I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.
Had a great evening on Christmas Eve, Jason and I met up with Steve and Lisa down at the Clovelly Hotel. It was absolutely heaving there, and it looked like a lot of the people had been drinking all day. Luckily it had cooled down quite a lot from the daytime and it was bearable again. We had a few drinks down there and lots more of our friends turned up for a couple. Most people tho were only out for a little while. The pub closed about midnight, so we caught the courtesy bus to Coogee where we went to one of Steve's old haunts, the Palace on Coogee beach (he used to live in Sydney about 7 years ago). It wasn't so busy in there, but we still had good fun. We stayed until about 2ish then went home.

Me, Jason, Lisa and Steve

Steve doing his Liam Gallager!!

Christmas day was really nice, we got up suprisingly early and had some breakfast and went back to our flat to swap presents with Todd and Lilly. Mum nor I didn't feel like it was Christmas day as it was so hot, we found it very weird! After we'd opened our pressies and watched a bit of TV, we went back to the flat in Clovelly and had Christmas lunch which was baked potatoes and salad! Then I had a big urge to go swimming in the sea...you can see the sea from the balcony here, so I suggested we go down to the beach for a bit before we headed off to Sue and Grants. We drove past Coogee beach which was absolutely packed, so we decided to go to Clovelly beach, which was a lot quieter.

By the sea

Jason and I went into the sea for a swim, it was absolutely lovely.....I can't believe I've been swimming in the sea on Christmas day....I just had to do it whilst I'm here!!

Jason and I in the lovely water

It was a really quick dip tho as we had to get over to North Ryde for the evening, I could have stayed in the sea all day.

We arrived at the Taylors at about 4.30. It was great to see everyone again, and Mum hadn't seen Grant (they are cousins) since I was christened (yes, that's a long time ago) so they had a lot of catching up to do. We watched the kids all open their pressies, then we had a lovely buffet dinner there, lots of salads and grilled prawns, ham and turkey too.

Opening the pressies

It wasn't the same as I'm used to, but I was really pleased to be able to take part in a proper Aussie Christmas (well, it was really a Kiwi one as they are mostly from New Zealand). Christmas day was definitely an experience (especially swimming in the ocean). After dinner we went for a walk up the road so I could show Mum and Jason the houses decorated with their Christmas lights, they were really impressed.

One of the lit up houses (I still need to sort out the night time feature on my camera, it was so much better in reality!)

After a bit of a photo shoot.....Grant wanted lots of family pics, it was highly entertaining...we left for home, we were all pretty shattered.

Boxing day we had a bit of a lie in, then I had to go to the airport to change one of my flight tickets. After that we drove to Palm beach (which is where they film Home & Away). I've been there before, but I really wanted to show Mum, it's a fair way from Sydney, it took us about 1 hour. It was pretty busy when we got there, so quite hard to find a parking space. The beach was looking lovely, we took a walk to the Summer Bay surf club where we had to get our photo taken with the surf club sign.

Mum and I outside Summer Bay surf club

Mum on the pathway they all walk down to the famous beach

After that we dumped our bags on the beach and jumped in the sea. It was bliss, but the waves were quite high and the current strong, so I didn't last too long in there, I was getting dragged all over the place. We had a bit of a sleep on the beach, then drove back.