A Mid-Winter Christmas (in June)

Crumbs. Two months since our last blog - you know when you're behind when both Mums start demanding an update on our activities. 

June and July have flown by - it's winter here in the South Pacific, with no festive season to break up the work routine. So - it's been nose to the grindstone (with only a couple of weekends away in a very cold, ice-covered campervan. It'd be rude not to...)

But that's not normal. Over here the Christmas displays have Santas on surfboards. Their seasonal christmas tree is the summery pohutukawa. So to normalise it all - we recruited our two very British friends (Suffolk and Nottinghamshire represents) Hannah and Jody for a very British Christmas. In June.

Here's some highlights. Starter 1 provided by Cope's mobile catering services. 

Round 1 - Blinis and Bubbles!

 And the aperitifs (yeah right) courtesy of the Bailey-Wells Bar...

The measure of a man (& woman) is their willingness
to invest in a dedicated beer fridge

The beauty of their house is that more than one person can be in the kitchen at the same time. Useful for the mound of food being prepared.

Main course chefs!

From the below, you can see we went all out with the decorations. No expense (financial or creative juice) spared.

A Kiwiana Christmas Tree

Catching the cork from the second round of bubbles

Ding ding - Round 2 - curried parsnip soup

After several pre-aperitifs, aperitifs and post-aperitifs, it was time for our first ever vegetarian Christmas roast.

Round 3 - She's ready for more...
The Mushroom Wellingtons

Secret Santa (but, as Cope tradition dictates,
presents should only be opened after dinner
is washed up and a walk completed.... boo!)

It turns out Secret Santa is hard to keep secret with only four people...

A head scarf and a head band.

One is good for yoga. One isn't.

Presents dished out. Bellies full. Glasses recharged. Cheese demolished. I've announced "That's Christmas over". Best turn on the TV for the evening's entertainment!

Cheering on the All Blacks as they win the third of the three tests.
Why not? We'd already lost the series!

England smashed once again. So naturally the next logical step is to fish out the spare door from under the house, wipe off the cobwebs, march into the house (past an unhappy set of wives) with it and proceed to try and throw a ping pong ball in each other's drinks.

And beer pong. With a spare door.

Little did Jody know, but I've been practising for this moment for months. The Mount Gay Rum was all his. Nice team-work on the sharking, Sarah.

Beer pong loser = brandy winner.

And what would a Christmas be without some kind of word game. Here's the Bailey alphabet classic underway.

Letter games. The forte of pissed people.

And finally before bedtime, Jody brings out his guitar for an amazing private gig to some of his favourite classics. Amazing stuff and we've still got the songs going round our heads.

Time for bed - and the beauty of Auckland is you're never far from some great nature or an amazing view. This is what Hannah and Jody wake up to every day, incredible stuff!

Stanning.

Feeling slightly jaded, Sarah and I ditched our grand plans for a good run and went to the zoo instead. The orangutans got stared at a lot. And I remembered to take just the one photo.

How we felt...

So, Happy Christmas from Auckland!

After a busy couple of months at work, we're off to Fiji tomorrow for a 10 day break from the winter weather and as a birthday present to ourselves for our imminent 30ths.

Other than that we've both got back into the training. Sarah's gunning for a London marathon qualifying time this November, by smashing out the Auckland marathon. I've got two cycle races, one mountainous and one endurance event, in November. More on those another time perhaps!