wakooltravelblog: JANUARY

This post is about January - but first a bit of December .... On Christmas eve we celebrated Christmas with our neighbors - just about everyone from the Navy Housing went home to their extended families for Christmas, so those of us that were left behind had a traditional family Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve, which was a lot of fun (especially since there were kids running around every where getting excited about Santa - and watching it on the iphone santa tracker app.

Christmas was a bit bitter-sweet for us. We LOVED having a white Christmas (and making a snowman on Christmas day), but were all feeling a bit homesick and wanting to be back in Australia. Thankfully we left for Australia very soon after Christmas.
JANUARY
We were so excited to be invited to Nikki's Brother's wedding, and that we could all come back to Australia for it (at one point it looked like Steve would have to stay behind). The wedding was WONDERFUL. Anastasia was a beautiful radiant bride, and Steve (Nikki's brother) looked pretty sharp too. It was great to be able to catch up with family that we haven't seen for years.

Anastasia is Russian and so the ceremony had lots of Russian parts to it, which we really enjoyed. At one point they threw glasses (in chiffon bags) over their shoulder for good luck.

We were really impressed when it came to the bridal waltz, as they really did an amazing dance and put on a great show (we didn't know Steve could dance!!).

Whilst we were in Australia we were able to catch up with a few friends, which really boosted our spirits (we are very sorry if we missed you when we were here, we are looking forward to catching up with people when we get home to Australia for longer than 8 days). As well as catching up with friends we were excited to be in Canberra for New Years Eve (a huge thanks to the Guy family for letting us invade their house for New Years Eve), as well as catch up with our animals (especially the dog Fifi), and Hannah & Jacqui learnt to bake bread from Alan Dearn (which is very useful because we can't get bread without sugar over here, so we've been baking our own bread every day since we got back to Annapolis). Hannah & Jacqui were also lucky enough to be "home" just in time for their good friend Connor's birthday party.One other big highlight was to be able to meet Nikki's new neice Chloe, who was born after we left Australia. It was also fun to spend some time with Olivia (her big sister), as well as Nikki's sister Belinda & Nikki's mum, Louise.