Christmas Day on Sunshine Beach

Before I went away for Christmas I intended to post an upbeat Christmas blog to fill you all with Christmas cheer, but it turned out to be more than a little melancholy.

Christmas with the Unwin/Lidster's turned out to be fantastic. It started with an early morning run and swim on the beach with Shakespearemate. Even a short run on the sand under the baking sun (already fierce at 6:30am) is surprisingly difficult. A dip in the sea soon refreshed us.

In contrast to home presents were given out before breakfast, the start time being negotiated upwards from 6am to 7:30am the night before with the very excited Bruce. Unwin tradition dictates that Bruce dons his Santa hat and distributes all of the presents under the tree (of which there were lots!), reading the funny messages on the labels and everyone collecting a little pile without opening them. Once all the presents have been given out, everyone rips open the wrapping paper. The theatre was in the distribution of gifts, not seeing what everyone had got.

Once all the presents were open a glorious day of eating commenced. We dined like kings for the entire week. For Christmas Day breakfast we had ham freshly carved off the bone and eggs. Lunch was a traditional turkey with all the trimmings, minus the brussel sprouts which is an improvement as far as I am concerned. As always I ate far too much.

Once the heat of the day began to subside we headed back down to the beach for an afternoon swim and was where I took the above movie.

A knee jerk reaction when someone mentions Christmas to me is to think of winter and snow. However, being able to go outside in shorts and a t-shirt, and be active on Christmas Day does make a lot of sense.