Best Wishes

Sending you best wishes
in everything you do.
May all your dreams
be answered
and every wish you
make come true.

May all lifes good fortune
bring you true success,
and every step along the way
is filled with happiness

Photography

On Sunday the 23rd December, Linda's friends Kim and Alice came over to celebrate Christmas with Linda and they wanted me to be their photographer. Here are some of my favourite photos that I took that day:

Above is my favourite ever photo- reminds me of the Peter Pan movie when Peter first teaches the Darling children to fly!!!
True Friendship- love this photo!
Trying to make Linda look serious by putting on Kim's glasses
First attempt at taking a mid-air shot of the girls beside the Christmas tree ...
What a jump! A shame I didn't get the heads fully in the picture. Although it is much harder inside since there's not much space to stand back and take the photo...
...so we made our way outside. It was way more successful capturing a jump off the front steps...
What a jump!

It took a while to get the timing right... the photo above would have been awesome if I hadn't cropped the top...

This photo reminds me of High School Musical posters where all the main characters are jumping in mid air!!!

Christmas Day

We wish you a Merry Christmas!!!

Christmas morning was extremely fun! I was really excited about Christmas (I love Christmas!!!) and woke up before 6am on Christmas morning! After that followed a what seemed like a very long hour of laying around in bed and reading 'Matilda' by Roal Dahl as we are not allowed to get up before 7am on Christmas morning. But finally it was 7am so me and Linda went to wake Mum and Dad up, let Lola out of the kitchen (where she has her bed) and all together we went to the Christmas tree. It looked amazing!
This year was the first time that we had restrained ourselves from opening Christmas presents from friends before Christmas so they were all piled up under the tree along with the presents that Santa bought :) Photos were taken and presents were opened.

Lola's first Christmas
I loved all my presents sooo much!!!

I got Lindor chocolates(Mmm!), a dictionary of Biology(Yeaa!!! I didn't have one yet, and it is soo helpful!!... although I can't read it at the moment-it reminds me of study and I'm on HOLIDAY!!), a collectors edition book 'The Origin of Species' (which is soo little and cute, with a hard cover covered in red soft material, and the pages are tinted gold around the edges!), a bookmark with Hermione photos (so nice!), a balancing bird (that can balance on almost anything! I think it's to do with the centre of gravity being at the beak. My friend had one at primary school and I used to borrow it all the time from her- it's fun to play with!), a framed Ministry decree like one of the ones featured in the film Harry Potter and the order of phoenix (interesting, I hung it up in ourcorridor), a poem written on a glass plank (so lovely, titled Best Wishes), a yellow towel with a button to wrap hair in after a bath/shower (so soft! When I figured out how it works I spent most of the day walking around with it on my head! It's so soft and fluffy!) and Linda's yr 9 science, english and Religious studies books (sounds random but they would be helpful for teaching later on as I don't have any of my yr 9 books). Thank you Santa and everyone else for such wonderful presents!!!
Linda's second dream came true and she got ice skates! Mum and Dad also got presents that they loved!!!
After breakfast we spent the rest of the morning playing around with presents. Every year after lunch on Christmas Mum and Dad go to a Christmas party, while me and Linda have a party of our own, with Mila Linda's friend who comes over every year on Christmas. This year was no exception! She got me a 20 pack of coloured gel pens!! I love gel pens!!! :) (unfortunately Lola got hold of one of the pens and chewed it a bit so I had to fix it up with tape. Naughty Lola!)
We prepared a christmas dinner (butter chicken, rice, seafood salad, pies etc) which we had at 7pm. The girls put on their music and we had our Christmas dinner together.
The girls were quick to finish and then went off to do their own things. A chance to change the music! So I put on a CD that Anita gave me that is full of my favourite songs that we used to sing at college (three of my favourite are 'Shout to the Lord', 'All the Earth' and 'Power of Love') and sat at the table some more, eating and listening to music.
After some time the girls came back and changed the music, telling me that I was being depressing. I was not!!! I loved sitting there singing along to my music which is NOT depressing!! However I surrendered and we had dessert (flake pastry tarts) and danced along with the music that Linda and Mila chose.

