Christmas Eve Y'all

You've probably noticed some changes to the blog.  We've added some links to sites we like and some other stuff.  The picture of the Croc up top is one I took at the Australia Zoo.  He's about ten feet long and I was able to get right up next to him to snap the pic.  As close as I ever want to get to one of those blokes.  You'll also notice that we're starting to post pictures in the body of our posts.  If you click on an image you should be able to see it in full size. We hope you like the way the blog is shaping up, we're going to keep trying to improve it.  As we learn more we'll share more.  In the meantime if you have any suggestions or questions that you'd like answered please send us an e-mail.  Also, I've changed the time stamp to reflect Australian Eastern time. Remember we're almost a full day ahead of you.

Wow, It's about time for us to hit the hay.

You guys are just waking up to Christmas Eve and we'll be waking up to Christmas morning.  I've just checked the NORAD web site and Santa is in Japan and due here in Australia in less than an hour.  We don't have much time to get this post done.

We had a really fun day today that mostly consisted of hanging around the house.  Leah managed a work out class while I watched the kids next door for a few minutes.  We popped over to Coles for a few items and that's about it.  Leah made some Christmas Corn Flake Wreaths and I helped by tasting.

By the time she was done with these we were both stained permanently green and covered with melted marshmallow.  We discovered that they don't have the little red cinnamon candies that we have in the states and had to scramble and come up with an alternative.  We used some little raspberry jellies that we found along with some red mini m&m's.

We discovered that they have the good kind of peanut butter here that has nothing but peanuts listed in the ingredient list.  The kind that the oil separates to the top if it sits for a few hours.  It's our favorite. In addition to the wreaths Leah also made Special K bars.  I really lucked out here boys.

We went down to the shops and got some small gifts for the kids.  We're invited over for brekkie and it's not good form to show up on Chrissy morning without at least a gift for the kids.  Never mind the fact that Andrew and Melissa have us over all the time.  Thomas is really into a cartoon called "Ben 10"  I'm becoming quite familiar with him at this point as well.  There's a whole aisle in the toy department dedicated to him.  We managed to pick out a toy for him and a bucket of Play Doh for Zoe.

This evening we cracked open some beers and cranked the ipod (everyone else in the house must be with family cause we're the only ones here) while we made dinner.  We had bought some prawns and steaks and made a nice tomato, pepper and mozzarella salad.  All the prawns that we've seen for sale here come with the heads on.  You don't see this too often in Denver but we've gotten pretty used to it here.  As a matter of fact, we already know we'll miss seafood when we go back.  The quality of seafood here is amazing.

After dinner we helped the kids spread magic Reindeer food on the front lawn.  Aparently if you spread this stuff out on the lawn and leave some rain water in a bucket the Reindeer are more likely to stop at your house.  Also, we discovered that Aussies leave a plate of cookies out for Santa just like we do, though they call them bikkies.  But instead of a glass of milk the old boy gets a bottle of beer.  I think this should be a tradition in the states as well and I plan on bringing it back with me when I come home.

After the kids went down to sleep, we stayed and had a few drinks.  Probably a few too many.

Merry Christmas.  Here's a self pic of us with Steve Irwin. Eat your hearts out.