No big news, apart from the obvious and usual annoyances that marks this time of the year...

Jenny is back in Melbourne after her sojourn in Vanuatu (Michael worked, she got to file her nails for 6 months and wait for the boat to bring in each well-out-of-date copy of the Women's Weekly...)

Mum's Birthday (Christmas day that is) passed without any dramas except for the fact that the weather had been up to and over 38degC (100degF) for days beforehand and about all we felt like doing after stuffing ourselves was lay down and complain how hot we all were.

Dale and Dad manage to remain upright, while Liesl just flakes out on the couch.

Our present to the girls was some furniture for their new cubby house. Grant made it up the week before and we were very pleased with how they turned out considering he'd never made furniture before or for that matter even bothered to use any design plans ... just go buy some wood and start sawing, sanding and screwing! (You can see some more photos on the girl's page).

"Oh no, we INSIST... you will be having a cup of tea... it won't take a moment..."

Now, the smarter one's among you will be wondering how the heck we have managed to get photos on the webpage the day after Xmas - particularly given our snail like progress in the past to use up a whole roll of film, get it developed and scan in the photos...

All this wonder of modern science is possible because Dale gave Grant a digital camera for Xmas; a very cute little Sanyo that plugs straight into the PC and gives you instant photos for the webpage! Though it cannot give the same quality as a "real" print it is more than fantastic for anything you'd want to see over a screen and quite OK for running off copies on a colour printer. And because it has a little LCD screen on the back you can actually use it to check if the photo's OK as soon as you take the shot (and either save it or delete it and have another go). Expect to see Grant go crazy and finally get that page about Prahran up on the site any day now - hey, it's only been about 2 years in the making!

Poor Dale's going to have to wait a little while for his present which will be a timber and chrome frame for a full length mirror (Grant saw a good design and was chasing frame-makers to build it for him). Unfortunately Jen came back from Vanuatu earlier than we had thought and took back her car... leaving Grant without a car and still needing to lug all that wood around for the girls furniture. Something had to fall by the wayside and in this case it was Dale's present (he's an adult and can understand these things, but for the girls Xmas Day only happens on Xmas Day).

Yeah, no doubt you'll see a photo of THAT too!

Guess that's about it. Still don't know where we'll be New Years Eve but we hope all of yours is a good one.

X

Grant & Dale