christmas in australia (just the two of us)

Merry Christmas to you and your family and friends. May the food taste delicious, the presents be satisfying and time together with others be meaningful and enriching.

So, after all the hustle and bustle, hurrying and scurrying, frantic buying and frazzled cooking - Christmas is here!

My contribution to the busyness of the season was to prepare a selection of Christmas goodies and, with Frank, to deliver them along with Christmas well wishes to our neighbours.

Personally we opted for a low key event. With a forecast of cool temperatures, rain and hail we reluctantly revised our beachside picnic plans and settled for lunch in the controlled environment of our own home. When the wind picked up and the hail began pelting down just before lunch we were rather glad for the mundane protection of four walls and a tin roof. I'm wondering if hail qualifies as a white Christmas? Maybe that's stretching it a bit, but other parts of Australia experienced a delightful sprinkling of snow!

All in all it's been a pleasant day. We crawled out of bed to feast on French Toast with berries, paused to reflect on the birth of Jesus and the incongruity of an incredible history maker stooping to enter the world in a stable with shepherds the first to hear the news, and skipped into the present opening. Wow, we are so rich - all day I've been conscious of it. Some people are struggling to survive without food, money, friends or love. Their day will be the same as the day before and the day before and the day before and the day before. Inside my heart I carry a bucket of thankfulness, and it is so full at the moment that gratefulness and happiness keeps spilling over the sides.

One of the presents I bought for myself Frank was a game called Carcassonne and we managed to use it to wile away the rest of the morning (and a good bit of the afternoon) building roads, cities and cloisters in the French countryside. (Frank won, but it was a close call)

I think we might still be lost somewhere in the French countryside (which would be rather pleasant really) - because I don't quite know where the rest of the day went!

We nibbled on Christmas treats, munched our way through a prawn salad (my first attempt, and I was a little disappointed with the flavour really) and savoured raspberries and icecream before falling asleep in the middle of riveting reading.

And so the day has passed. Our first Christmas as husband and wife. Special.

It was nice to spend it just the two of us - but next year I'd like to spend it with our families. There's a richness in being with loved ones - the more loved ones, the richer it is! (In theory)

May my heart always be attuned to the riches I possess and ever grateful for all I have been given, at Christmas and every day.