Boxing day

Christmas was mayhem ...

With our niece and nephew visiting, we had three children under 4 in the house. It's like Toys 'R' Us exploded in our living room.

But now we get to celebrate Boxing Day, aka December 26th. In Christchurch, the place to be on Boxing Day is, evidently, Hagley Park. We headed there along with the rest of the city, their coolers and their picnic blankets.

Christchurch has a picnic

The park was full of families playing and picnicking. It was really a beautiful sight. There certainly are some benefits to having christmas in the summertime.

Hagley Park has a paddling pool which was just chocka full of screaming toddlers. Our niece and nephew joined in. Quinn had a wee paddle, but is still a bit too small for this particular kind of fun.

But then the water fun ended abruptly when this man came out and set up his sign:

We watched as he put on his hip-high waders and walked the length of the paddle pool with his net, looking for poos.

Happy christmas!

Tomato forest

Remember our little seedlings?

Well, they've grown a bit... into a freaking tomato forest.

These tomato plants are nearly 5 feet tall. They would probably take over the yard if we left them unattended over a long weekend. When Gareth approaches to water them in the morning, he hears a faint cry of "FEED US!!"

We haven't actually harvested anything yet, but we are rubbing our hands together with great anticipation. Roll on the tomato soup, the tomato sauce, the salsa ...

The tomatillo plants have completely gone gangbusters. We're going to have enough tomatillos to start our own salsa verde business on the side.

It's no wonder they call this place the Garden City.

Incongruity

Saturday was a great day. The weather was fantastic - we went for a walk on the beach and had fish 'n' chips outside for lunch. I got a little sunburnt.

Then we came home and ... put up the christmas tree.

The birds start singing at 4 a.m. these days (you know these things when a certain baby has you up at all hours) and it doesn't get dark outside until almost 10. The days are looooong.

So we've put up this beautiful fake christmas tree, but barely have enough darkness to enjoy its twinkling lights. Although, in this case, that's probably a good thing because our cheap-ass Warehouse christmas lights barely twinkle at all and half of one of the strings doesn't even light up. That's what you get for shopping at the Warehouse (New Zealand's Wal-Mart, without the poor employment practices).

Also on Saturday I did yard work - sitting on the grass in the sun, pulling weeds and dead-heading the rose bushes. OMG we have so many roses. One of our rose bushes has almost certainly reached critical mass. Peach roses, white roses, light pink roses, hot pink roses. So many roses. And heaps of other flowers (or weeds? who can tell) all blooming and glorious. I filled our entire green organics bin trying to tidy it all up. And then for dinner, we barbequed. Salmon and shrimp: om nom nom.

Then on Sunday we went to our friends' house for more bbq'ing. Burgers, sausages, my awesome potato salad (well, Gareth thinks it's awesome).

We used a lot of sun cream this weekend. And we did some christmas shopping and wrapping.

And there is our christmas tree- reminding us that it's christmas time, but it's summer, but it's christmas time...

This photo was taken at 8:30 at night...