Down here in little old New Zealand, we celebrate Christmas in the summer. Usually with trips to the beach, barbecues, sun umbrellas and sun burnt noses. So a mid winter Christmas celebration is always a bit of a novelty to us.
Helen was in charge of our SLG outing yesterday and her choice for the day was to take us out for a mid year Christmas lunch at the Te Marua Golf Club in Upper Hutt. The weather wasn’t in the least wintery – lovely sunshine, just cooler temperatures. The dining room looked out over the fairways where keen golfers were busy hitting that little white ball around.
Te Marua Golf Club
As well as our table of ten diners, there was another much larger group from one of the local churches. One of the ladies was selling raffle tickets for a large rich fruit cake, and our group purchased some tickets too. I was so keen to win that not only did I buy 3 tickets in the raffle, I also negotiated with Rex to buy the cake from him at a nominal price should he be the lucky winner. My cunning plan didn’t work when one of the ladies from the church group was declared the winner.
Ready to enjoy our Christmas lunch
The meal was delicious. We enjoyed roast beef and baked ham with a full complement of veggies. Followed with pavlova, fruit salad, and my favourite, Christmas pudding. With tea or coffee to finish, we all had that rather full feeling at the end of our meal.
Then it was back to Helen and Calvin’s home for “entertainment”, which created much discussion amongst us. Surely not charades – my least favourite thing to do? Perhaps some other sort of silly game? We were pleasantly surprised to find that our entertainment took the form of a slide show put together by our hosts. Our Super Leisure Group has been getting together and enjoying monthly outings for over 20 years now and there are several photo albums showing all the things we have got up to over the years. Many of these photos were scanned, captioned, and made into a slide show. It was very professionally done and Calvin even added music.
Calvin ready to entertain us
Our day finished with pulling the Christmas crackers, donning our silly hats, and reading out the jokes. It was a great day, many thanks to Helen for organising it this month.
Pulling my Christmas cracker
After being out of the work force for a couple of years, we had forgotten how frustrating it is to be caught up in the slow commuter traffic as everyone is heading home. It was a matter of stopping, starting and merging traffic lines as we drove up the Kapiti Coast. The sun was going down and Kapiti Island was a dark silhouette off the coast as we made our way home..
Kapiti Island at dusk
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