December 2017

Hi everyone - and a Happy New Year to you all!

Firstly, our dear brother-in-law Bill passed away recently, and John arranged this little shrine for him so we could think of him and Marion and the rest of their family on the day of his funeral in the UK. Vale Bill.

The blog is late this month as we spent the Christmas/New Year holiday with John, Silvia and family and Jo and took loads of photos of all the exciting stuff which I have been having to sort through to pick out the best to put up on the blog. They weren't just from our cameras but also from John and Silvia's! There is also quite a lot of John's on end of term school events. 

There were also lots of videos taken, but, as they need a lot more sorting and making smaller for the blog, I am going to leave uploading them until next week probably or the week after.

Anyway, I'll try to shorten the blog by just telling you roughly what was going on at various times and then just putting captions under the photos.

The first photos are of Emil's end of term concert, where he plays drums, violin and guitar in various acts!

Emil the drummer!

Emil the violinist!

Emil the guitarist!

Benjamin

Here is Benjamin in his school play - he was a bird with a big beak!

Maya's class graduated from the Steiner School, so next year (in February) she will be at Denmark High School where Emil is too. Here's some graduation photos.

Maya on Graduation Day....

A proud Silvia with 2 other proud Mums.....

Maya, 3rd from left - violin recital....

John, giving his formal speech to Maya's teacher....

...and being a proud Dad in the audience...

Maya and her class singing.....

Benjamin and Emil at the Graduation....

....the 'after' party!

Now here's a lovely casual photo of Jo enjoying a cuppa at John and Silvia house.

Emil and Marion.....

Silvia's friend Marion, from Germany, was also staying with them for the Christmas holidays.

Here she is with them at 'The Gap' and 'Natural Bridge' enjoying the scenery.

......Silvia and Marion....

....on the board walk near the beach....

While she was staying with John and Silvia, Marion decided to make some curtains for them from some material which Silvia had bought some time ago! (You will see photos of them later on in the blog).

John and Emil putting up fixings....

....Marion making the curtains.....

....Silvia looking like she's making the curtains, chuckle!

Here's a 'Stollen' - traditional German cake - which Emil made for us to eat later that day when we arrived.

Emil's 'Stollen'

We stayed just across the road from John and Silvia, as Jo was house sitting there and the owners said they wouldn't mind, so it was very convenient and meant that it would be less crowded at John's than if we all stayed there. Here's a couple of photos of views from our 'lodgings'.

On the evening of December 22nd there was a Christmas Parade through the Denmark main shopping street. It was really good, and everyone got into the spirit of it. John and Emil were playing in the Sneeches band which more or less led the way. The rest of us watched from the sideline. Here's some of the photos.

 

The Sneeches Band....

...Emil and John, 2nd and 3rd from the left....

...these 2 bears were not always the same 2 people!..

....some acrobatic school children,,,,

....Kung Fu Santa on a reindeer.....

......a dinosaur!!....

...this cart looked very lovely.....

...there were old cars too...

....and children on bikes....

....and of course Santa - on the fire engine!....

...John on the left at the end of the parade.....

....and Emil with violin......

...and Benjamin.

Later, we had more music at home.

The following photos are of another house where Jo was also looking after the sheep and chickens in the absence of her friends the owners.

Mike looking for 4 leaf clovers!...

...the sheep....

...Maisie and Jo....

...Mike and Jo.

Next day was Christmas Eve, which is the main evening for Silvia, as in the German tradition a very Festive meal was prepared for the evening, then  presents were opened.

Maya, John and the Christmas tree....

Maisie 'posing' in her new sparkly shirt!

...a close up of the presents....

Hmmm. The sparkles don't show much in this photo!

...afternoon tea Christmas cookies....

Fondue meats and various delicious dips and salads were the main meal with gorgeous individual choclate 'puddings' for desert.

Then we were entertained by Maya, Emil and Benjamin before opening the presents!

The candles were lit, and the cake brought out.....

....hugs and kisses all round.....

....a wooden snowman made by Emil for us...

 ..a shirt for John from Marion........




......and a Spitfire model kit for Emil......

....photos taken....

...a flashing light necklace for Jo from Liz....

...a 'Smiley' game from Auntie Marion (UK)








...and a wooden reindeer made by Benjamin for Jo.....

....plus lots of other presents for everybody!

As we were sleeping across the road, we didn't see the kids opening their Santa presents, on Christmas Day morning, but here's some photos John and Silvia took.

 

 

After breakfast, we went to Ocean Beach for a while.

Benjamin's friend Oliver and his Mum joined us on Christmas afternoon, for snacks and then Christmas dinner in the evening.

The Brandy on the Christmas Pudding burnt well and added nicely to the flavour!

Benjamin and Oliver did a funny skit for us afterwards, and there were more but some are on video, so we will save them for our second Christmas holiday blog.

Boxing Day was a day of silly games, skits and pantomimes which started about 3pm and went on until about 10pm, with lots of food which Silvia and John's friends brought besides what they had provided. It was a great time, and we had tummy ache from so much laughing!

Here's Emil playing on his home made drum kit......

 

 .....a game of croquet in progress.....

....John and Benjamin taking time out.....

...the next 3 photos are of the bottle game. In the 1st one Mike got badly beaten by Martin.....

...in the 2nd Martin just got beaten by his daughter....

 ...and in the final, his daughter was the overall winner!

...the game of Pass the Fruit Name....

 ...in the Pass the Fruit Name game, everybody chose a name of a fruit or vegetable, then someone had to say their name and somebody else's, and if that person didn't respond quickly enough and got hit with a balloon by the person in the middle, then they had to go in the middle etc etc......






Now here's our 'compere of the day', Benjamin, introducing Emil and John doing a Cindy Lauper skit with Maya on the drums.

 

...it was hilarious!!

When it started to get dark, we went indoors for more 'home entertainment', the frist of which was the pantomine skit on Cinderalla!

 Cinderalla manicuring the feet of the 2 ugly sisters......

...the arrival of the invitation to the ball....

.....the dashing, handsome young prince at the ball.......









....the prince again, with the slipper.......

....the ugly sisters waiting for the slipper to be tried on.... hmm...looks like a very hairy pair of legs in the middle there!

...and the final bow, complete with the mice who were turned into horses for the coach!

Here, once again is our compere who, between Cineralla and other skits, kept us amused with his jokes and magic tricks.

 

.

Afterwards we all collapsed, chuckle!
Here's, Maya, Jo and Benjamin on the sofa.
It had been a very full, exhausting but enjoyable day.

Well! that's an awful lot of photos, so I shall put the rest up (not so many next time!) from 27th December until the end of January on the January blog, together with one or two videos!

I would like to add that we saw Liz and Nathan and exchanged Christmas presents from them and us and Jo before we went down to Denmark, and we also all spoke to Alex and Dan in Austria via Skype on Christmas Day, so that was lovely to see them too.

Hopefully we'll see you again with the rest of the Christmas/New Year holiday news on the January blog.

Enjoy!