After dancing around for some time, Linda and Mila went off to dress up, while I cleaned up the dishes (the girls dried them) . Some time later the two of them re entered the room looking like this:Wow! What ladies!!

After the girls got sick of dressing up we decided to play truth or dare. That was a hilarious experience! I personally prefer choosing truth over dare-safer! Hehehe! It was almost midnight by then and after playing for a while we went to set up our matresses in the living room. We always sleep under the Christmas tree on Christmas! We got ready for bed in our pj's and were about to continue our game when I heard the car coming into the driveway! As quick as a wink we turned off the lights and pretended to go to sleep. I was right under the tree, with all my presents around me, and the lights on the tree twinkling all above me! That is how I fell asleep that night!!! On the night before Christmas Dad read us the traditional 'The night before Christmas'- I love that book! Thus in its last words

"Merry Christmas all, and to all a good night!!!

December 25th, 2007

:):):) MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!! (:(:(:

Christmas at Christina's house

On Saturday 22^nd December I went to Christina’s house to celebrate an early Christmas. I and she have been celebrating Christmas early together every year since intermediate school!

We exchanged presents, talked, painted, ate and played board games! Her family has sooo many board games so we spent time playing snakes and ladders (I had forgotten how frustrating that game could be! But in the end I won!), Trouble (had never played it before but it used to always get advertised on TV) and another game that I forgot what it’s called, but they were all games that used to be played in primary school! It was so fun, I haven’t played any board games for soo long! For lunch we had pizza, and then for afternoon tea I had toasties with onion, cheese and sweet chili- I love them so much and have them every time I come over to Christina’s house because she has a toastie maker.

The weather was beautiful-warm and sunny so we spent quite a bit of time sitting out on the deck sunbathing and painting and talking. We went online to get some ideas of what to paint and I found a bunch of pictures of Hermione from Harry Potter and Tanya printed them out for me in colour. (When I got home I laminated and cut them out and stuck on my wall) I love to draw/paint Hermione/Emma Watson because I love her face complexion and her hair tone and style which is always interesting to portray in artwork.

She (Hermione) is also a great favourite of mine- ‘Who I Admire’ figure, along with Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately we got bored with painting before I got to finish my artwork, but I will finish it next time I come over to Christina’s house.

Christina made butter chicken and potato wedges for dinner-which turned out to be extremely hot! Unfortunately I had lumped everything all together on my plate so everything ended up tasting EXTREMELY hot!! I drank several glasses of juice and then we had ice cream for dessert which was so nice!

My parents picked me up on the way home from a party at about 8pm, just in time as we just finished a late dinner. It had been an awesome day, apart from the fact that it was over too soon!

:):):)!!!Happy Birthday Dad!!! :):):)

On the 20th of December was Dad's birthday!!! As per tradition in the morning we sang happy birthday and gave Dad his presents. We got him a professional snorkelling set- blue flippers and mask! There was also a bag and a DVD on how to use the gear! The DVD was really amusing to watch! Linda gave him a framed painting and we also gave him chocolate. He loved the snorkling set!!! Apparently he had wanted one for a very long time!! He kept walking around the house in flippers!!
We baked Dad a cake and I decorated the top- it's not as easy as it looks using the squirting thing to draw with icing-but it's really fun once you get the hang of it! I wrote 'happy birthday' in Russian and drew a plane (Dad likes planes) and stars and a sun.
We also made pelimeni- Russian food which is small mince balls wrapped in dough and boiled, as well as salads and other dishes! I made seafood salad which is a favourite of mine!

