Christmas day

Christmas day was great. We got up early and got ready for church. Our family had been asked to sing, so we sang “Jesus, Lord at thy Birth” (click here to listen to song, not us of course)

After church we skyped with my family and then the kids opened their presents. When you get a present from each sibling to each other (they worked hard doing chores earning money for each other), add onto that presents from aunts, uncles, grandparents, and a couple of generous friends, and you’ve got quite a few more than three toys each! We went around the circle opening presents and it took us a couple of hours!

We played our new games all afternoon and then skyped with Michael’s family, had dinner, and tried to get the kids to bed as fast as we could. The combination of the extreme heat and the fighting over toys was more than we could stand, and we still needed to finish our packing for the big trip tomorrow.

The kids were thrilled with their new boogie boards, movies, games, and then the individual toys they have in the photos below. Emma won’t put her doll stroller down and Mary fights her for it every few minutes. It has been a screaming battle at our house all afternoon. I should have bought two. Mary didn’t particularly care for anything she received, she only wants to take and break things that belong to other people. Daniel was thrilled with everything, he was jumping around like a bag of beans, but it’s his remote control robot that stole the show. Hannah loves her new princess CD player and feels very grown up, and Benjamin can’t decide between Woody and his Power Jamz guitar. Matthew, well…we tried. As you know, we keep electronics away from Matthew as much as possible, but I found something that I thought would be harmless. A six-language mini translator…you type in a word and then choose from six different languages and it translates the word for you. I hadn’t realized that it came pre-programmed with several useful phrases for travelers. After only a few minutes of Matthew mastering how it worked and exploring his options, he found the phrases, scrolled down to the pharmacy topic, and then asked me what this sentence means, “Do you have any contraceptives?” Awesome. In the social topic, there was the question, “Are you single?” At least he can say them in Dutch and Italian now.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas too.