Happy Christmas and New Year!

To all of my friends, family and complete strangers to stumble onto my little blog, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and I wish you all a very Happy 2006.

Christmas for me began with Midnight Mass. I played the organ at my parish church to a congregation of about 1000. This was an extra special Mass for me as it was the first time my non-religious boyfriend has ever attended Mass. I hit a few bad notes but I did mostly ok and received a lot of compliments after Mass. I also did a vocal counterpoint solo which went down really well.

Christmas Day began with a rush as Steve and I had to do the family runaround but it wasn't so bad. First we picked up my Mum, drove to my brother Conor's house and spent some of the morning with him and his family. Then back to Mum's for Chrismas lunch which was a traditional hot meal of turkey, ham and load of vegetables, followed by Mum's famous sherry trifle.

Then Steve and I went home for a little rest and to wrap the remainder of the presents. Then off again to his Dad's for dinner. Dinner there was more Aussie in the sense that it was still turkey and ham but this time it was cold cuts served with salad.

We left his Dad's place to go home and as we drove down our street we saw the yellow flashing lights of an Energex truck. Our entire neighbourhood was in darkness. The storm which was going while we had dinner at Steve's dad's place was bringing down trees and branches on the power lines in our street. We had about 5 hours of blackout.

All in all, I enjoyed the day inspite of the rushing, the eating, the heat and the blackout!

The next thing on the agenda was our New Year's Eve Party. Steve and I were hosting our first NYE party so the pressure was on to get the house ship-shape and party ready. Unfortunately, I had just come down with a nasty virus and couldn't do as much as I needed to. So Super-Mum came to the rescue and helped Steve get the place ready. (I did put in a few days' effort before I succumbed to the lurgy though.) Our friends came over for a BBQ dinner under the house after which we took a stroll to the beach...after all, we do live on a peninsula! We took in the night view of Brisbane and then walked home to catch the fireworks on tv and toast the New Year. Then it was apple pie and ice-cream for everyone!

My cough got worse that night but I'm on the mend now. Fair dues to Steve who has nursed me back to health only to catch the damn virus off me. Now it's my turn to play nurse.

That's it for now. Happy New Year everybody!