Christmas Recap

Gabe's annual picture with Santa. While in line he was waving, all friendly and excited to see the big man in red, but when it was our turn, he wanted NOTHING to do with Santa, and refused to stay up there without me. Thus I enter into this picture of a not-so-friendly santa and Gabe's not-so-disguised terror at being so close.

I have very strong feelings about Christmas, specifically Christmas happening exactly the way it did all the year's I spent it in my mother's house - which would be 32 of my 34 Christmases. But I've had to adapt a bit to incorporate Mario's traditions and form some of our own, and so far it's turned out better than anticipated. Their big celebration in Christmas Eve, and this year I got to host at my house.
I made Christmas crackers after the English tradition with a little gift for each person inside. We invited everyone for 9pm, and started the night with piña coladas and stuffed muchrooms, coconut shrimp and crab dip as appetizers.

After that we read an adaptation of "The Women Who Knew Christ" - the points of view of the shepard's wife, the wife of the inn keeper in Bethlehem, the mother of Joseph, the mother of Mary, and Mary about the night Christ was born, singing lots of Christmas songs in between each part. I love my family tradition of acting out the nativity, but with only 2 kids at our party, it wouldn't have been the same, so we did this instead.
We then feasted on grilled lamb, rosemary potatoes, and lots of amazing salads until almost 1am. Paco and Mario took Gabe and Pilar outside to watch the fireworks going off all over town (which we ended up not being able to see any!) and to light sparklers and throw "chakibooms". When they came back in the house, Pilar discovered that Santa had flown by and dropped a big bag of presents in the patio!!

By this point, Gabe was about at meltdown stage, but managed to open a few gifts before being put to bed.

Pilar expressed pure, unbridled joy with every gift.

It was 3am before we went to bed, so Christmas morning we slept in, then Gabe and Mario and I got up and opened Gabe's remaining gifts and our stockings just the three of us.
Then the family all came back over the eat left overs for lunch, work on Pilar's big puzzle,
and then we went to the local orphanage and made Gingerbread houses with the kids.
We divided into two groups. The other group's house was all nicely decorated, while our colapsed under the weight of all the cadies basically just thrown on...
We also delivered goodie plates to neighbors then just hung out and played with the kids' new toys. It was truly a wonderful holiday season, and I actually really like having it all centered on Christmas eve - I felt like the emphasis was so much more on the family gathering and dinner than the gifts, but maybe that was just due to the fact that I did all the planning/cooking this year!

Happy New Year to all!!