Well here we are nearly at the end of 2008. Christmas has been and gone, and, because I set out specifically to have a stress-free Christmas, there are quite a few things that haven't been done. Yet. Meh. Oh well. At some point I'll have to make those Christmas cakes. And finish sending out my christmas emails, get some of those 'Happy Holiday' photos printed for the luddites, and finish up our annual webpage 'blurb'. And get some sort of voucher sent to nephews on both sides.

Very slack. But I don't suppose the world will end.

Given that we had no visitors, and didn't go visiting, and I'm not a yee-ha Christmassy person anyway, Christmas day for us was pretty low key. Kind of weird, really. But very definitely stress-free. I flatly refused to stress about anything. We trimmed the lunch menu yet again this year. For just the five of us we really didn't need to go the whole typical Aussie christmas cold buffet-style spread. We had a ham. We had prawns. Potato salad, and a garden salad. (And Marc talked me into sharing a bottle of bubbly.)

Santa might have brought a few things for the girls, but he didn't bring me the sparkly blue-sky beach day I really hoped for. Nonetheless, after a decadent breakfast of flapjacks a la Tracey (ie. oversized pikelets from my tried and true pikelet recipe) with maple syrup and lashings of butter) we headed down to the beach for a late morning/midday swim.

Again, Santa obviously decided I hadn't been quite good enough.

Seaweed.

Seaweed is one of my two major (irrational) phobias (the other being wet (and detached-from-the-head) hairs... yep, I know, I'm weird). I got wet. I caught a couple of waves, but then I stepped in a clump or two of seaweed, and there were smaller bits all through the waves. I jumped and screamed like a girlie and made for the shore. The rest of the family had a fine time, and have milked my wussiness for all it's worth since.

I wandered around and tried to take a couple of photos.

But I am not as artistic with a camera in my hand as my eldest daughter is...

And, there were lots of People on our beach! This...

... is crowded for our beach. This is what we call lots of people on our beach. It only gets this bad on Christmas Day, and a few days into new year. It was a bit hard not to feel really indignant. Our Beach had been invaded! I mean, just because it's Christmas... Sheesh!

[Are we spoilt? Yes. Very!]

The weather - even on Thursday - has mostly been overcast - not your typical summery beachy weather. Since Boxing Day we've had persistent north-easterlies, which haven't made for the most pleasant conditions, and it mucks up the main beach because it faces east. This morning we woke to blue skies and the wind had dropped. We headed back over to the back beach, on the south side of the headland where the surf wasn't so chopped up! The water was cold! (North Easterlies, for some reason, tend to dredge up colder currents - the opposite to what you might expect in the southern hemisphere.) But the waves were pretty good; I caught quite a few in, and Cait even commented that I looked like a pro. [Actually she said 'the waves make Mum look like a pro' - which is more a nod to good body-surfing waves than me, but I'll take any form of compliment I can get these days!]

Another week till Marc goes back to work, and so we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed for a bit more beachy weather. Most people pay to go to the seaside for their summer holidays. Here we have a fantastic beach on our back doorstep. All we need is for the weather to come to the party!