Guest blogger Pete again...
I'm not sure what time the sun comes up at Lochlea, but shortly after that, we were up and about on Christmas day. Grandma had the boys outside looking for reindeer tracks and they eventually tracked them in to the Christmas tree and the presents. After that it was a whirlwind of ripped wrapping paper and the excitement of new presents.
Jim, Mel and kids arrived in time for a fantastic Christmas lunch. It was a fantastic spread and a real credit to the cook. :) After lunch, Mary roped several innocent bystanders into a few rounds of karaoke with her new Singstar games. It was pretty funny to watch but not so funny to listen to. ;)
Later in the day, the kids all got outside and ran amok. Luckily it was not too hot - a bit overcast and fairly pleasant. There was some swimming in the pool and quite a bit of time spent working on the cubby. It was funny watching the kids work on the cubby. One would move something and then another would move it somewhere else. It was chaos, but they had fun.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, the cubby is built in a great big old pine tree behind the chook house. The tree is leaning on the old chook house and the roof of the chook house has been incorporated as part of the cubby. The cubby is the work of several different eras of grandchildren, cousins and neighbours kids. There is an incredible amount of wood and junk - scap metal, old tires etc. that has been carted up the tree. One day the chook house may fall down, taking at least half the cubby with it. :)
Around dinner time, the boys were playing with some toy golf clubs which Harry received as a present. Then Alex decided the real golf clubs would be better. They were only using soft plastic balls, so I thought it would be okay.
"Move away from the other kids if you want to use real golf clubs Alex."
The words were hardly out of my mouth a minute before I heard a scream and saw Patch lying on the grass with his head in his hands. I rushed over to have a look. Patch had a heap of blood coming out of a big cut - right in the middle of his forehead. It was pretty deep and we decided that we would have to take him to get some stitches. With an ice pack on the wound and lots of love & attention, Patch had calmed down by the time we got going, and the wound had just about stopped bleeding. If it was anywhere except the face, we may not have bothered with hospital.
When we got to Dalby hospital, we were surprised to find nobody waiting. We went straight in and they saw us straight away. They decided to glue the stitches rather than stitch them (a mistake in hindsight), and we were out of there very quickly.
We were back to the farm in about an hour and a half. Amazing - if we'd gone to a Brisbane hospital on Christmas night, we would have waited for hours!
Jim pitched his tent in the front yard and the kids & Aunty Mary slept in it on Christmas night.
Les & Kurtis came out for Christmas tea. We had a lovely tea and then some more (terrible) singstar (karaoke).
At some point in the night, Patch got cranky and ripped his glued head wound open. Should have gone for stitches! I retired pretty early, so I can't say who was the winner, but maybe music was the real winner. ;)
Jim and Mel stayed for Boxing Day and myself and the boys stayed for another lovely and relaxing week. I imagine the folks were glad to have the house back to themselves by the end of the week. Old Chinese saying - "Visitor like fish - after 3 days start to stink." ;)
