A Wedding,Preserving and Christmas parties.

Christmas is now over and we had a lovely time on the coast at our youngest daughter's home.
All our children and grand children were together and we celebrated a little different this year with a leisurely picnic in the park.
The lead up to Christmas  was a busy time, and we attended quite a few different non Christmas related gatherings and celebrations .
The first was the wedding of a lovely friend of ours who married his long time partner in a lovely ceremony  in Newcastle.

The cake was an amazing work of art,

We had a lovely night away, the wedding ceremony and reception was held at the motel where we stayed and it was wonderful catching up with many old friends we hadn't seen for ages.
On our return home we picked our crop of apricots off the old tree ,

We made apricot nectar as the apricots were quite small and not really great for bottling.

and we also made apricot puree.

We also picked the apricots from the newer tree  down in the orchard, These were halved and bottled in a light syrup and water bathed  in my  ancient electric Fowlers Vacola preserver

.

These will all be a great addition to the pantry and we have already  used up quite a few of the jars of apricot nectar, mainly  being used as a base for drinks.
We visited our older  daughter and spent some time  making a massive amount of rum balls for us all to share over the Christmas period.
Our granddaughters were wonderful little process line  troopers, sitting up at the bench rolling the balls in coconut.We did 5 batches like below.

These are delicious little morsels and I still have a healthy supply of them stashed away in the freezer for future gatherings.
The next weekend we met our daughter  and brought our two small granddaughters  home to the farm so that they could attend our annual town Christmas party that is put on by our local Lions club.
There are stalls, a jumping castle,

The kids all get a free dinner, and they hold chocolate wheel raffles,

We won several prizes, a ham and three food hamper prizes,

Santa arrives on the local town fire engine,

and chats to all the children  and gives them a small gift of sweets.

The kids had a great evening and the  culmination of the night is always an amazing fireworks display. The Lion's members  work hard all year fundraising  for worthy causes and also to pay for the fireworks. I have gone a little crazy with the fireworks pictures, but they were just so good.

What a night !
The kids just loved it.
We took them home the next day to their dad, mum was away with friends for the weekend.
The next weekend we met up once again as we attended the early celebration of our youngest grandson's first birthday.

It was a lovely day with all the family there, hard to believe he is one, time has flown really quickly.
Within 30 minutes of our return  to the farm after the party a wild wind/dust storm hit.
It literally just picked up and flung the trampoline  into the top of our back verandah where it ripped the mat and tore the safety net off. It then continued  at pace, taking with it  a wheelbarrow that has plants and a fairy garden in it, and a cement birdbath.
The dust was horrific, and trees and branches were down everywhere.

We have stripped the trampoline of it's torn  mat and net,

We are going to  cover it with wire netting and it will be used as a cover for our fig tree that is waging a war against the birds.
We decided it should be used somehow rather than just go to the tip as landfill.
The wind also caused some major damage at the Brother in Laws place next door.
They lost the shed roof where they store their caravan and tractor and  their  small  rustic  guest accommodation was literally destroyed.

What a mess it made, there will be a lot of cleaning up  now that their  insurance assessors have been.
It's been a busy time,  we have been on the road a fair bit, and have been constantly cleaning as  we have now had 3 or 4 dust storms pass through and it seems to penetrate every tiny little nook and cranny .
I trust you all had a wonderful Christmas as we did. We are now back into the routine that living on a small  acreage  brings.
Take care until we meet again,
Cheers,
Jane and Brian.