the gang's all here

My parents are visiting for 4 nights from NZ, it's so nice seeing familiar faces, hearing all their news and showing them our new place.

Mum went off shopping today and managed to make it into the city and home again in one piece. Dad had a quiet day at home as he is currently wearing a moonboot to help heel his torn achilles tendon but he was well entertained by Loki.

I've been well organised too and had Italian meatballs in the freezer ready to simmer in passata and chicken stock for tonight's meal. Fantastic when you get home from work at 6pm to have something that only takes about 20 minutes to cook but is a filling, tasty, healthy, impressive meal that does include meat. Unfortunately Luke doesn't consider vegetarian food to contain enough protein and as he can't eat nuts he may have a point but it does mean we eat a lot of meat sometimes I long for a simple vegetarian pasta dish or curry.

Tomorrow night we head out to Bar Italia for a cheap and cheerful Italian meal, the service may not be flash but it has a charm all of it's own.

The first Noel the angels did say

well it's been a while since I posted, I've been a bit preoccupied with the newest member of our family.
Sorry for the scary red eyes in the photo but the red eye fix won't work.
Loki is just adorable, he's very good, no accidents so far and it only took 4 squirts of the spray bottle to teach him to mostly leave the Christmas tree alone. He is having a little bit of a problem with the whole 'nighttime is for sleeping' thing but he's learning I hope.

Apart from that we're just getting ready for Christmas, we put up the tree and put out the nativity set. I'm plowing through the Christmas card list and we put a wreath on our front door. We've also started Christmas shopping mostly because my parents are arriving in 10 days and we need to have the NZ gifts bought for them to take back for us.

I find it really strange how Aussies say 'chrissy' as in buying 'chrissy presents'