Kevin was at Brisbane airport to meet us on our return from Tasmania and take us back home to prepare for Christmas and the New Year.

Christmas preparations are similar the world over, they involve shopping, cooking, partying and finding a little magic to make it special for the children - Light shows, animal displays with close encounter opportunities, finding streets that had been extravagantly transformed from mundane houses to elaborate Christmas scenes, with thousand-megawatt lighting displays. We were truly experiencing Christmas through a child's eyes thanks to Aoife.

Christmas Eve started innocently, preparing for Santa's visit but helped by a little lubrication, some music and general craic, a planned early night ended up being 3:00am and only then because Santa had arrived and refused to enter until everybody went to bed.

Aoife, excited by Santa was up at 6:00am and made sure that Kevin and Michelle didn't miss out on the excitement - who needs more than 3 hours sleep anyway?

By 9:00am we were all down at the beach having an early morning swim, while Kevin prepared breakfast beachside - traditional Christmas morning - The temperature was moving towards 30 degrees and not a sign of snow to be seen ……somehow surreal. Christmas dinner with Michelle's sister and her family, traditional fare, followed by drinking and drinking games, which got predictably funnier as time went on.

Return match on Boxing day at Kevin & Michelle's place - Poolside barbeque set the scene and the inevitable drinking followed

After boxing day, we tried to recover the abuse our bodies had been receiving and turned to kayaking, taking part in a 4-hour yacht race (albeit mainly as ballast) cycling and just to slow down a touch - bit of chilling by the pool.

It was not to last. New Year arrived and party-time returned - Mooloolaba came to life, thousands in the streets, huge firework display, drinking and dancing in the surf club took us into the early hours - A New Year had begun.

New Year's day was a relaxing one and we went to the newly opened super cinema in the local mall and watched Mary Poppins Returns together, stretched out on reclining chairs, with drinks and popcorn - All cinemas should be like this.