Happy 2010.... where did the time go?

Happy New Year to all my lovely friends & family who read this!

I know that 3/4 pants & work boots don't exactly match - but it was a quick "grab your boots, hat & rain jacket & run" moment!

My, it is hard to believe that it's been so long since I've sat here at the computer & written a blog post. Please forgive my tardiness - my only excuse being that this is the time of year that farmers have time to socialise - harvest is finished & holidays hadn't begun yet (most are gone this week or the next) - we have had a busy social agenda. I've also had two sisters visiting & what a wonderful time we've had.

But let me regress...

Christmas.. What a wonderful time we had. After all that worry about melancholy, it turned out to be a happy time, without a tear at all.... you see on Christmas Eve Dave was speaking to our neighbour & it turned out he & his wife were all alone for Christmas (having celebrated with their adult children the Sunday before), so we asked them over for Christmas lunch. Hospitality at Christmas is something I had never considered before... it always has been a family time & as such the focus has been on our family, but this year was different. And let me tell you it was wonderful! There was no extra work as I had already bought an enormous turkey, made a delicious ice cream gateaux dessert & cleaned the house from top to bottom. The children LOVED having guests & we had a lovely time with them. I would highly recommend sharing your Christmas with others... everyone had a great time & on leaving our neighbour said she would "always remember this Christmas" - which bought tears to my eyes. We also went to a friends house for tea - what a fun, tiring day!

Christmas was a rainy day (which was just beautiful as it was nice & cool) - the first one the old timers remember. Well God let that rain set in & the total over the Christmas weekend we had was almost 3 inches!!! This means most of our dams are full, our water tanks are full & we are still praising God for such a great gift. Even our house dam (which is our big one that has a silt dam before it to "catch" all the silt before releasing water into the house dam - it's never been full enough to release the water before ) was getting water running into it!!

This was enough to make me almost cry - water running into the big dam from the silt dam!!

For New Years generally someone at church has an open house & everyone is invited. This year it was some dear friends turn, so we all attended (including the Sunnyside visitors) & had a night of board games & generally eating the many snacks the ladies provided (needless to say there was a lot of food). We almost missed midnight for all the chating... but managed to just catch the countdown on TV & watch the Sydney fireworks. Jud was the only one to crash before midnight...lets just say we've had some tired children.

See the fence - well we were driving on the other side of that before this big rain!

We had a wonderful time with my sisters over the last week (sadly they had to leave yesterday) with the highlight being our shopping trip on Thursday - our aim was op shops, old wares & antique shops! I'll post our finds later...lets just say we had a wonderful "all girls" shopping day!

One for Nita - who loves Snowy!

We've also had farmyard additions..another post!

I look forward to catching up on blogs as time permits (Dave has the next two weeks off work & we are unsure as to whether we will go camping for a couple of days)!

I hope you are all well & enjoying this beautiful time of year!

May God richly bless you throughout this new year!