In some areas of Australia, winter time is from June to August. And in those months, some parts of the country is blessed (to others it may seem as a curse hehe) with snow. So, it is only at this time of the year that people get to flock winter wonderlands to make snowmans, snow angels and ski to on snowy mountains. And when you say snowmans, it can only mean one thing–Christmas! Hence, some of us in the land down under greet each other “Merry Christmas in July!!” at this time of the year.

This winter season, instead of going to the Snowy Mountains like we did last year, the Husband and I decided to stay in snow-less Sydney and hibernate for most part of June–we just stayed home most weekends and rested after a hectic Autumn season.

This month, we finally went out and for the first time celebrated Christmas in July on 19 July 2009, a day before our 30th wedding monthsary.

We celebrated by having breakfast at the Aroma Festival at the Rocks…

and by watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at IMAX in Darling Harbour.

The Husband and I were very excited to watch this movie. We are a fan of this movie franchise!!! We’ve missed seeing an HP movie together coz when HP 4 and 5 came out in cinemas, he was still in Dubai then. So now that we are together, we decided to watch it in IMAX too because we both haven’t seen any films via IMAX here in Sydney.

We arrived in Darling Harbour at 11:15am and there was already a long queue towards the entrance of the cinema. When we bought the tickets a week prior to showing of the movie, the ticket person instructed us to be in IMAX at least an hour before show time in order to get good seats (no reserved seating kasi). Buti na lang din bumili na kami ng tickets beforehand because when we got there, sold out na lahat ng tickets for the whole day.

So we waited for like 40 minutes before we entered the cinema and true enough, it was jampacked.

Only the first 10 minutes of the film was in 3D, then the rest was in 2D. Nevertheless, we loved the film and to see it in a big screen was a bonus. It is the funniest and most romantic Harry Potter movie to-date. It made me look forward to the upcoming two HP movies.

After the film, we were both famished because we missed lunch (only had popcorn while we watched) so we decided to buy fish ‘n chips and hung out by the harbour while we ate our late lunch.

So there goes our Happy Christmas and pre-30th monthsary date this July.

In other news, feeling Christmas talaga ang aming July because of so many blessings this month:

(1) The 60th birthday of my dearest mommy which was celebrated with my in-laws and our friends.

(2) Birthday celebrations here in Aussieland: my aunt and cousin celebrated their special day.

(3) Parties with friends: Kolokoys Party on the first week of July and Wii Lunch Party with our other couple friends on the 2nd week where we discovered the amusing Wii Samba de Amigo game.

(4) Other than Harry Potter, we also watched Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen this month 🙂

(5) Christmas in July won’t be complete without gifts right? Here in also Australia, we have we what we call EOFYS or End of Financial Year Sale wherein stores nationwide mark down their prices in order to get rid of old/current stocks. Discount prices go up to 70%-80%. This is one of the best times to shop in Aussieland.

Two weeks ago, we found out that the Wii Fit is being sold for only AUD99.00. Since I’ve been wanting to own one for the longest time, but delaying it, hoping that maybe one day it will go on sale–well, it finally did 🙂 So voila, we now have our very own Wii Fit :).

We can always feel like Christmas in our hearts but setting a day or month to honor and celebrate Christmas in the middle of the year is such a wonderful experience too. Celebrating Christmas in July gave us that warm fuzzy feeling in the middle of winter season which surely gave us a lot of excitement even if we didn’t have to go somewhere far.

Now isn’t it wonderful to have two CHRIStmases in one year????