It was a busy month, this is going to be hella long!!

Carrying on the gingerbread house tradition with new friends. :) Carrying on the tradition of having WAY TOO MUCH candy! Building gingerbread structures in very high humidity is not ideal.. there were some struggles. It took a while to figure out which icing would work. But in the end we got there, mostly. Fun was had.

Poor Ash’s house already collapsed by the next morning due to moisture issues.

Scott and I decided that instead of getting each other Christmas presents we would finally get ourselves a stand mixer. I did some extreme couponing and we ended up getting a great price on a fancy Kenwood mixer on Black Friday. It is AWESOME. It has a scale built into it!! I made strawberry cupcakes to break it in.

We had our work Christmas lunch at the Espy this year. There was so much food this year it was ridiculous. I screamed when they brought out an entire dairy free pizza for me as a substitute for the little pieces of deep dish pizza, hahaha. We all brought so much stuff home.

I went to SO MANY Christmas parties. They were all great! Christmas BBQ at Sonika’s, Christmas pool party brunch at Naomi’s, Christmas dinner at Scott’s bowls club, and English Christmas lunch at Maz’s. So much eating. So much fun. I especially liked playing in the pool with Sonny’s kids, and duck fat roasted potatoes at Maz’s.

Some delicious party meals.

Pre-Christmas crochet time with Ava. #summeroflyingdown

Maybe a new Christmas tradition… cinnamon buns for Christmas morning. Next time I’ll use yeast that didn’t expire 4 years ago. They still turned out pretty delicious though!! I stood next to the dough being kneading in the mixer in awe for the entire 8 minutes.

Luca seemed to like the mimic that Scott made for him! He was going around chomping everyone’s limbs.

Christmas Day was the usual in Boronia, an insane amount of presents, an insane amount of food, backyard cricket, chats with family, pictures. No waterslide this year as Shaun’s family had gastro and no one wants that combination. :D

Our December #SMAJ was going to Day 2 of the cricket with Da Boys. I did enjoy the Boxing Day Test this year but I found it hard to see the ball and follow what was happening in real life. Plus it was very crowded. Scott did bring us thermos hot dogs though! We lasted four or five hours before both of us really needed to leave, and we got to see both teams batting and several wickets, so overall a successful outing.

Still playing heaps of pickleball all around the city. I checked out the Eastern Indoor Sports Centre which has actual pickleball lines, for a drills and structured play session. It was good!

Churning out Lake Reed cable knit hats. Fun to learn a new technique! I finished the pink/burgundy one in 2 days for a Kris Kringle gift.

Lake Reed cable knit hat, before and after blocking. Makes a big difference, doesn’t it?

Rosemarie’s sweater, finished! Before and after blocking. Really pleased how this one turned out.

Vacuum packed Bingo and sweater for travel to Squamish. I don’t think Bingo has fully recovered yet.

Unpictured stuff:

• Scott has had many MRIs and doctors appointments. The good news is that he’s not concussed and at least we know what the problem is now, and it’s fixable, the bad news is that it’s going to take a little while to get through all the steps, and he might need surgery. He’s still uncomfortable but I guess he’s learning more how to balance lying down time and doing some activities. We’re hoping that we’ll get some updates this week or next week, after all of these public holidays.
• We went to trivia at a new place, which is always a novelty, but it was very loud and the seats have no backs and my (vegan) pizza was very wet.
• Our belated November #SMAJ was going to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie at the theatre with the Lonard’s. Ava was giggling the whole time. I loved it too.