Let me elaborate... Heidi and Darrell came out from Abu Dhabi for their first Xmas here in 4 years and it was so wonderful for us all to be together.
I mentioned in a previous entry that we moved into our new house at the Vaal, which is in the same complex as our other house, but is right on the water's edge. Sadly for our bank balance, but happily for the family, we have not yet sold our old house and hence we had enough accommodation at the Vaal for 17 people!! My folks, Bruce and Charmaine and the 5 boys all slept at the 'upstairs' house, and we, the Bergesens, Jeanette (Darrell's mom) and the 3 girls were in the 'downstairs' house.
The Bergesen's arrived on the 22nd and we had a wonderful day and night with them before the real chaos began.
The rest of the family descended on the 23rd. We organised that each house would do its own breakfasts, but we would have lunches and suppers together (naturally at the new house because of it's drop dead gorgeous view!). Yes, this photo IS taken from my new patio!!!!
The weather was very kind to us and hardly rained at all. Eskom was not so kind. The power went out at 11am on Thursday and did not come back on for 24 hours. We start to panic by Friday morning - ALL our Christmas day food had been brought down and we were very concerned about it going off. By 10am, I was so worried that we went off to the local store (which had power) and bought some bags of ice to put in the freezer and fridge to keep the temperature down. We also bought a 2 plate gas stove. Naturally, this purchase was enough to get Eskom to turn the power back on!! I'm not complaining though. That area has a bad habit of power failures and I think that the little stove will come in handy at some stage.
Christmas day arrived with MUCH anticipation from the kids. The kids opened their stocking presents from Father Christmas (the real one) bright and early. Then we went off to the local church and had a very pleasant service. After church, Roland and Caron arrived (making it the grand total of 19 people) and we opened the presents from under the tree (our gifts to each other). We gave Grandpa the job of being Father Christmas, but we all know that he isn't the real one. Hey Stef? 
After the mound of gifts was decimated and the kids were happily playing with their new toys, we got onto the business of lunch. We had delicious snacks for our starter (thanks Caron!!), and then cold meats and salads for the main course. We ended off with yummy ice-cream for pudding. We were bulging by the end.
Everyone kept themselves very happily amused the whole weekend - paddleskiing, windsurfing (Megan's new passion), swimming, cycling, j-boarding, fishing (no whoppers this time), reading and relaxing. We hardly took out the boat because of the wind, but I don't think it was missed very much at all.
At first Carl and I felt very obliged to be 'hosts' and make sure all our guests were happy (we put that pressure on ourselves, everyone else didn't care!). It took us a while to realise that everyone was so busy doing their own thing, that we didn't really need to worry! That being said, when it is your house(s), the burden does naturally fall on the hosts, and to be honest, I was EXHAUSTED when we left on Sunday!
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