Christmas is coming?!?

Christmas is coming!  Christmas is coming?!?

Let us just come out and say it - It doesn't feel like Christmas to us.  At all.  The days are hot and the daylight hours are long. How can it possibly be Christmas time?

It's certainly not like we've never experienced warm and snow-less Christmases before. We've been fortunate enough to spend a Christmas in Florida, and we certainly had our fair share of green Christmases in Maryland.  But this year...it's different. We think it's due to a combination of things:

• Our Christmas in Florida was a getaway for a week. It was a temporary escape from the cold Canadian Christmas. In Oz, however, the days have been getting hotter and hotter since the beginning of October. We often find ourselves thinking that's it's July since it feels like the beginning of summer (as it should, we suppose, since it is indeed summer here). But no, it's not July - it's December and it's only 2 weeks until Christmas.
• The days are bright and long! Christmas, in our mind, is a dark but cozy time: The days are short, which allows you to enjoy colorful Christmas lights everywhere. This is definitely not the case here - it's still bright out at 9 pm, so we're missing all the Christmas light festivities.

Despite the fact that we're not feeling Christmas-y, we're still looking forward to the holidays. We've been told that a typical Aussie Christmas consists of having a BBQ while opening presents in your backyard (can you imagine?!), which is followed up by a game of cricket before everyone hops in the car to head to the beach.

Given that we're not huge fans of cricket (i.e. the most boring sport to ever exist), we've crossed that item off our list of Christmas must-do's (for this year, anyway!).  So how are the Foster's spending Christmas? Well, we've rented a cottage on the beach (Jervis Bay - Chinaman's/Hyams's Beach - which apparently holds the Guiness Book of World Records for the whitest sand in the world). We've been told that the cottage has a nice BBQ and backyard, so voila - all other Aussie traditions will be met!

Check out our cottage rental by clicking here: (Seahaven Cottage)

Chinaman's Beach - Our cottage is located by the grassy area at the left of the photo!