Christmas Day started about 9am when we headed downstairs to watch Jane, Steve and Marc (Steve's brother) open their presents. From there, we headed to Steve's sister's house, Carolyn, to see his niece, Sarah - almost 5, and watch her open her presents. I'm really glad we tagged along for this, although it felt a bit weird for the first 5 minutes, as Christmas really is for the kids, so it was nice to be around one on Christmas Day. Carolyn and Rob made us feel very welcome.

At 11am, Jane headed off to work in A&E at the hospital, and Marc headed off to drop his girlfriend, Tina, at Heathrow Airport, leaving Steve, Aaron and I to have a very relaxed day pottering around and getting Christmas Dinner ready for 5pm.

While we were getting everything ready - it started snowing. For months now, I've been saying that if I can't have my warm, sunny Christmas, then it had better snow to compensate and my wish came true with snow at about 1pm, then again about 4ish (while I was our walking Cody, the dog).

There were 8 of us for Dinner (Left to Right: Jane, Aaron, Carmen, Marc, Rodger, Jeremy (in the high chair) and Ester) and about enough food for 20! It was one huge bird.

After dinner, we sat down and played the game that Steve and Jane had given us for Christmas. It's called Dirty Minds, and basically you get given 'dirty' clues and have to guess the 'clean' answer - a real laugh after a few wines.

Boxing Day started early (about 7am) for the boys, who were off to play golf in the ice and snow. 9 holes, 10 frozen toes, 1 lost golf club and too-many-swings-to-count later, they were home and we were off to the pub for the afternoon (a british tradition on boxing day). Aaron and Gaz came joint 2nd to last, while the others we knew didn't do much better, but they did all get a prize and I think the overall verdict was good.

Firstly, hope that you all had a fantastic Christmas spent with family and friends and that Santa brought you everything you wanted!

Our Christmas started on the 24th December at 11am. We decided that the pile of presents was really too big to take to Wales then to Scotland with us, and as 11am on the 24th December is really midnight, and hence Christmas Day, this was a good compromise.

Big thanks to everyone that sent over presents! I must admit I wasn't expecting to get much being on this side of the world, but in the weeks leading up to Christmas, they just kept coming and coming!

I get the feeling that a lot of possum's died for us this Christmas, as that was definitely the dominant feature in opening the presents, with Aaron and I both getting Merino-Possum scarf's and socks from Aaron's parents, and me getting a Merino-Possum jersey and gloves and Aaron getting Merino-Possum socks from my Nana.

I managed to get quite a pile of presents including: a new sleeping bag, a couple of pairs of earrings and a few other little things from Mum and Dad; a travel frisbee, travel radio/clock and NZ playing cards from Marc (my little bro); a print from Janna and a number of bottles of wine from workmates.

Aaron gots lots of socks!

We then headed off to Victoria Coach Station to catch our £3 bus to Cardiff. Just briefly, there is a funny story that goes with this one... Aaron had told Steve, the guy we were staying with, that we were arriving on the 23rd, when we were actually coming on the 24th. With Aaron's phone on silent, neither of us had heard the 12 missed calls, 2 text messages or 2 very worried messages from Steve coming through until 1.30am. By this time, Steve had been to the bus station in Cardiff (20 mins away from his house) and the train station and been in touch with the police and hospital. Needless to say, Aaron was a little red-faced.

That time of year draws close once again. So before we disappear for a couple of weeks through the South of Wales for Christmas and into the high country of Scotland for New Years I thought we should say "Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year".

I have just finished up with my work Christmas outings, first one was an official work one were we took the day off to go wine tasting and sampling at Venopolis, by the end of the wine we were walking the street with our boss in a Santa outfit, all of us in either Santa hats or reindeer antlers. We than headed to the London eye at night time, with bottles of champagne. A couple in the next capsule got engaged at the top, of course there we were cheering in our Christmas outfits. Finally we moved on to a restaurant to eat and exchange £5 secret Santa gifts. The next night was the social clubs organised outing, we had been pre-organised into groups and given a musical which we had to sing a song from. We were given, Saturday Night Fever, and my group had chosen Tragedy by the Bee Gees. So embarrassment aside, my impersonation of John Travolta went without a hitch. A good evening. Now we have Carmens to look forward to which are in the New Year.

