After spending a lovely evening out with Damen, Michelle and Ryan for New Year’s Eve, the actual 1st of January was dominated with a trip out to Mom and Dad’s house in order to celebrate the New Year with a big family lunch.
Despite Chantelle working for the first half of the day (she would join us later in Bellville), Jess, Emily and I made an early trek through to the Northern Suburbs, where we joined Ryan, Riley, Claire (with the boys), and Granny Lotter in chilling at Mom and Dad’s pad. Lots of conversation, lots of swimming (though Emily wasn’t quite so keen on the cold water), and lots of relaxation as Mom and Dad scurried about preparing the feast, was the order of the morning.
Lunch was absolutely delicious as expected (so much variety!), Jessica and Emily enjoyed themselves on the day (as did Gran I suspect), and when Chantelle finally did join us after work, we immediately (well, after she had first eaten – hey, we’re not monsters) made her put on her new boardshorts that she had received for Christmas and got her in the water (a rare treat for Jessica who was absolutely thrilled at the opportunity to swim with Mommy!).
We even dug out an old Polyotter (from when Claire, Ryan and I were kids) to see if it would be useful for Jess, but after a couple of tries we quickly decided that drowning our child with an ancient flotation device is probably not the best of ways to teach her how to swim! :)
Eventually everyone kind of peeled off home late afternoon/evening, Chantelle and the kids included, though I stayed on in the hopes of a few games of darts with the family.
As such, the darts board did indeed make its appearance, and pleasingly Mom and myself convincingly put Dad and Ryan to the sword (though one of the games Ryan and Dad did give us a bit of a late scare, thanks to an absolute flurry of bulls near the end!).
The game of choice was Killer of course – our attempt at 301 was so abysmal that I’m going to completely ignore it…
