Saturday 24 December 1983 – Christmas Eve – Ringwood NJ
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| The pristine driveway on Christmas Eve |
When we woke
up this morning the whole world was white!! – so we have our White Christmas
after all despite so many people saying we wouldn’t.
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| Vicki with Rocky the pup |
We only got
up at about 09.00 and then went for a walk around the lake – Uli, Vicki, Matt,
me and Rocky – setting off in what seemed to us to be quite a heavy snowstorm.
Marvellous fun! We walked across a corner of the lake which was all iced up –
very gingerly on my part as there were sundry creaks and cracking sounds. Matt
and Vicki had great fun sliding on the ice.
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| Matt out on the ice |
The wind
came up while we were out which dropped the temperature considerably and it
stopped snowing. When we got home the thermometer showed -5°C and with the wind
chill it was a deal colder than that. I helped Uli clear his driveway using a
blower and a snow shovel. Rocky had a great time dancing around in the snow. We
got it done quite quickly and it was fun, but I did realise that, like mowing a
lawn it would not be quite so much fun to have to do it every time you came in
or out of the house.
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| Matt, Vicki, Rocky and Uli out on the ice |
Just as we
finished, Michael’s bus driver, Margaret turned up with a Christmas present for
him. He was still asleep having been sick during the night – too much rubbish
to eat being the consensus of opinion (incorrect as things turned out!) She
seemed a very nice person, but took a long time to get going, joining us for breakfast
which we had at about 11.15 – boiled eggs and cold cuts with toast and rye
bread.
We took Rab
and Nora for a walk after we had eaten and Margaret had gone on her way. The
kids stayed behind and played computer games. The wind was blowing quite hard
by now which dropped the chill factor even more and it was pretty darned cold
out there, but I enjoyed it. When we got back a football game was starting, so
Uli and I watched that. It was the Sun Bowl final being played in El Paso and although the sun was shining down there in Texas, it was -4°C with
a 13 mph wind blowing. Must have been darned cold for the spectators.
I enjoyed
the game very much although of course it lasted three hours, so I was not very
popular. As soon as the game was over, we congregated around the tree and
opened the presents. It seemed a bit odd to us to get our presents on Christmas
Eve but that is the German custom apparently. (It is odd to read this remark, since all three of us believe that we
ALWAYS opened our presents on Christmas Eve – a practice we continue to this
day!) Anyway there was great excitement all around and everyone was very
happy with their presents. Matt got some Star Wars items (how surprising) and
Rab seemed quite happy with the pair of diamonds which I had bought in the Amsterdam duty free.
The present
opening ceremony was followed by what Uli said was a typical North German
Christmas feast – herring salad followed by grilled sausage. We all enjoyed it
but Rab and I thought it a little silly for Michael to eat what was rather rich
food. He turned a little green half way through the meal and was taken off to
bed. We played a game of Malifig at Uli’s request which seemed to go on and on
and on and so finished off with a much quicker game – Salute The King, which
was somewhat marred by Matt’s sulking. He is not behaving too well at the
moment – perhaps too many late nights and too much rich food. Anyway we called
it a night at about 22.00 and were soon fast asleep.
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