Christmas far from family

When you grew up with cold weather Christmas festivities, it's hard to adjust to a warm weather one. Even though I've been in South Africa for 6 years now, it still doesn't feel right to don shorts and t-shirt and have a braai (barbecue) on Christmas day!

This year we had a friend, Beccie George, who was bridesmaid at our wedding and has been a friend of ours since university days.

Having a new visitor is wonderful, because it's a good excuse to do all the tourist things in the city which we wouldn't normally do. Oftentimes, with the busy-ness of every day life, it's easy to forget that we live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Each time we get a visitor, they comment on how blessed we are and then we often take a step back and look around us and realise how right they are. Beccie was a wonderful gift to have with us as she helped with the kids and is just a very fun-loving easy-going person to be around. It wasn't the same as having Christmas with family, but we had some great laughs along the way.

Skype had to be our form of being with family this year, which isn't quite the same, but it's an amazing way of staying in touch when there's such a big distance between us and the grandparents.