Scrapbooked Nans Pic

Hi Nan,

Hope you are having a lovely Christmas! Thinking of you.

Love,
Louise

P.S. I hope you like the page that I created for you. :)

LouAliopoly from Alison

Alison gave Louise a custom Monopoly style board game for Christmas.

The places and events commemorate things that Alison and Louise did during Alisons visit. Some examples from the "We have a slight problem....."
- Tom the tour guide has lost a member of the group.
- You get soaked on the ferry to Alcatraz.
- Stop what you are doing - Ebony wants to be fed.

Some examples of "Fantastic Holiday News"
- You can sleep in just this once.
- The sealions at Pier 39 don't smell all that bad.
- There's a breezy alternative if you run out of loo paper at Google.
- Your missing luggage turns up.

Making Rumballs

Louise and Dina spent an afternoon baking rum balls and gingerbread biscuits. Dina has never baked before, so this was a new experience for her.
Dina tells us that they don't bake biscuits and cakes in India. Indian housewives are suppose to make two hot meals per day, using the stove, of course, for their husbands. That's a lot of cooking!!!
The decorating was done with special writing icing that comes in tubes (the cheats way :)
In the local lingo, biscuits are referred to as cookies and English Breakfast Muffins are referred to as biscuits. Crazy!

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Sarah dropped in to help us decorate the Christmas tree. Afterwards, Louise and Sarah made gingerbread biscuits.

No Images?

I just noticed that the images were missing from the most recent two posts, but they seem to be back now? Let us know if you can't see them.

Shopping for a Christmas Tree

We went Christmas Tree shopping today and picked up a live tree.

There are Tree vendors dotted along El Camino Real, in the vacant lots. Louise had one in mind. Their trees were sorted by size, with some already sprayed with fake snow. Once we chose one they put a base on it (including a tray for water).

Ebony's scratching post had to be moved a little to fit the tree.

Tonight Sarah is coming over to help us decorate it. We picked up some lights and a tree skirt from Walmart, since Frys and Target only had one choice each for lights.

Goodwill to Most Men

Would the owner of the Blue Honda please return to your car?

Fires in WA, NSW, Vic, Tasmania

We saw on the ABC Broadband News that there are fires in most Australian states. On the Sentinel Bushfire Monitor it looks like the Victorian fire is quite big. Our thoughts are with the poor people who lost their homes, hopefully Santa will find them to deliver their Christmas presents.

No fires over here at the moment, just rain.

This one's for you John.

I surprised Sean with ice cubes to motivate him to get out of the bath. Thanks for the idea John. :)

First Wedding Anniversary

It's our first wedding anniversary today in America. We decided to celebrate in style, since we were kind of celebrating two great things. One being the obvious, our first wedding anniversary and secondly we've known each other for 10 years. Sean took me to a little French restaurant just down the street from us called Chez TJ (menu). The food was exceptional. The Pork reminded Sean of crackling at Christmas at Grandmas. Louise found the amuse buche divine, it was a slice of raw fish with lime, corriander and a yellow paste.


Back in 1996 Sean decided, unbeknown to me, to purchase a 1996 bottle of Grant Burge Shadrach. Since being with Sean all those years, not once was he tempted to open that bottle, which was still wrapped in it's special paper.


Well, we've moved numerous times, lived in 2 states (SA and ACT). We've bought 2 houses, sold 1, and had 2 pets. Tango our boxer dog, who is now living on the Murray River with another like minded boxer, and our lovely black cat Ebony who is now an international traveler at the ripe old age of 7.

Things that we both love doing are: driving in the Adelaide Hills, and renovating houses. Who knows we're we'll be in 10 years time. But I do know that we have set aside another bottle (2003 Mont St John Pinot Noir) for when that time comes around and we can't wait!!

New Furniture

We recently got new chairs to go with our table. They are microfiber suede fabric in olive green. Shona took Sean to pick them up when Louise was in Las Vegas, but the chairs that had been put aside were the wrong colour. We got them delivered a week later. WE JUST LOVE THEM!!!


We also purchased a coffee table. It's a trunk with lots of hidden compartments inside. No more cardboard box for us. :)


This coffee table isn't the one that we are keeping though, since Crate and Barrel managed to deliver a damaged one (just like the first table they eventually delivered to us). They are sending out a replacement which might arrive on the 12th.