Christmas Box

Well, a  Merry Christmas and  Happy New Year to everyone - here's hoping for world peace, an end to poverty and in my case a liver that needs some serious time-out in January.

The past 3 weeks have been pretty intense, but good. My mother has taken to island life like a brown boobie pelican to the Caribbean Sea and seems to have enjoyed her time here. She hasn't even missed TV, though I suspect she has watched just a little bit too much Dreamworks & Walt Disney for her liking  and is ready for a good dose of BBC.

The festive season kicked off with a real bang - I had my office Christmas lunch and the First Annual Girly Chrimbo (Christmas Blow Out) Dinner on the same day- so had to pace myself a bit, as they both involved getting on boats and a lot of alcohol.  I survived both and was even joined by Tyler at the Girly Chrimbo which moved from The Last Resort to the Cabanon, the local nightclub dive where we all had a jolly good opskop and lots of fun. We realised that it was actually the first time T and I had had actually gone out for an evening without the kids. Amazing.

The next major highlight of the season was the arrival of our 40 foot container - roughly the same size of our (furnished) house last Tuesday and the knowledge that we had 16 adults and 18 children for Boxing Day lunch (why o why do we do these things to ourselves?). Anyhow more than half the boxes and furniture went straight into storage, and we are still wading through piles of junk (Tyler has 3 pairs of long john thermal underwear for skiing, for example) and just so much STUFF.  So we unpacked and unpacked and unpacked and unpacked (you get the picture) and we'll eventually get there, but at the moment it does feel like a very high mountan to climb. It is wonderful having our things again however.

Christmas Day was spent  with all our local 'family' and we had turkey and all the trimmings. Father Christmas was also very well desposed towards the Caribbean this year and lucky moi got her Kindle, and the boys got their well-travelled Hot Wheelers. T got a large contribution to his iPad and the day off.

In fact T has actually been very brave and changed jobs. You may all recall that his first adventure into BVI Cheffing had its challenges, and long story short - he is now the Sous Chef at Scrub Island, a new 5 star resort owned by Marriot (http://www.scrubisland.com/) with a large professional kitchen and in charge of all the baking and patisserie. He's very pleased and enjoying himself a lot.

Boxing Day we had a good old braai and all our new friends came to sit amongst the boxes, giving new meaning to the day  (Boxing Day - geddit?!)  and it was very chilled with people leaving around 7, and us collapsing into the bubble wrap.

We knew we could push ourselves, as we were off to do nothing at Cooper Island for the week, and that's exactly what we did, apart from a wonderful dive to the RMS Rhone on Tuesday and reading 2 books (Freedom - Jonathan Frantzen) and Chris Cleave (absolutely brilliant). We also ate and drank a lot, musn't leave that out. The weather wasn't brilliant - but as you can see from the photo which really looks like a cheezy postcard, this is a relative thing.

New Year was spent at Trellis Bay Fireball Party, all very new agey with calypso thrown in - but where in the world could you take your 81 year old mother and 5 year old boy, and still have a good time? T was working (Foie Gras stuffed morels, Kobe beef etc) but joined us just after midnight and we still hooked up with the Clatworthies around 1:30 for a glass of champagne. Like we really needed another one,

Today we all feel a little shell-shocked but are off to yet another invitation, New Years Lunch - so I need to dash, but just wanted to post all our family news.

We've been thinking so much about all of you around the world - in New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, South Africa and England - and thank you all for your wonderful support and patience with our family  this past year. It has all been pretty hectic, but we think we've laid down some good foundations for the future and we're all still in one piece (it was a bit touch and go at some points along the way!)  but we're looking forward to 2011 - the year in which everything hopefully stays exactly the same as last year!!

Lots and lots of love to you all and all possible health, wealth & happiness for 2011. xxx