Warning!! Lots and lots of photos :)

It was a lovely night to celebrate Josh and Kara's engagement at the end of November.   Here's just a few of the photos.  Kara and Kasiah looked gorgeous and Josh didn't scrub up too badly either!

Kara with her cousin Katherine, Mum Barb and sister Carissa.

It was lovely to have an occasion for dressing up.

I realised when I went through all the photos that Ben only appeared in the background of this one.

It was a beautiful balmy evening at the hotel, especially out on the balcony.

I realised that, as I had a photo workshop to attend in December, we would be in Adelaide for the Barmera Pageant night.  I persuaded Bun that we should go to the Renmark Pageant instead.  Here he is helping push the old fire truck that stopped right in front of us.  I'm not sure how far around the route it got but Bun came back buggered hahaha.  After the pageant, we went to Kate and Roger's for tea and then watched the fireworks from their lounge room window.

I've been having fun with the Thermomix and have produced jams, salted caramel sauce, dips, foccacias, bread, peanut butter cups, banana bread, etc.   I've also started doing demos for people and so far I've managed to sell 3 of the machines!  It's been interesting and tiring at the same time as I was working almost full-time at JC Irvings as well.  Thank goodness that's finished :)

We went down to Adelaide for the photography workshop which was held in the city, starting at the end of Rundle Mall and along North Terrace.  There were 6 of us and we managed to attract the attention of some of the crazies out at night!  Callie had a homeless guy talking to her for a while but thankfully he didn't follow when we moved on.

I learnt quite a bit during the evening but now have to put it into practice, hopefully there will be plenty of time when we head off again.

Marg and Vic were in Berri for a few days so it was nice to catch up briefly, Ben hadn't seen Marg for a few years now.

 

I did a practice run on preparing a pavlova in the Thermomix prior to Christmas.  It worked out well and I served it up for dessert Saturday night as Callie and Steven were home for a quick visit before Christmas.

Once I had finished work at Irvings, it was time to work out what else needed to be done.  I ended up having a lazy day last Thursday as I had nowhere I HAD to be.  I worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and had demos on 4 nights out of 5 last week!  Pretty knackered by the weekend :)

Callie and Steven were here before they headed off to Bali on Christmas Day.  I jokingly suggested Sunday morning that I would like breakfast in bed.....I received the DIY version!  LOL

At least they had toasted the crumpets and the water was hot!  The milk was missing however and arrived later, served in an eggcup!  You've just got to laugh :)

Having listened to pillowfights and people who wanted to jump out and scare others, I concluded that even though the house was full of adults, there wasn't a grown-up amongst them LOL

It would be so nice to be able to take family photos without someone complaining hahaha

We had Christmas lunch at Kate and Roger's.  Their renovations are finished and it looks so lovely!

My Christmas tree pavlova worked!!!  So glad I scaled down the sizes from the recipe in the magazine though!  We left Kate's and after a brief stop in Winkie to pick up presents, Bun and I headed off to Adelaide to see Josh, Kara and Kasiah.  They had an extremely early start to their day, having taken Callie and Steven to the airport.  They needed to be there at 5.30am so Josh and Kara earned some serious brownie points there I think.  Unfortunately none of us slept really well last night as some '(*& people' were letting off fireworks randomly throughout the night and upsetting all the dogs.  Josh brought Kasiah into our room at 5.30 this morning for some snuggle time.  After a little play time, a change and a bottle Kasiah went back to sleep between us and so did we!

Thank goodness for digital cameras as you can just keep snapping away and capture all the changing expressions :)

She's such a cheeky little monkey!  Josh and Kara got her a Jolly Jumper and already you can see she's going to have a lot of fun.

We came back from Adelaide this morning so that we could catch up with Jon Western and his family.  Although Bun and Jon have a chat on the phone each year, it's been about 9-10 years since we've actually seen them.  It was lovely to sit by the river for a few hours with them.  

Ben is leaving tomorrow morning to go down to Adelaide.  He plans to catch up with Josh, Kara and Kasiah in the afternoon before he goes to Lorne with friends on Saturday for the Falls Festival.  He'll leave there on New Year's Day for Canberra and then back to work on 2nd.  I think he might find it tough after having the last 5-6 weeks off :)

I hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas with family and friends.  I did plan to update the blog beforehand so that I could wish people a Merry Christmas but other things kept getting in the way, but you get that.

I have a feeling that 2014 will be busy and filled with special things for us so I hope the same holds true for all of you!

Cheers

Anne