much! We did play with some sparklers though, and watched the magnificent Sydney fireworks at 9pm on TV which looked very impressive.
Once the kids went to bed Andy and I stayed up for a bit but I'm afraid to say we didn't make it till midnight! Very rock and roll over here in this house, haha!
On New Years Day we headed to Lysterfield Lake for the day, which is about 45 minutes east of the city. We got their early (thankfully as the car park was absolutely packed about half an hour after we arrived) and started with a big walk around the lake. We knew it was about 5km and had packed the kids scooters. Unfortunately most of the walk was on unpaved paths, so not the easiest with a scooter. I'm glad we persisted and made the kids complete the walk, but I'm not going to lie, it was hard work at times convincing them to keep going! We had to take turns helping them by pushing them on their scooters, and by the time we finished the walk (5.7km total) it was very sunny and warm out. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the small beach of the lake and doing a bit of swimming before heading home for the night.
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