Crashed the Christmas Party

It's a really hard month this month for a few reasons. The obvious one being Christmas - the second one without Noah and the first one without Aaron.  I'm hoping the month will go really fast so that we can say we got through our first Christmas without Aaron.

As hard as this month is I still look forward to spending time with family and friends, even when it's to do with Christmas. Weekends are particularly hard when we are out of our routine and trying to fill in the days without Aaron and Noah, so on Saturday we decided to gate crash the Deloraine ward's church Christmas party since it's my Mum and Dad's ward and we have lots of friends there.

It was a beautiful, hot sunny day and it was lovely to sit under the shade of the Porter's trees, eating and chatting.

My brother Jared and Becky and the kids also gate crashed the party :)

The kids had fun playing games organised by Simon.

Well some of the kids played the games.  Harri decided it was more fun playing with all the bigger boys. He's so used to hanging out with Jay all the time, that he'd prefer to hang out with the bigger kids. 

Jay on the other hand prefers to just sit quietly and hang out with the adults lately.  I just wish that he was like Harri, running around having fun with kids his age. He's been much happier in the last month, but I know how he feels so I'm trying to be patient with him and just let him hang out with me if that's what he feels like doing. I think we have relied on each other so much over the last ten months, that he just feels comfortable being with me all the time.

The kids put on a very cute nativity play for everyone.  Don't you just love the donkey :)

'Baby Jesus' was all set with his sun hat.

Rusty the bull was getting lots of attention as usual.

The boys still remember the last time we spent time there and Gus showed us how Rusty likes to eat his apples.  There were a few brave people who fed Rusty some apples by putting it in their mouth. I felt like I was going to vomit when I saw all the cow slobber all over their face!

Rusty is so tame and didn't mind giving people rides on his back for hours.

Kobe was so excited about the visit from Santa.

Santa and Mrs Claus gave out bags of lollies and as they handed out the lollies Mrs Claus would say each child's name. She had to ask a few kids what their names were and Harri grabbed his lollies and then said 'Santa didn't even know my name!!'.

Kobe patiently waited for his bag of lollies.

To end the party the kids all went on a hayride. 

It was a lovely day and it was nice to spend time with family and friends.