SO MUCH TO BE THANKFUL FOR ... FAMILY, FUN, CHOCOLATE ...

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas with your friends and family!

We have just returned to New Plymouth after a totally fabulous week up in Auckland with family. We spent the week with Mum's sister (Aunty Lynn) and her husband (Graeme), with their daughters, son-in-laws, and 3 grand daughters. Add that together with our 7 adults and 5 boys and it was a totally crazy house!!!

As kids both families spent lots of time together, but as we have gotten older it seems to have got longer and longer between visits - especially with us girls living out of the country for long periods, kind of makes it hard to catch up.

Anyway, the week was very laid back with far too much food with far too little exercise (apart from running away from the kids with the water balloons!), but it was such such an incredible week. It kind of makes us sad that we have taken so long to get together again, but we had such a great time this year that we are already planning to do it again next year when there will be 2 more grand kids since 2 of my cousins (Melanie and Renee) were both pregnant this year!!

This is a card that I have just made to send to Lynn and Graeme to say thanks for having us all to stay a whole week, and for putting up with the mess in Lynn's typically immaculate house (you can image that with 22 people in and out of the house all day, it was impossible to keep it tidy!!). It was a really wonderful week that we will all remember for years to come!

For those of you who know my sister, Michelle, you probably realise that she has a little addiction problem (to chocolate that is!). Michelle LOVES chocolate, so I just had to share a picture that I just happened to snap in Auckland. You can see that she is very happy about something ... if you haven't already noticed, check out what Michelle is holding in both hands - 3 x 1kg blocks of Dairy Milk and 1 box of chocolates!!!

We had just finished playing a game where all the adults bought a $10 wrapped gift which we put in the centre of the circle. When it was your turn to play you could either take a gift from the centre or steal from someone else who had already had their turn. Well Michelle kept stealing the chocolate, and then even got her husband involved in stealing for her as well (here she's hogging his gift as well!)