Hope everyone had a relaxing Christmas, I think thats the key...just to go with the flow, I think we managed to do just that....

Christmas eve we made the most of the sunny weather knowing the next day was supposed to rain... Celia doing her bit on the mower... before we took Matt back to his boy scout days and cooked our tea round a campfire in the paddock...with some lovely bottles of local wine they had picked up during their visits to the vineyards earlier....
Christmas day, the boys were up at a civilised 6.30am...and were rather amazed that Santa managed to fit such a huge trampoline into his santa sack...Dad and Uncle Matt were rather suprised at the size of it too as they were putting it up in the garage the night before...it just kept getting bigger and bigger....took all four of us to cart it round to the garden and heave it over the fence lol! For now it has pride of place in the middle of the lawn....hmm not exactly what I had in mind as a feature in the garden but will put up with it over the holidays and then maybe shift it into the paddock! Saying that everybody has been enjoying bouncing around on it...even the grown ups!

Some other pressies that were hits...Samuels fire engine....even comes to to the dinner table with him!!

Josephs Freaky Food Lab kept the lads amused concocting up all manner of disgusting things! EWWW thanks Nana and Grandad lol!
and lots of games...always a favourite in our house...Aunty Celia teaches Patrick and Joseph how to play battleships..
Boxing day we headed for the beach at Matauri bay, the boys tested their boogie boards and I tested me new swimmers and went for a dip (sorry pics were banned rofl!!)...and it was fantastic...the water was warm but the wind was a bit fresh!! The plan was to walk up the hill to the Rainbow warrior monument but the track was closed for repairs so we headed back in to Keri Keri and walked the path to Rainbow Falls instead....

Ok I'm not quite sure how I managed to get them all looking at the camera at the same time without someone pulling a weird or funny face...but I did!! Yayyyy!! One for the scrapbook!
and into the new Year we go.......

More pics of Maffoo and Celia at large in Northland!

horsing around.....
Paihia...
Cottle Hill vineyard in Kerikeri...
icing gingerbread cookies with the kids!

3 more sleeps until Chrimbo!!

excitement is mounting in the Darge household! lol! blogging got pushed to the bottom of the priorities list over the last 10 days or so...not enough hours in the day and all that!

The advent activites have included the boys cooking dinner for Mum and Dad and creating a restaurant...they did a wicked job...decorated the table with flowers and candles and they made a menu and napkin rings out of pipe cleaners...so cute and they did a pretty awesome job on the dinner too...Pasta with mince bolognaise sauce and veges followed by jelly, fruit and icecream for dessert with Mum overseeing the proceedings...

What else did we do...a Harry Potter style treasure Hunt...a pajama party where we watched

...of course....Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone...he's the new hero of the moment and even surpasses *gasp* Ben 10!! and some other things which I can't remember off hand now lol!

Of course the big event of the last week was Aunty Celia and Uncle Matt arriving from the UK ....they have hired an MX5 convertible while they are here and so one of the weeks advent cards was to arrive at school in style lol...Joseph lapped it up being dropped at the gates with the top down...P was a bit self-conscious about the whole affair and Matt said he got out of the car and ran for it lol! The boys havn't been shy with them one bit, even Samuel who had never met them before which is just lovely to see! Anyway here are a few pics...sorry its taken so long to get them up here Gran and Pop!!!

Celia has a few more of our day out today lunching at the beach in Paihia..so will try and upload them off her camera and add too over the next few days....they are starting to look very relaxed now and are sporting a bit of a tan already after the sun got them (through the clouds!)and turned them a bit pink on their first day here... Jim whacked off a few leaves of Aloe and we slathered them in the juice to take the sting out.

No Scrapping being done til next year now!!

Have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS all!!

Thank you to anyone who has visited this little old blog of mine and left a wee comment along the way...much appreciated!

Safe Holidays everybody!!

Meek and Family!!

Every year this man says 'we're not putting lights up this year'....every year we have sparkly twinkly's heh,heh...he just can't help himself!

