Christmas & New Year's 2008

It's a little late and out-dated, what with us being in the 2nd month of 2009 already, but I thought I'd stick up a couple of photos from the festive season.

The bulk of my holiday was spent with Team Spohl (Sparks and Pohl) at the farm where we lived the life of sloths by relaxing to the max and generally only moved when entirely neccessary. Actually that really only applied to a couple of us, actually mostly just me, because just about everyone went on daily walks and rides ranging from a modest 2kms to a full blown 6kms at times. Personally I wasn't sure what we had all worked so hard during the year for, if we were going to spend our holiday trying to keep fit.

Christmas was mellow and was definitely more focused on the kids, something that is entirely understandable and yet hard to accept all at the same time. Luckily Bronny busted out her Christmas stockings again this year with Cal receiving her debut. The Spohls were completely blown away and all agreed that stockings were the way of the future.

On the 30th December the Spohls kindly vacated the premises in search of their own New Year's party, while the majority of our social circle arrived for a few days of chillaxing. New year itself was an awesome evening spent with great friends and the days were spent reading, fishing, playing board games and cricket, swimming, etc, etc......

Christmas Eve

Prawns and ribs for dinner - No stuffing around

Christmas morning

James waiting patiently for Uncle Baj to open his present, something that Uncle Baj was having an incredibly difficult time doing

James and David showing a keen interest in the good stuff

2 of the many fish we caught and ate

Christmas Day - Roast Lamb on the spit

Tight lines

Nix and Cal doing an impressive job de-boning and filleting

New Years Eve 2006

New Years Eve this year was spent in Camden, London. With a certain amount of persistence and aggression, Greg (all the way from China) managed to rustle up a good sized crew and I think there were about 20 of us. Kurt and Toni were down from Yorkshire, Greg was over from China, Connor and Barnsi were over from Ireland and we also had 3 Dutch girls thrown in for good measure, so it was always going to be a big one and I think everyone put in a pretty good effort.

The party itself was titled "The Mad Hatters Tea Party" and the dress-code was, come as your favourite Alice and Wonderland character OR where a crazy, funky hat. Having no interest in dressing up or making the effort to find an outfit the majority of us settled on the hat option.

The tickets we bought allowed us to move between 3 bars and all were part of the same party. Unfortunately we only drank in the Barfly and didn't manage to get to the other 2 bars (The Enterprise and The Lock Tavern), but I think we made a good choice as the group never split up or spent the night on the streets queuing to get into the other clubs.

All in all it was a great night and I think the pictures say it all.