Too summery to feel festive

I do like three-day weekends. I think I've said that before sometime. This one was our own doing though, not a public holiday type one. It was my birthday yesterday, so following another hectic weekend Joanne and I decided to spend the day together, just hanging, doing stuff on our own time, with no place to be by a set time.

The day started with a trip to the immigration office. I won't bore you with talk of residence permits and returning residents' visas. All you really need to know is that I can get back in the country when we leave for the UK trip in June. Following that we wandered round town for a bit, seeking Christmas present inspiration, before dropping a tasty pie for lunch at the crumpet club. Real steak pieces. Yum. The latest James Bond film followed that (had to do it, despite less than rave reviews, just to tick it off) before dropping Joanne at home, heading to the park for a game of touch (last of the year) and then picking up a Chinese on the way home for our tea. What a great day. I think we should hang out every birthday really.

I think we both appreciated the day off too. We had another busy weekend. The sort of one where two days are just not enough to relax and unwind after the week of work.

Friday night was Joanne's work do at the Convention Centre. It was a good evening. Santa goes on Safari was the theme. The buffet counter was full of tasty meat, so no complaints from me.

On Saturday we helped Tim & Christine move into their new house before going to buy a Christmas tree. We'd bought all the decorations a few weeks ago when they were on sale in Farmers so Saturday evening was spent decorating it. It almost made me feel Christmassy. Almost.

I also spent Saturday knocking up a black forest trifle. We had the bible study group round for a barbecue after church on Sunday (the carol service complete with shepherds in shorts like last year) and my part of the deal was a dessert. I do love that trifle and any excuse to make it and share the love is grabbed with both hands. The barbecue was kind of an end of year social thing but also I guess a sort of goodbye to Lisa & Steve for just our group before they head off to Bible College in Sydney in January.

Sunday was also spent carving up the ham from work. In case you missed the explanation last December, every year everyone who works for the company gets a ham as a Christmas present. Last year it was 8kg, which I thought was pretty big. This year's was 10.7kg. That is a big ham.