Xmas eve morning we drive to kevins unit in west Brunswick which he has kindly offered to let us stay at, even though he only picked the keys up for it yesterday and has yet to move in himself…still it will be nice to have place to crash. We take considerably longer getting to the unit than we should have done, but that’s par for the course. On arriving we meet a hung over Kevin ….. good to see him….until he helps us move some of our stuff into the unit and promptly drops the present we had brought his parents (a nice bottle of finlandia vodka) which smashes nicely on his driveway! Still we take a photo of it just to prove we had brought her something! We spend Xmas eve day at loweys brother’s house where the beer is flowing fast and the food is plenty. Lowey is in good form although slightly worse for wear after stopping out til 6am on a works do the night before….some things never change and it reminds me of all the times I saw him arrive for a Sunday game back in tamworth after a night out at xenon!.
There are probably about 18 family members of all ages and we all have dinner outside on a massive table and it’s a very sociable affair. We meet loads of good people and they all make us feel very welcome. For lunch we have fish ham veg and salad not to mention all the party nibbles before that. Most of the day I think of how stressful it all must been to organise but everyone seemed very relaxed with a distinct lack of arguments ..not sure how they do it. After lunch we play cricket in the garden with a few of the kids and adults, ana and lowey re kindle their past by bowling at one another with ana being dimissed by a suprisingly quick delivery from the lowe but then going on to play several delightful strokes including a reverse sweep for four that could grace any coaching manual. We discover that even the 11 year old girls are better than most English players! Emma decides to go in to bat after taking an amazing catch, starting on a high emma is soon brought back down to earth after a five year old smacks her straight in the eye with a full bunger, everyone is laughing but she couldn’t see out of it for the next hour with it watering so much but she gets well looked after with some more champagne and pudding along with an ice pack .The next event of the day is santa “arriving” at the party, he sits in his grotto and everyone sits on his knee and collects their present from him and he rings his bell, very cute when all the younger girls just stare at him in amazement. We get loads of good photos and footage from the day and slowly the day draws in to leave all the blokes sitting together debating about cricket.
Eventually emma and I head back with Kevin to his folks house and we spend the night and wake up xmas morning there!!!
