Her first Christmas you say? Well it’s her second Christmas but the first time we have made it to the Barnett (Anto’s mothers side of the family) celebration which is held annually in varying locations, but generally in Victoria where most of them live!  Last year Anto had just returned to work after 4 months off following Astrid’s birth so he had no leave to make the trip down to Victoria. This year he again managed to have been back at work for only 5 days before the celebration (held on the 15th of December this year), and again has no leave. Luckily this years celebration was being held in Canberra at Trevor and Lorraine’s (aka Grandma and Grandpa) place.  Since we only had to travel 5 minutes in the car to attend we managed to put in an appearance.

For the Christmas feast I decided to make a tiramisu for dessert. Astrid has become quite the fan of baking and anything that is ‘mixed’ is fantastic. Making tiramisu involves at least 5 different things having to be ‘mixed’ so she had a ball. It also involves ‘dipping’ the saviordi into coffee and marsala which is also one of her favourite things to do. The best bit is that she got to taste some of her mixing! Do you think she enjoyed it?

 

 The big Christmas party day arrived….. after some hot weather it wasn’t that warm but still in the mid 20’s. We headed over to the grandparents house and found that they had all started partying without us as Miss A had a bit of rest so we were a little late in arriving. Undeterred she tucked straight into a sausage with sauce and conned her uncle Mikl into letting her sit on his lap. I do think she thinks that Uncle Mikl, may be a little shifty at times!

 

 For some reason Astrid’s grandparents thought that after a week away from Paris Astrid might be missing her croissants so they bought her a chocolate one in case there wasn’t going to be enough food she would eat (unlikely given she is a food monster). Nonetheless she demolished her croissant!

Then it was time for dodgy Santa (otherwise known as Peter) to hand out presents to the kids. Astrid looked a bit worried by him but happily opened the present (which happened to be the kiddie baking set we bought for her in Paris) so she can ‘roll’ and ‘mix’ when I bake!

 

This year 22 people made the gathering including 3 kids. Not bad considering they all had to travel! While there wasn’t the normal large array of children to play with Astrid did enjoy meeting her second cousins Mackenzie and Spencer for the first time. What more fun could three young children have than playing in a large cardboard box?

 

 The rain didn’t hold off but we all moved inside and watched some cricket while eating dessert. Astrid did manage to finish off her day with some watermelon before she discovered the really good desserts. Maybe next year she will get to meet more of the family. She certainly had a good time this year!