Happy New Year!

Well, can you believe we are into the 4th day of our new year! If that's true, I would hate to see how fast this year is going to fly by! So my wish for you in 2009 is...

May your New Year be better than your old year.
May your goals be in reach and your dreams soar.

May you receive many joys & blessings in 2009.

I was reading the newspaper this morning (believe me I don't get to do this often) and read that John Travolta's son passed away on Friday morning, he was 16. They think he hit is head on the bath which caused a seizure. Apparently he did have siezures on the odd occassion. I felt so sad and reflected on how so many tragedy's happen everyday and we sometimes need to take a step back and be grateful for life and what it offers, no matter what curve balls are thrown our way!

On to a happier note, we celebrated a very quiet Christmas with my brother, Vaughan and sister-in-law Nicky and lunch with our South African friends, Crystal, Bruce, Celeste, Jolene, Colin and their two friends Matt and Amy. It was a great day. We started off with going to a church service. Then we went to take some pics at the Burj Al Arab (just to prove we were in Dubai!). We came home for a very belated omlette breakfast which Peter made and then we opened presents (the boys were very patient to wait so long as it was around 13h00 before we started present swapping!). Here are some pics taken through the day...

We celebrated our first New Year's Eve with friends of ours with a good 'ole spit braai! Not much celebrations going on though because the Sheikh of Dubai banned any outdoor celebrations (usually there are fireworks on the beach which a lot of the hotels let off as the New Year arrives) in support of the war going on along the Gaza strip. Well, that didn't stop us South Africans (and I am sure many out there too in Dubai) who had small house parties! Not sure that anyone would have seen much fireworks even if there were as there was such thick mist that came in, it was wonderful! Cool!

At least the New Year did not bring in a hangover and we celebrated the day just relaxing at home.

So...2009...what will this year bring us...well, I suppose we will have to wait and see!

All I wanted for Christmas....

was a humungus Christmas tree for our house! Every Christmas time I put up our tree which was about half a metre high and it took me all of an hour to put it up and decorate! Well, my wish came true 3 days ago when we went shopping at one of the big shops here called Carrefour (a supermarket chain from France). They were having a 50 % discount off on all their Christmas decorations and I managed to get the last tree (just waiting for me!) on the shelf which was 2.4 metres. It almost got stolen out of my trolley too!

Not thinking much of how big a 2.4 metre tree was when buying it until I got it home and put it up the next day! The thought when buying that yes, it will be big but boy...that big! It took me about an hour to just put it together - luckily the branches are colour coded. Not like the small trees you buy where you just fold out the branches and start unfolding the smaller branches...no, not that easy!

Anyway, the point is I am still very happy about my Christmas tree, it also took about 3 days to decorate. The decorations were also on a 50 % discount so all in all I was quite chuffed about my bargains!

Thanks Row and Fi for the loan of your small Christmas tree (compared to the humungus one!) while you are holidaying in South Africa with Dad and Mom...lucky buggers!

So, this is what the tree looked like without the decorations (yes, that is a bird in the tree! Our new addition to our family, a parakeet, called Belladean (that story will be blogged still!)


and this is what it looks like decorated (lucky for high ceilings!)


So on this Chrismas Eve I would like to take the opportunity to wish all our family and friends the merriest Christmas and may 2009 bring you lots of happiness and may all your dreams come true....

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Miss you alll!!! XXX