Christmas Smells & Sounds

I've been in the kitchen baking christmas star cookies with the boys.  We've been listening to Christmas carols and hanging some christmas lights in between oven loads.  After two weeks of rain and thunderstorms in Sydney, the weather is hot again and the cicadas are chirping outside.  While standing in the hot kitchen with the oven on for the past few hours i've been listening to the sounds outside, cicadas, cockatoos screeching and then some warbling magpies, I am now feeling that Christmas time is beginning and summer is here.  With the smells of the cookies, the carols and the sounds outside I can feel a warm Christmas coming on and it brings back alot of memories. Childhood Christmases in Kenmore, Hervey Bay and later in Redland Bay.  Yes it would be nice to have a white Christmas again, but I also remember a wonderful wet Christmas in Rockhampton.  Just as we were sitting down to Christmas dinner on the verandah the heavens opened and it started pouring...... just magic. Now if only that would happen at Laidley!