Christmas in the Land of Oz was a lot different for the Thomas Family. We are used to having family around. We have two Christmas trees one (Mom's tree) is by our fireplace where our stockings are hung and one is in the dining room decorated with all the kids' special ornaments. There is normally a few inches of snow on the ground and the temperatures are barely making it out of the 20’s. We bake cookies. Lots of cookies!
Christmas Eve we set out our freshly baked cookies with milk by the fireplace, carrots for the reindeer of course. Gabby sprinkles her special reindeer food on the lawn and we each wear our new, warm, flannal, cozy Christmas jammies that Mom spends hours searching for each year.
Christmas day, we wake early to open our presents that Santa has left for us. We stop to pose with each one as Mom snaps a picture. Mom then makes us a huge breakfast complete with chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy. The rest of the day is spent with family and new toys as Mom and the Grandma’s, Aunts and anyone female make our traditional dinner. We have roast beef, ham, mashed potatoes with gravy, candied yams, green beans, macaroni salad and desserts aplenty. At the end of the day, we are stuffed and happy.
This year our stockings were hung by the entertainment center. We only had one tree and it was decorated with the kids’ ornaments. There was no snow to be had and the temperatures were well into the 80’s.
Christmas Eve was spent traveling back home from our wonderful Holiday before the Holiday (see previous post). We rushed home to bake chocolate chip cookies and make puppy chow because we had to bake at least one kind of cookie for Christmas. We did have Christmas jammies this year and Mom did spend a lot of time looking for them. Not because there were tons to choose from, but because she simply could not find them. She improvised and we had Christmas t-shirts and shorts. They were cozy though.
Christmas day we woke to open a few presents as most of them were lost somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. We later found out that Santa got confused and our package went from St. Louis to Chicago to Los Angeles to Tokyo to Singapore to Sydney to Melbourne to us. WOW! Our presents were well traveled!
We did spend the day with some newly made friends from the UK who were also without and missing their family. We swam, made pizzas in our new outdoor pizza oven, Gary grilled chicken and steak on the barbie and we enjoyed a few frozen cocktails. We did still have mashed potatoes but with salad and corn on the cob. The desserts were still aplenty! Our Christmas breakfast was made the next day as our new friends spent the night because they had a long drive back to their house.
We missed family and our yearly traditions terribly, but we did learn that you can adapt, make a few new traditions and make anything special as long as you have each other and a whole lot of patience.
We also learned to never trust the US Postal System or the Australian Postal System. A package that was expressed mailed on December 8th did not arrive to us until December 29th. This is when the kids got the rest and main part of their Christmas gifts. The package did not arrive in Australia until the 24th, but could not be delivered to us until the 29th because the Australian Postal Service was shut down for 5 days for the Christmas holiday.
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