We have had a pretty eventful year all round. Both Carmen and I finished up our Masters in the beginning of the year and quickly joined the mass exodus or the 'brain drain' to head over to the UK. Arriving, we crashed at a cousins of mine before he got sick of us and found us a flat to live in. After an initial three months of temping, Carmen found herself a full time job at a pharmaceutical company, she is very happy with the actual job but there seem to be a few rough bits around the edges such as the travel time to and from work each day.

After Carmen slipped into her new job, I did a shifty into her old temping position, last week they offered me a permanent position as a financial analyst, which I have accepted and started on Monday. I am very happy with the new position and things are looking up.

And of course there has been the exploring of London, England, UK and the begins of the rest of Europe. Highlights include La Tomatina in Spain, were I managed to throw lots of tomatoes at Carmen. Oktoberfest was a fun event, both with a great group on the bus trip and with the impressive scale of the event and beer consumed. Our whirlwind tour of Scotland also leaves fond memories, it was fun, interesting and I even got go for a swim with Nessy.

To all our friends, family, people we have meet over the last few months, we hope you have a great Christmas, as my Dad says, Christmas isn't about the giving of presents, its about the receiving. So I hope you get lots in your stockings. Thanks to those who have kept in touch and we look forward to catching up again in the New Year.

Arriving at the hostel in Dublin on Friday night, we were well aware that the trip had crept up on us really fast and that apart from go to the guiness factory, we didn't really have a plan. One of the best things about staying in a hostel however is that there are always plenty of brochures of cheap trips around the place and after perusing these for about an hour, we settled on a day Celtic trip.

We had another great tour guide who, like the guide we had in Scotland, was a born story teller... (think both the Irish and the Scottish) are well known for this ability). We saw a lot of really cool places and heard a lot of really cool stories, but they probably won't sound so good written down, here is the general overview from the tour company

OVER THE TOP TOURS CELTIC TOUR OVERVIEW (click)

And here are our highlights:
5000 year old tomb with some pretty cool carvings on the walls. Only the priest was ever allowed to go in to 'talk to the spirits' and make sacrifices to ensure that the gods were happy with them and that the sun would come back again. Not much to look at from the outside, but very impressive that it has been there so long.

Unfortunately the King Stone on top of the Hill of Tara didn't sing for either of us (so neither of us will be the next king of Ireland). But the sunset made up for it!

This story starts a couple of months ago when our flatmate, Kate, asked if I'd heard about the 3 million flights that Ryan Air was giving away? With an offer like that, who can refuse so it was straight to the web. Now there is always a catch, but considering the catch is that we still had to pay taxes, resulting in each flight costing only about £13 - we were still keen. (That's what I love about this side of the world).

Arriving in Dublin late on Friday night we managed to find the right bus and even get off in the right place, though I'm sure it was more good luck than good management. We headed to find the hostel, which was in the old Litton Lane Recording studio. As we walked into our hostel room, I was surprised to see that people were actually living there, and having the tact of a doornail, I announced this to Aaron who was right behind me. This resulted in an evil stare from the girl reading in the top bunk that I had failed to realise was there. Not a good way to make friends...

Feeling that 10.30pm was a bit too early to head to bed, and that we were never going to be able to get to sleep with the bass from the nightclub outside our window shaking the glass, we headed out to pace the streets of Dublin. Dublin has quite wide streets (widest I've seen since I've been over here) and quite a nice feeling to it. We grabbed a bite to eat and I'm sure I got chatted up by a few very drunk Irish guys, but I couldn't understand them, so it didn't really matter.

Sunday morning, we headed down to breakfast a bit later than Saturday to find the place buzzing with people. This caused a minor electrical dilemma as people attempted to run 2 toasters and the microwave all off the same plug, hence blowing the fuse. However, everyone just jumped to the conclusion that the toaster was broken - but not Aaron... he kidnapped the toaster and headed off to the reception to make our toast in quiet. Handy man to have around...

With that out of the way, we headed to the most famous landmark in Ireland - the Guiness Storehouse and Brewery. I was expecting a tour through the part where they actually make the guiness, but instead it was a bit of arty museum. If you're going to Dublin, you should probably go, but it didn't live up to my expectations.

From there it was quick bite to eat then souvenier shopping before heading to the airport for an late afternoon flight home.