Happy Holidays

Since I was not going to fly home for the holidays, Clinton invited me to join his family's celebrations this weekend in Rosebud, which is about an hour and half south-east of Melbourne.  The boys picked me up and we drove down around noon on Christmas Day.  His family were very welcoming and even had little Christmas presents for me (which was nice because my presents from home are currently MIA and likely stuck in customs).  I brought some snowball cookies to contribute to the meal and a bottle of wine, which turned out to a favorite of Clinton's father.

The weather was warm but not too hot and the backyard tables were festively decorated.  Various family members stopped in and joined the celebrations throughout the afternoon.  We had so much food to eat starting with chips, dip, cheese and crackers.  We then had prawns, barbecue steak, sausage, shish kebabs, coleslaw and potato salad.  On top of all this food Clinton's brother, who is a bartender, was mixing drinks and made sangria as well as various fruit daiquiris.  After digesting the late afternoon lunch we ate Clinton's pavlova and my cookies for dessert.  There were lots of funny stories about growing up in Rosebud and we played a few games.  It was a nice evening.

Today we woke up to some rain, but it managed to clear by early afternoon.  Since I haven't ever explored the Mornington Peninsula before, Clinton's parents took us for a bit of a drive around the area.  We started with a walk in Arthurs Seat State Park with its great views of Port Phillip Bay and the Seawinds Garden, which contains several sculptures by William Ricketts.  The chairlift to the summit isn't working, but Clinton, Kevin and I took a picture on "Arthurs Seat."  We next drove down to Point Nepean Road and through the various seaside towns on the way to Sorrento to visit Clinton's brother, who was working.  We took a walk along the front beach and out onto one of the piers.  After some fish and chips at the restaurant we headed back to Rosebud and then packed up the car for the drive back to Melbourne.  It was such a lovely weekend and a great way to spend the Christmas holiday.