Giftmas fast approaches!

We have set up our xmas tree, and decorated it with some new decorations and some fairy lights. We have turned the lounge room into Stylish's bedroom, and made her old room into Spikee's play room / bedroom - he did sleep in there the first night but is now safely back in bed with his dowdy old parents. 

Stylish is loving her new bedroom, and Spikee is feeling terribly grown up and independent with his play room. We set up the plastic xmas tree in there, and will do present opening and whatnot in there come giftmas morning. 

We had some sad news this week, with the death of our favourite rat. last week she started getting frail and her breathing was odd, then on Monday afternoon she took a turn for the worse and died. Poor Stylish is devastated. She wanted to cremate the rat, as her grandma, baby brother, and cousin were cremated. So I breathed deeply and we set up a funeral pyre in the garden. Stylish helped collect fire wood, and then we dug a hole, put a wooden board in the hole, place the rat (wrapped up in furry rainbow material) on top of the board and built up the fire about her body.  It burned for about an hour before we let it burn out and doused it with a bucket of water.

The garden is going really well, but we have decided to move into our own house some time next year so we're hoping to harvest as much as we can before then! I would hate to leave it here after so much hard work. The strawberry box has 11 flowers in it!!!

Tonight, and most nights actually, we go walking around the neighbourhood enjoying the xmas lights on people's houses. The kids think it's the best thing ever, and I quite enjoy it too. Sometimes we even go to the park and they play for an hour or so first, it's been too hot most days to get out much, so going at night is our only option.