Christmas Day 2009

Friday 25th December 2009

We were woken up at a reasonable hour this morning, 7.30am isn’t bad, by the kids, they had brought their duvets (doonas) out of their rooms and set up camp outside our bedroom.
They are so well trained, they just sat quietly outside our room, for at least thirty seconds anyway, before one of them made a silly noise, closely followed by another and then another, it sounded a bit like a frog chorus without the frog sounding bits, in fact, if he hadn’t already done it Paul McCartney could have used the idea to make a hit single.
Eventually, after about 5 minutes, we gave in and let them make us a cup of tea in return for them having the pleasure of us watching them open some of their presents.
So our day started with us drinking tea in bed, made and very well we must add, by the children, while they unpacked some of their presents at the end of our bed, they loved it and we think it’s fun too.
We had eggs and bacon for breakfast cooked by Ian, then opened our presents and the kids presents from friends and family, before going down the beach for a swim.
There have been no reports of stingers this year and if we stayed local one of Marisas friends was going to come with us, so we went to the beach at the end of the road, the water was warm and calm and we were soon swimming around with our snorkels.
After about 20 minutes Marisas friend and her mum turned up, then about ten minutes later Fraser got caught by a couple of stingers across his face, one of them was right next to his eye and he had what looked like blisters pulsing up and down under his skin.
As it was so close to his eye and in an area where it would be difficult to use ointment without getting it in his eye, we decided to take him to hospital to get it checked over.
Ian and Fraser were in the hospital for about two hours with a hot compress covering the affected areas before Fraser was seen by a doctor, they checked the lens of his eye to see if that had been scratched and it hadn’t, so all they could do is give them a bit of advice and send them home. By the time they got home, Carolyn and the kids had come back from the beach and had started to prepare dinner.
The advice we got just in case you’re interested, was use a hot or cold compress, have a hot shower, take panadol or ibuprofen and use an antihistamine.
We think we’ll just stick to our own advice and drive to Meelup in future, even Fraser, who seems to attract these stingers, never seems to get stung down there.
For Christmas Dinner we had a Duck stuffed with Turkey Breast and Quail, we cooked it on the spit over the BBQ and had it with an assortment of fresh salads and mashed potatoes whilst sitting under the patio in the early evening, it was delicious, a bit like a Boxing Day dinner really.
In the evening the kids played with their presents while we watched a couple of episodes of Only Fools and Horses, then had an early night.