Kiwi Christmas....

Oh it's so nice to be home.
The pohutakawa are in full flower. The sun sparkles on the waters of the Bay of Islands.

The fish nibble, tug and tease on the end of fishing lines. And dolphins frolick around the boat.














The fishing on Friday started a bit slow with some gust-propelled drifting across the bay with winds so strong that even the strongest snapper couldn't keep up with the bait, but culminated nicely with a drift between rocky outcrops, oyster-encrusted and pohutakawa fringed bays past a pod of frisky dolphins and we brought home enough fresh fish to feed a family a few times over.

The barbeque has spluttered and smoked as the sausages and steak charred to a slightly-less-than-carcinogenic-still-authentic-BBQ flavour.

Bottles of wine jostle in the fridge.

Menu-plans have been generated necessitating multiple trips to the local New World, butchers and weekend Farmer's Market for fresh raspberries, prawns, turkey, ham, cream and salad.

My pregnant baby-sister, her husband and her bump are expected home on Christmas Eve. Given that I haven't seen my baby-sister since her wedding 3 years ago, this makes for a full family Christmas.

Technology has gone mad - my parents have stepped up to the challenge with a Flash Drive (small steps for Gen-X, giant steps for parent-kind), a new lap-top, a wireless modem so I can email and blog from the comfort of the lounge (I don't think it was just for my benefit although I did do a bit of propaganda and enthusiastic extolling of benefits), a Wii and this has all required a fair amount of installation, explanation, testing and fiddling.








And throughout, cats do what cats do best.... be exactly where they want to be, which is not necessarily where you want them to be (inside clothes drawers, on the computer and kneading sunburnt knees with their razor-sharp claws).


Ah, it's good to be home.....