20./21. December

Santa Clause is coming to town!
Yeah, I am finally being grasped by the spirit of christmas after these two wonderful days. Anja and I are relaxing on our new camp (moved rooms because Halia's parents arrived) and are anticipating the end of this blogpost so we can have some hot chocolate with marshmallows and rest in front of a movie. We blew our plans to go to a bar into the wind as we lay in bed half dead this afternoon and for a few other reasons like having lots to do here. Today we also finally cooked again and whipped up my favorite stir fry that luckily everyone enjoyed (beside Stefan). As we are chilling here I am wearing a new piece of my clothes collection, but a bargainer as I am, I didn't pay for it. Hmm, how did I attain it? Well, we have to go back in time for that, just one day though.

Around midday we made our way to the station to get to Mentone by one o'clock. In the end the trip cost us one and a half hours. One reason for this delay was our rush to leave the train arriving at Flinder's Street in order to hop onto the Frankston line (taking us to Mentone), however, we then discovered our train had just turned into the Frankston line and drove off right in front of our noses. Upon our arrival we were picked up by Mr Owen himself with whom we headed into the nearest supermarket to gather the missing ingredients for traditional christmas cookies. Oh boy, Owen had no idea what he had gotten himself into. Before I keep going I would like to thank Oma and Opa for writing out and sending my beloved recipe.
Kneeding and mixing the dough was a quick affair once Owen had found the scales packed away in the pantry. Luckily we did find them because we did have to improvise with a few other needed utensils like the rolling pin which we substituted with a bottle of wine. This option seemed classier than the olive oil spray that we mistook for insect repellent at first.

Anja also insisted on kneading chocolate flakes into the dough so some of the cookies later turned out looking burned because they were so dark. The cookie cutter shapes I was able to attain were very christmassy of course. They contained a gingerbread man (male), an angel (female), a mistletoe (flower), a christmas tree (triangle), a christmas tree ball (circle), the spirit of christmas (heart) and a star (star).

Once the cookies were done and Owen had used the rest dough for a big blob face after he had grown tired of cutting out cookies, we decorated them with yellow, red and orange icing and differently colored sprinkles.
In the end Anja and I had to take half showers because the flour never really went where it was supposed to. I must say I got away the worst at least concerning pretty much my whole body. However, Anja ended up decorated with a nice and clear handprint of the back of her black shorts.

Once the kitchen (and us) were clean again and the cookies were packed away the plan for the day was not done yet of course. We had booked tickets for an open air showing of Frozen in the Botanic garden. Well equipped with a pick nick blanket and a fluffy blanket and some drinks and our santa hats we found a nice place in between all the other movie goers. Fortunately we arrived about 90 minutes before the actually screening, that way we got a quite nice place in front of the huge blowup screen, because the whole lawn ended up packed with people. In those many minutes of waiting we all lay down under the blanket and looked at cloud formations and just before the movie started what I thought were birds, were actually many many bats flying above our heads!! That was the first time I ever saw bats.

The movie was actually really funny and sweet and I was surprised at how well the sound was carried over the lawn. During the course of waiting and all of it I absolutely fell in love with Owen's jumper and since I was wearing my huge huge flea market jumper he agreed to swap for a while. And then he allowed me to keep it for a few days while he is holding mine hostage.
You could therefore say we have spent another two lovely days.

Hope you did too,
Skipper