Day 5: Christmas Set up

We woke up at 10am. 

Oops.

K + W were still at the lake house (til 3:15pm), so we decided to have a chill-out day. We watched Bride Wars and I ended up having breakfast at 2pm. That wasn't helpful for my jet lag. Char went out for a walk so I ventured around the kitchen to find a late lunch. I ended up having some Mac and Cheese.... but it was fluorescent and didn't taste like cheese. I regret eating it. I also went through all the profesh formal pics-- they were interesting. Hats off to Jez and Emily for their cliche prom posing. That made my day!

It doesn't really show on the cpu monitor but I promise it was as bright as Twisties, without the flavour

Do you see what I get up to when I'm home alone

This is the disaster I become (pug with braces cracked me up for a good 5 mins)

Curled my hair woo woo

Kerri returned in the late afternoon, but still took us to Marshall's and TJ Max-- discount store wonderlands. We got a little tour of the place, and found some pretty cute Christmas items (like the mugs I show later in this post).

Marshall's

TJ Max 

Funky pencils

Somebody please get that for me in an adult size so I can match it to my beret pls 

We returned home to find Walter had set up the tree he cut down while up at the lake house-- it's so cool to see a fresh, pine tree set up in the house!! With no threat of red backs falling from it!

From 7:45-9:30pm, the whole family helped set up the Christmas decorations. We are no where near done, but we enjoyed setting up the basics. Char and I got to hang our stockings over a real fireplace-- I'm so excited for a white Christmas!!! The boys got really hyper after that. At the beginning of setting everything up, I surprised everybody with hot chocolates. There was no whipped cream so Walter and I tried to make some using eggnog and egg whites-- but we failed. Ahhh well.

Tried a Hershey;s kiss (yum yum)

Dinner (yum yum)

Cups: Walter's, Kerri's, Charlotte's, Mine, the boys, and Em's

Cute Santa? 

Ryan (age 5) was playing with these blocks, and accidentally spelled Satan-- 100% true story. Then he was dragging his toys with a rope around the neck. A little concerning. 

Singing Christmas carols

Cute displays

Putting our part of the tree on

Christmas Nutcracker x Mickey Mouse

Family photos

Walter, Trey, Char, Me, Ryan, Kerri

Countdown woo woo

Char decorated the tree

Ryan placing the star onto the tree

Kerri bought us a coat stand yay

The boys showing me a trick

Seeing the sitting room transformed into a Christmas wonderland was fun! There's a lot of competition in this town to be very festive, so it'll be interesting to see the all the houses lit up along the street. So far only a few have set up, but I'm sure by December 1st, we'll be seeing tonnes.

From about 10:30pm, I had a lovely FaceTime chat with Emily. I also got to Facetime mum earlier on in the day.

Tomorrow is when I start to be really touristy-- we are going to redeem our Explorer Pass (we payed about $250 to see 10 NYC Landmarks and Tours, for any day we want during a month). We may or may not be seeing the Empire State Building. I'm a little terrified. I'm definitely more keen to see Lady Lib. She took my breath away when I was in DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass), so I can't wait to get closer to see her true beauty lol.

It's almost 1am so I shall sleep now.

Wish us luck for tomorrow, I feel like I know how to read most of south Manhattan since I walked across most of it yesterday when I was lost,

From Calypso