Catching Up and Happy Holidays!

Hello my lovely family and friends. Baby Jaren is sleeping and although I did try and lay down to nap myself I decided to get up and try and get some blogging done. He's officially one month old and things are getting a bit more settled. I absolutely love him and being a mom. This month has already passed too fast, though it's nice to have things getting a bit more in a routine and to be managing more on little sleep (though we'll see if I actually finish this entry today or if it takes me a few days to do so.) I've been shocked at how hard it is to get things done with a newborn. Oh well! I've not been too stressed out about that. Varian's been amazing and has done so much for us, and frankly sleep has gotten a big priority when possible, and the rest I fit in in little snatches. But look I'm already getting ahead of myself. My goal is to catch up a bit on some of the things that have happened in December and then blog about the biggest news of all...the arrival of our beautiful son! :) So I'll try and stick in a somewhat chronological order.

Christmas:

• TREE

We set up our tree in early November. (No rule about having to wait till after Thanksgiving here, though granted that wouldn't have stopped me anyway. I love having the tree up for as long as possible, and would have kept it up longer this year other than we wanted it done and out of the way before the baby came.) I love our tree. It's progressed even a little since last year and just was so sparkly and beautiful. No - those presents weren't all for us. That's for siblings and cousins and other extended family as well. But also I'm like a little kid who likes to open lots of little presents on Christmas instead of just get one big thing. So I do tend to get lots of little things and wrap them all up separately so there's more to open on Christmas morning.

• STOCKINGS

And the stockings were hung from the tall boy with care...

• CELEBRATIONS

We took advantage of various Christmas activities in Brisbane and Ipswich which were nice. I especially love that they do fireworks here for the holidays. :) I love fireworks! Christmas Eve we went to Max and Laree's for swimming, food and presents. Varian's Mum's family is from Germany and they do all their celebrations the night before.

A rather violent game of chicken-fight, well a series of games that is. The results were debatable but as you can see from this photo, I think Varian had the upper hand.

That darling little angel is Charlie, my "1st cousin-once removed-in-law." I got to play Mary in the nativity play, yes I am a good 20 years older than most of the other participants but I was perfect for the part!

Waking up on Christmas day and opening presents as just the two of us was lovely. Then we went to a Christmas breakfast and then a Christmas lunch with family, topping it off with a swim at the beach. You know as much as I miss a white Christmas, there's something to be said about Christmas in summer.

• FAMILY PARTIES

Chad and Felicity and Co. came to stay with us over the holidays which was so much fun. We keep begging them to move up to Brisbane and they want us to move down to Sydney. In my ideal world all of the Woods/Jeppsons/Astons/Knoths and associated would all move to live within a half-hour's radius from each other and we'd get to bond all of the time. Maybe someday...

In lieu of camping (which worked out well for the 37 week pregnant lady) we did a day trip up to some rock falls and to see the glow worm cave. Really fun day full of wading, rock-sliding, picnics and cliff-jumping (again not for the 37 weeker, but frankly it was just a good excuse. I hate cliff-jumping!)

Yes those glowing blue dots are actual glow worms. SO COOL! There were also glowing mushrooms and plants on the hike out but I don't have pictures of those, but it was breathtaking, Avatar meets Australia. :)

I hope you all had wonderful holidays yourself. For those who we got to spend time with thank you for the great memories. For those we were far away from, you were in our thoughts and prayers and we miss and love you! Merry Christmas all!