Our First Australian Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!

We thought we were very clever - we ordered our seafood back in November from the Narrabeen Lakes Fish Shop. Let me put it this way.... we ARE clever!!! Reports were coming in by 3am on Xmas eve morning, the traffic was backed up all over Pyrmont. 3am!!!! The Sydney Fish Market stays open for 36 hours straight - from 5am on the 23rd to 5pm on Xmas eve. And it's just mayhem for those 36 hours.

I got to Narrabeen Lakes at 4.45pm. The queue went out the door and around the corner... It took me an hour to collect my order! But great thing was that there was no pushing, shoving or jumping the queue. Everyone waited patiently in line. Some striking up conversations. Some chatting on mobile phones - relaying cooking instructions to sons and husbands. Everyone was in a festive mood and, because there was a queue, confident that they were in the right place for the very freshest seafood!

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when the guy behind the counter brought out our lobster and asked if I wanted it cut in half!!! Nothing small about an Aussie lobster!!!! (see pics below)

Scott's been nagging me non-stop for the past week if he can just open one present - aaawwwww, pleeeeeeeeeeez? Just one??? Well, you can only imagine how these pleas escalated on Xmas eve!!! I LOVE that my husband is so young at heart!!! :-)

So amid the aaawwww plleeeeeeeez's, we managed to open a bottle of bubbly and prepare a little bit of the seafood for Xmas eve dinner... We started off watching the sunset & eating a dozen oysters with Tabasco, fresh lemon and pepper. Yummy!!!!!

A few simple barbied prawns with a Balmain Bug each

Take the photo already! I wanna tuck in!

Dawn on Christmas morning

Can you believe that I actually got up before Scott? Set a pot of coffee to brew & then got his lordship up!

So many prezzies to open!

AND the stockings too!!! It felt like Christmas! Oh, but wait a minute.....

Scott had said he was really keen on the new AC/DC album so I got it for him. I had said I was really keen on the new AC/DC album so he got it for me!!! Oops!

I got a funky USB crystal light rocket

And a cool "Gone Cruisin' - back in 5 years" picture/sign. It's gonna look SO cool in our new place on the Gold Coast!

Scott's become quite fascinated with surfboard design. I found this fabulous book for him on the history & design of surfboards.

The FULL set of Indiana Jones - including the Crystal Skull. I think this was the winner!

All our pressies on the couch - with my Wizz Mixer in the bottom left of the picture. Way cool!!!

So after listening to some Chris Isaak Live in Australia (one of my stocking fillers) and reading a bit, we decided to head for the beach. So from about 9am all the way through to 1.30pm we were total beach bums! Very relaxing and not too hot cos there was some cloud in the sky. But the water was lovely and there wasn't a breath of wind. Only downside was that there wasn't a wave in sight! But we battled through...! :-)

When our tummies started rumbling we headed home for our seafood feast!

And what a feast it was!!! Bubbly, an enormous lobster, crabs and prawns. I made a lovely salad which we hardly touched after all that rich seafood.

This is NOT a side plate!!!

What a setting!!!

Bubbly running low...

There it goes!

While we were sitting relaxing after lunch a couple of Rainbow Lorikeets decided to pop in for a snack. The one actually climbed up onto Scott's hand to much on some honey-covered bread.

This was taken on Boxing Day morning - they came back for breakfast.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas too!!!

All our love and very best wishes for 2009!

Mands & Scott