The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.


It finally started feeling like Christmas today.  Up until now I’ve felt that I was merely caught up in the motions of shopping, event attending and advent calendar window opening.  
This morning was different.  I put my Apple Music ‘Essential Christmas’ playlist through the car sound system as we drove to Christmas lunch with some of our most favourite people in Sydney.  Number one on the list was of course, Ms Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas…’.  Mariah = Christmas for people of a certain vintage.  As the festive hits continued, I felt myself singing along with feeling and that feeling was my Christmas spirit.  It had unfortunately been almost drowned these last couple of weeks with the pressures and obligations of every other aspect of my life.  But no longer!
Our destination was The Tramsheds – a firm favourite of both of us.  The Christmas Markets were just starting up behind this beautiful ‘window’ called ‘Floating Wreath’ by the Loose Leaf team.

While we waited for our friends to arrive, I managed to find those unicorn bottles of Queen’s coconut essence.  For some reason Coles and Woolworths don’t seem to stock it anymore.  Not only did I find plentiful stock at Supamart at The Tramsheds but I also found it on sale!  I stocked up safe in the knowledge that the success of my future batches of coconut baked oatmeal would now be secure.
Our friends survived the Saturday morning traffic and parking situations. The first order of business was drinks all round before we made for the playground.
However chaotic and hard life seems to get in those weeks that lead up to Christmas, it’s these special times spent with special people that help you reconnect with yourself and what Christmas is really all about.

Our friendship is a continuous exchange of gifts.  Actual presents between the boys and so much more for the adults.
It’s been said many times before by people more articulate than me but it is true how Christmas becomes less and less about material gifts as you get older.  Instead, it’s a time for honouring treasured family and friends by spending time with them.  Making memories, revisiting memories, laughing, commiserating and being comfortable enough in their presence to be your true self in even the most testing situations.  Like the heat of a Saturday in summer where everyone around you is just a little overwhelmed about how much they still have to do for Christmas.
Lunch is a little less chaotic and more chill than it was last year, in direct correlation to the growing maturity and social awareness of our offspring.

Not that this meant that the boys were any less energetic than they were this time last year.

We were lucky enough to have lunch in ‘the tram’ aka at Butcher & The Farmer.  In between bites of fish and chips, the boys raced down to the ends of the tram to ‘drive’ and build cushion fortresses.  After already having run around for an hour or so in the mid-morning humidity of a day that barely needed it to rain already.

A sultry Saturday afternoon just before Christmas, a seat on a tram and the company of good friends.  Just about all the excuses I needed to kick back with an Aperol Spritz before lunch.
It was also a day for a burger and chips.

Plus bacon.

Just because.

We rounded out the day with our traditional stop at Messina before bidding each other fond farewells.  The days and weeks ahead will see us each celebrate Christmas and New Year a little differently.  A well-deserved trip of a lifetime for some, the beginning of several precious months with family from overseas, quiet time with loved ones interstate for others of us. 

Wherever time takes us, though, we’ve started the journey in a wonderful frame of mind.

To friends and to friendship.



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