Not my Eli......

There are alot of Eli's in Ben's life. There is his bestest friend in the whole wide world. There is the other Eli (from playgroup). The other Eli is what Ben calls him and then there is Not my Eli...... his cousin! Even though cousin Eli wasn't his Eli they still had a ball together! Eating watermelon

Fixing Eli's tractor that Ben coveted enormously!

So much so he wouldn't get off it. Ever time Eli made a move that looked like it was in the direction of the tractor Ben would pipe up with. "Eli you have to share!"

Aunty Teesh and Uncle Brenty

I don't think words are necessary to convey how great it was to have the family all together.

Christmas

So at 4.45AM on Christmas morning we were awoke to the joyous cries of "Santa's been! Santa's been!"

It really amazes me that there is always that element of doubt that you haven't been quite good enough this year. There is always the possibility that he WONT come. Until you see that sack full of gifts and then the excitement is uncontainable!

So we jumped out of bed. Poppy literally because they boys scared the bejeezers out of him!

Merry Christmas from Matthew, Ryan and Ben!

Aunty Teesh drags herself down the stairs. As she is coming down Ben pipes up with "Aunty Teesh you look beautiful!" The thing with Ben is it comes from his heart and he means it! He was so pleased she was there!

Waiting for the starting command!

Ans they are away! Ben is a careful unwrapper. He unwraps, examines then requests it be taken out of it's box. His mummy then suggests he unwrap the next one because she is too excited to see what he will discover next!

Matthew is a wrap and discard kid. He tears through his present really quickly and then is faintly disappointed that he is finished and then he starts opening boxes and is happy again! (I don't know where he gets that from?!)

Ryan is an exclamation guy! There are lots of "Awesomes" and "Just what I always wanted's" and "Cool"s

Ben finally reached the end of his Santa sack!

This year Matthew discovered the joy of giving! Which is what Christmas is all about for me. I know he much prefers the getting but at least he thought about the giving side! Here is his gift to Ben.

Matthew is talking to Nanna Bev, Ben is reading the lego map and the older boys are playing with the lego!

The table was fully laden with lego!

Daddy flying his new remote controlled plane. Easily the hit of Christmas and Boxing day!

Ben playing cricket with his new gear. Check out the look on his face as he connected with the ball!

Christmas lunch and Kata arrived with a friend from Scotland, A.P. It was A.P first Chrissy in Australia and did we give her an experience! I am sure she thinks we are all completely nutty! But I think she had a ball. If she was in Scotland she sure wouldn't have been having water fights and cricket games and prawns and being eaten alive by mosquito's. (She came up in welts!)

The table fully laden with food this time!

Merry Christmas!

Playing Uno Moo. A gift from Kata and Brenty.

Aunty Teesh helped Ryan

Kata helped Ben

Matthew with his transformer baddy guy!

My blue shoes from Santa

Boxing Day

You may think the Boxing Day test is held at the MCG but there is a more serious test match held at Grandma's old house. Thank goodness Luke and Kinga (Nathan's cousin) bought her house a few years ago so the tradition could continue! It would be devastating if this long held tradition no longer existed. It is probably devastating to Kinga and Luke to think that we wont let them sell the house, ever! Unless a settlement clause includes the boxing day test as part of the exchange!

Anyway so a Coombes' (Nathan mother's side of the family) Boxing day includes cricket (of course), touch footy (usually played in the cricket field at the same time as cricket!), water fights (again interspersed through cricket and footy) and eating and drinking (again in conjunction with cricket, footy and fights!) This year we added a slip and slide. SO much fun!

God father Keith sliding!

(Keith is one of Ben's godfather's and he bought Ben a set of Thomas books so now Benny brings them to me requesting a "Godfather story"!)

Aunty Teesh belly flopping, there wasn't a great deal of sliding!

Matthew

Monty Burns.... I mean Ryan!

Benny

Matthew shooting Benny in the water fight before the balloons began! (can you see the menacing look on Matt's face?!)

The football in the middle of the cricket game

The cricket game with parts of the water fight!

The little kids footy game!

The whole clan!

The Coombes grandchildren and great grandchildren

The Coombes grandkids in the exact same positions as a photo taken 10 years ago!

Poppy

Aunty Bron gave her siblings and mother a scrapbooked photo album of the whole family through the years. Everybody loved it! Including Nanna.

Aunty Kathy cried of course over her album!

Grandma and Bron going through the photos!

The only disappointment of the day was we had promised to take the boys to the Monster Truck show in Caboolture after the Boxing day celebrations but it was too huge a day. And Nath and I were exhausted and we had to drive home the next day. So we had to break our children's hearts and tell them we couldn't go. We had explained there was a possibility that we may not go but they are so optimistic in our abilities to cope!

And when we got home Santa had been!

Once again Santa had made a delivery in our absence! (I have worded the boys up that it is very unlikely he will make two deliveries next year as we are staying at home!) We didn't get home until after 9pm because we stopped in Sydney for a couple of hours to see my parents. So we smuggled the kids inside and put them straight to bed so it wasn't until the next morning that Matthew discovered that Santa had paid a visit. Matthew really wanted to wake his brothers up (just as he had done on Christmas day) but I wouldn't let him. That morning he and I had several discussion about the virtues of patience! The other two woke up at 7.30 and they were able to unwrap their presents. The big hit of the day was the see saw. However their see saw could never bring them as much joy as my see saw did when i was a kid. Because the year Santa gave me and my siblings a see saw we heard him putting it up in the back yard! Thus giving us proof that he existed! So the boys kind of missed that but they still love it anyway! Me, not so much because to see saw you need a willing participant. And sometimes there is two willing participants and sometime there are none. Which makes for lots of fights! But such is life!

The long trip home

But thank goodness we were going the other way! This particular traffic jam was about 20km out of Buladelah. The traffic was barely moving.

The boys were wired for sound! Between dvd's,DS and colouring in, they were so well behaved for the 15 hours the journey took.

The Cappy knocked over 100 000kms on the way home. Nathan wouldn't slow down so I could get an in focus photo! He was concentrating too hard on the speedo not giving evidence that he speeds!

Like Father, like son

Nath and Benny having a snooze. Spitting images. Cute