Friday

Christmas Eve!
We all spent the morning puttering around the house. The kids helped Judy hunt for potatoes in her garden, which they loved. They took the responsibility very, very seriously.










They also tried to harvest garlic, but were only able to find two very tiny (yet super strong) bulbs. Sophie actually found them by using her almost creepy sense of smell. Yeah, she seriously COULD smell the garlic under the dirt. Perhaps she’s part vampire or something.






Then the kids headed off with the grandparents for a last bit of shopping, and Stephen and I drove into downtown Perth. The drive itself will be remembered as one of the highlights of the trip. Judy and Ken had given us their GPS unit to get us down there, however we had no idea how to use it. So I’m driving, and Stephen’s messing with it, and all of a sudden the British guy stopped talking to us, and the thing started mooing instead. I was like, “great. You’ve somehow managed to change the language to cow, and it’s going to moo instead of give directions”. Stephen held firm in his belief that no, there was not in fact a cow language, and that it was mooing for some other reason. A little while later, the polite British guy came back, and we ascertained that the mooing was actually a warning that I was speeding. Oops.

This is London Court in downtown Perth. I remember it from when I was little. Because Stephen is a giant nerd, he felt that it looked like Diagon Alley, and that they should all be Harry Potter related shops.








While in London Court, we happened upon what may be the only rude Australian in existence. I wanted to browse and look at the fancy antique tea cups that I collect, she told me that they were veeeerrrry expensive, I said yes, I realized that, but I loved them anyway, she asked in a snotty voice if we were really prepared to spend that amount of money, my hackles were raised and I told her that we certainly could spend that amount of money if we chose, but that no, we didn’t choose to.
And we left.
It was definitely a WTF sort of moment, because everyone here is about as polite and friendly as they come.

We had tea/coffee and a vanilla cream pastry to soothe our wounded pride, while I bitched and moaned about wanting to go back and buy all of the Shelley china that they had, just to prove that I could. Irrational? Who, me?

Then home to lasagna and my favorite cheap, boxed wine on the back patio (I could really get used to that), and the annual late night wrapping of presents.