We had a really nice dinner during which a couple of Dad's friends came over and joined us in our celebration. Just as we were saying a toast there was an earthquake!!! I didn't really feel it but everyone else did! It felt like just a slight wobble so we didn't really do anything about it, but the next day we read about it in the newspaper and it was 6.8 on the Ricter Scale and it's epicentre was in Napier! There were photos of the damage in Napier on the front page and wow it looked horrid! Luckily no one was badly hurt. We were lucky we weren't anywhere near Napier at the time, although we are going on holiday to Havelock North soon which is very close to Napier!!
We spent a long time at the table talking, saying toasts and then went to dance a bit....
...and then went back to the table and had dessert and cake, and sang Happy Birthday.
After sitting around and talking for a bit longer it was time for Dad to go to work (unfortunately he was on night shift at work that day) so our celebration had to come to a close. Dad's friends lived in Wellington so they left and took him to work on the way, while Mum and I were left to clean up and wash the dishes (Linda had already gone to bed a while ago, it was around midnight by this time).

It was just past midnight when we went to bed. Before going to bed I had a slight hassle trying to take my ring off. I have this pearl ring that I wear on special occasions that I always put on my right hand second to last fingerand it always fits perfectly and I can take it off by putting my finger in cold water (gold metal ring moulds around finger due to body heat while wearing the ring and goes back to normal once cooled). Only this time when I was putting it on I put it on the middle finger instead of the second to last finger so when I tried to take it off it just wouldn't come off! I was really innoyed as I don't like sleeping in jewllery, so after many attempts of pulling the ring off Mum finally got me some margarine and the ring came off! Whew! It doesn't sound like a bit deal but it was quite past midnight and I was really tired and couldn't wait to get to bed! Luckily the next day I got to sleep in because it's the holidays!! Yeeeaa!! Oh how much I love holidays!!! :)

A New Year Play...

On Sunday my family took part in a Russian New Year celebration play for children. Every year people from the Russian community get together and put on a day performance for children. Me, Mum and Linda took part last year (I was puss in boots) and this year our whole family apart from Misty took part.

Merlin tells a story...

This year’s play was about a girl named Snegurochka who is made from snow by an elderly couple.

From this traditional Russian tale came the tradition that in Russia, when Santa Clause comes to give children presents he is always accompanied by his daughter Snegurochka.

Linda played the role of a girl on ice skates at the start of the play and then she was Snegurochka for the rest of the play. I also had two roles; first I was a boy (!! So fun being in the role of a boy!!) who threw snow balls at the skaters and then I was a Russian lady selling Russian merchandise at the Winter Fair. Mum was a Joker and Dad a bear!

The story line of the play went like this:
Two girls are ice skating. Then two boys come along and start throwing snowballs at the
skaters.

There is a snowball fight, after which everyone runs away.

An elderly couple are walking past saying how great it would be to have children of their own. They decide to build a girl out of snow- and she comes to life!

She becomes their daughter and they name her Snegurochka, raising her and taking her to places and teaching her many things.

One day they take her to the Russian Winter Carnival.

The Merhandise seller at the Carnival- Me! Beside me is Mum the Joker

There are jokers and merchandise sellers and dancing bears!

Mr Bear -Dad!

After they come back from the carnival Snegurochka’s friends invite her to play. (me on the right! I changed my name to Philip for the day... :) )

They go into a meadow and the boys make a fire, and jump over it.

Getting beaten up by a girl??!!-No way!!

The magician (who is the storyteller) warns Snegurochka about jumping over the fire. (or she’ll melt!)

Santa Clause then arrives and stops Snegurochka from jumping. Then both Santa and Snegurochka give the children presents.

But two naughty jokers had swapped the presents bags around...

Mum on the left- but she was a good Joker, unlike the other two...

and Santa’s bag had… a snow puppy in it! (yes Lola participated in the play also!).

...starring Lola!!!
At the conclusion of the play Santa finds his own bag of presents and he and Snegurochka play games with the children from the audience and give presents!

We had 3 rehearsal days, one each week before the performance and it was amazing after all the rehearsals how quickly it was all over! It had been a fun experience and I felt a bit sad when it was all over! But hey! The Christmas season continues and we still have Dad’s birthday, Christmas and New Year to celebrate!

PS: From participating in this play I learnt that I really enjoy playing boy roles!!! :)