The washup

That one big day of the year, the one everyone stresses about and is busy preparing for, is now over, finished, done with!!! And I for one am glad. Some of you may have picked up from my Facebook posts that I was ready to skip the whole festive shebang and just keep moving right along. But, long story short, it all worked out ok and we had a pretty good day.

Beer and gingerbread cookies left out for Santa on Christmas Eve. 

Santa left some cool stash in the kids' stockings. Miss Caitlin though doesn't miss a trick and I am going to have to be super careful in future - she spied something in Ciaran's stocking that she saw me buy recently and no amount of pretending on my part would convince her so I changed the subject and thankfully she let it go.

Little boy was very curious and excited but he was very good and just looked.

The first of many pressies for this pair. Happy campers all round and thoroughly spoilt too.

We spent the day at Marty's parent's place with his sisters and family - 7 adults and 5 kids makes for a fairly full on, chaotic day but it was all pretty casual and chilled out overall.

We started with nibbles and drinks,  fed the kids lunch, enjoyed some prawns and oysters (not me though, cant stand the slimy little things, I just stick to prawns thanks), crowded in the lounge for presents which looked something like this ...

Then we left the kids to play with their loot and the grown ups enjoyed lunch - ham, turkey breast, chicken, cabbage/noodle salad, green salad, potato salad - followed by sticky date pudding and ice cream!

Afternoon siesta's for some and a swim in the pool for others was the order for the rest of the afternoon followed by prawns on the BBQ and leftovers for dinner followed by a fruit platter, white christmas and a cuppa.

Thankfully we just hung out at home on Boxing Day and then our friends came over in the evening and we hung out with them enjoying nibbles and drinks and exchanging pressies with each other's kids.

Thanks (or rather NO thanks) to storms on Christmas night which dumped almost 2 inches of rain at our place and nearly 3 inches of rain in town, followed by another storm that afternoon, we took a drive around to see the floods ...

This is our driveway river ... 4WD access only!!!

Looking towards town from the western side where we come in ... the river flooded over the lucerne paddocks and cut the road between the poplar trees. It will take weeks for the water to soak in or evaporate away because it doesn't flow back into the creeks or rivers.

Top right - river flooding lane behind main street shops - the main street and front of the shops are all higher but the water comes right up to the back of them and even into some but most are able to get their goods moved higher beforehand.
Others - when the river breaks its banks it forms almost a second river across the low lying flats on the northern side - the amount and speed of water moving through is incredible. The bottom right pic shows water over the road between the 2 bridges and it got much higher than this the next day, cutting road access completely.
Thankfully it is all subsiding relatively quickly and the road closures around the area didn't last long.

So beautiful ... sunset over the flood waters down near the lucerne flats that we share farm ... but so wrong cos the water ain't meant to be in these places and it's caused major damage to our lucerne.

However, they say a drought ends with a flood ... and 2010 has been the year of floods, certainly for Qld (at least twice in some areas, poor buggers) and NSW and Vic. The only state not copping the wet weather is WA. I'm sure their time will come ...

So that's my news for now ... are you impressed about another post from me WITHOUT an eternity between them LOL.

Next time I'll have some scrapping to share.

Happy New Year. I do hope that 2011 is a fabulous year for you all!!!

Best wishes, Love H xxx.