Wednesday, 25 December 2002 - Christmas Day

[robbat2]

Woke up around 10am, packed stuff to go out. We were having a fancy christmas lunch with the family at the Chancily Hotel. Quite a long drive up there, into the Valley of 1000 Hills area. Very scenic, but a bit of haze in the weather stopped me from getting many nice photos. Apparently when my parents were courting, they used to come up to this place once a month for a sunday lunch.

Lunch was diffentely first class. It was all a buffet deal. First there was a massive table of starters. With the really nice exotic and tasty things. The Thai Chicken Peanut Salad and Salmon Rolls containing Caviar & Capers were excellent. One thing that I was really surprised about was a salad consisting of watermelon and feta cheese, which was also good. For the main there was a carvery, with turkey, gammon and beef. There was also a big selection of vegetable dishes, a vegetarian lasagne, and a white fish casserole. I didn't have any turkey as I'm not fond of that, but I did try all of the other mains, just one plateful in total, as I wanted to keep room for dessert.

The dessert selection dwarfed both the mains and starters put together. Christmas Cake, Christmas Pudding, a variety of fruit salads, several cakes and mousses, various pies, lovely custard, and a selection of ice-cream. I tried perhaps half of the desserts there, and that took me two bowls of dessert. I couldn't eat any more. I've probably put on a bit of weight from that christmas meal alone.

After that nice lunch, we all went back to the Baker's house in Augusta, for the christmas gift exchange and opening. Things change as you get older, you see those younger than you and older than you start to get different amounts of gifts than you perceieved previously. I saw the grandparents get plenty of things, as well as my parents and the other little younguns (Cheryl's two children). It's not that I feel left out or anything, as I did get gifts as well, but it is how your perception of people getting gifts changes.

Most of the people left for various things after that, Cheryl, Brett and their two offspring going to their holiday cottage on Pete's Lake, the Grandparents heading home together, and Judy and Derek heading out camping on Pete's Lake for a mini-honeymoon before going off on the company gift of the honeymoon trip they recieved. Pete's Lake was a favourite vacation spot for Cheryl and Judy to go camping at as they were growing up, starting there with their parents and the caravan, then later on just camping their with their friends and getting quite drunk one vacation ;-).

That left just my immediate family with Jacqui and Neville. Sat, looked at photos on the laptop, and cold meat stuff for dinner.