The advent fun continues....on the 8th day of Christmas.....we had a snowball fight!! ahem, Kiwi style with scrunched up balls of newspaper...huge amounts of shrieking and laughing and barking..yes even the dogs joined in and it filled in a dull rainy morning just nicely! On the 9th it was still raining! stink!! So we took the boys shopping and they each chose a little something to give to their brothers.
Today the 10th...we held a Family Awards night... I can thoroughly recommend doing this with your kids...so funny....I printed some mini certificates off the internet and then we each wrote every member of the family a certificate for something we like about them or for something they do....after tea I announced we all had to go and 'get ready' for the award evening and everybody raced off and came back attired in all manner of strange things which included quite alot of underwear being worn on heads and over clothes etc....thats the Toomey coming out in everybody rofl!! and sorry was laughing too much to get a pic of the outfits!Then we presented our awards...check out Josephs award to Patrick for being the 'best bother' lol! The ceremony ended with a rousing chorus of we are the champions! Nothing like a bit of loving yourselves to bouy everybody up!
Only a week until Uncle Celia and Aunty Matt get here...heh, heh kids aye...tend to get their aunties and uncles round the wrong way....waving you guys....not long now and you'll be stretched out , feet up, drink on hand winging your way to the soggy north lol!! don't worry I'm sure it will have all blown over by the time you guys get here...she says hopefully!!

Ok i'm off to work on my next project in waiting....my Care2crop album...

The advent calendar activites are really proving to be a fun way to tick the days off, here is what we have been up to recently...

3rd December...Make christmas cards so we got busy with the good old potato stamping trick and some of Mums supplies and away they went!

4th December....Make homemade Lemonade....my helpers squeezed madly and even thought up a name for their brew! Samuel was chief taster and drained his glass in seconds(not taking after your Grandad there are you Mr Bum Bum!!)...must say its quite delicious with a drop of gin in it too!

5th December...a phone call from Santa!!!

6th December...Put up the Christmas Tree.

Sparkly twinklies!

and tonight December 7th.....a nice simple one...reading christmas stories..

Over to scrapping...it was my turn to create a sketch for the Monthly Sketch challenge at Scrapbook Studio....would love to see what you create with it...everybody is welcome and you may just win the $20 voucher to spend at the shoppe...now that would be a nice little addition to your christmas stocking!

I actually got out from under my little scrapbooking rock and went to a local Scrap n Chat last night...it was bliss! Got my layout done and met some other ladies who like to shuffle bits of paper round too, completely relaxing with no distractions...this could become my weekly escape lol!

The last NZdare of the year is going up tonight too... Everybody is sure to have something they can scrap for this one!

Woohoo the countdown to Christmas has seriously begun!!

Finally got the Advent calendar underway...a day late but the boys didn't mind...we still did the first activity on Saturday which in honour of a pinch and a punch for the first of the month we punched holes in tin cans to make tealight candle holders...well in the end it was too hard banging nails in so Dad got out the big boy tools...the drill and the grinder...and set too them...the boys were happy to cheer on the sidelines everytime the sparks flew lol! Then we painted them and let the boys stay up until dark to light the candles...a big hit!

Yesterdays activity was 'head to the beach and take a boat ride' so we took the ferry over to Russell and spent the day exploring, beaching it, climbing hills, eating fish and chips and icecreams and playing airdrums to the Foo Fighters full bore in the car! Oh yes you had to be there but lol!

Boats everywhere!

He's got that...'now what can I sell so I can buy a boat' look in his eye lol!

Being the true little pirate that he is...Patrick was quick to find the X that marks the spot!

Deep inside there is an artist trying to get out!!you could always take up scrapbooking mate heh,heh!!

Wave racing in ya undies, life dosn't get much better! Keeping cool...Long Beach (or as Joseph observed...a not so long beach), Russell

Ok so really! who would call their Takeaway shop Birdie Num-Nums!! Jim reckons we need to photoshop it to Nerdie Bum-bums lol! don't ask!

Uh-oh look out Patrick the Birdies are after your Num-nums!!

The ancient old Fig outside the ancient old (well for NZ standards!) police station in Russell...gnarly!!

We stopped at Paihia on the way and the boys were agog watching the hole in the rock jet boats getting ready and the sight seeing helicopter coming in...especially when 4 kids got out lol! I think now they have ditched the idea of spending their pocket money savings on scooters and skateboards and are now saving for rides on these lol!!

The Jack Me Up for December is Upppp!

A good night was had by all at Scrapbook Studio last night for the Christmas Cyber Crop...some cool challenges are still running so if you've got christmas photos to scrap...you are sure to find some mojo to scrap them when you check out all the layouts the DT have been working away on for the last couple of weeks! Lisa has some fabulous goodies to give away too...so enter a layout to be in to win!

My challenge is the Christmas Cheer card challenge...to create a card that will make someone smile this christmas...

Kelly's challenge was sketch based and congrats to Beverley (fifiscrapz) for taking away first prize for that one on the night...this was my 6x12 version of the sketch

My take on Liannes Non Traditional Colours challenge

My take on Heidi's OTP christmas table decoration challenge BBQ is our traditional Christmas meal so I combined my two favourite hobbies gardening and scrapping and created something for the outdoors table.

My take on Louise's Christmas Carol challenge ...a line from Joy to the World.