Little Drummer Boy

We took the plunge just over a month ago and bought Liam his first drum kit. He has been taking lessons all year, and practising by slapping his thighs during this time. With the help of his drum teacher, we managed to grab this great kit on ebay for a very good price. Thankfully we have a small room downstairs (partically below ground level) that muffles a lot of the noise Liam can produce on it. I think, however, we must get Liam a set of earplugs as this particular room has quite echo-ey acoustics - rather loud when you're actually in there, I must say!

Christmas 2010

Beth playing with one of her new toys - Barbie's head and hair...
time to teach the girl some hair techniques!

It doesn't take long for the Lego to be built!

This year we ate spiced coconut prawns with our ham and chicken... Yummm, great recipe. Even the kids tried it!

Despite the rain, we did all squeeze on the deck and enjoy Christmas lunch outdoors.

It doesn't take long for what was a carefully laid Christmas table to look like this!

Christmas baking...

After making gingerbread men a couple of years ago, we thought it was time to have another go this year. Long process, but Liam and Beth enjoyed it, especially the decorating part - you just HAVE to lick the drippy icing off your fingers as well as test the little coloured chocolate decorations as you go, don't you?!

The artisans hard at work... great way to spend a school holiday afternoon.

Today Show...

Almost forgot... The Today Show were filming every day last week from Coolangatta during our holiday. Each day they filmed 'live', which included guest appearances from particular entertainers. We missed Guy Sebastian on the first day, but caught Jessica Mauboy on Tuesday and got to see her perform a couple of songs from her new album.

Crazy. We stood in the rain with our umbrellas and got ourselves drenched just to see the performance and try and get glimpses of ourselves in the crowd on the telly later. But it was fun and certainly added some excitement to what might otherwise have been frustrating wet days!

Hooray for Holidays!

Highlights from our annual holiday down at Coolangatta...

A day trip to Byron Bay. The holiday began with rather poor weather, so to get out of the unit we took a trip down to Byron. Good move. It didn't rain a drop whilst we were there, in fact, it was quite humid. We stumbled across some great Sunday markets, enjoying some of the interesting foods that were for sale, and also visited some of the obvious places of interest - the infamous lighthouse and the most easterly point of the Australian mainland.

After a few days of rain, we were delighted with the change in the weather - glorious sunshine and warm days. Perfect for fun at the beach.

As well as swimming, we all helped create interesting castles in the sand. This is my brother Aaron and his girlfriend Joke (Yo-ka), who holidayed with us.

The finished product.

Actually, sand-castle building was very popular on this day.

We took an evening walk after dinner each day this time (helps to tire out the kids and get them ready for sleep!!) so it was sometimes a good opportunity to take the camera and play with some good shots.

They were building this park at Palm Beach last year, so Liam and Beth enjoyed playing on it this time. It's a fantastic playground with a cool pirate theme, including buried treasure you can dig for!

Digging for treasure...

Of course, sometimes it was just nice to relax at the apartment and watch a bit of telly!

Another school year ends...

Today we watched a few hundred littlies perform at the end of year celebration Christmas concert at school. The year 2 boys took the parts of Joseph's buddies (that's Liam and his best mate Hunter), and the prep girls were adorable angels. It was all drenched in much sweetness and cuteness of course. School breakup parties were then held in the classrooms, and the kids have come home full of a junk-food lunch and seem utterly exhausted and ready for a holiday.