Christmas 2010

This year we are at my Mom and Dad's for Christmas.  We arrived the day before Christmas Eve and are staying for 6 days to make sure we catch Amy on the Wednesday when she comes down.  It's been lovely. The kids have been super excited.  The proper festivities started on Christmas Eve - we went to "Christmas in the Barn", which was a nativity and carol service held on a farm in their barn with the animals around.  It was done really well and the kids loved seeing the animals.  Just a shame we only found out about it this year, would have been a good tradition to start up, but we won't be in the country anymore!

That night we put the kids to bed with their stockings.  Lani was a bit sneaky - she smuggled a bell from the tree up to bed with her and left it on top of her stocking as a booby trap to wake her up when Santa came.  Luckily she's a very heavy sleeper!

They woke up at 5am on Christmas morning, but luckily for us Grandma and Grandpa were closest so they didn't wake us up :)  They were very excited to see all the presents under the tree and had a little root through them looking for parcels with their name on.  Once everyone was up, had breakfast and dressed (apart from Jess!) we started opening them and it was lovely to get lots of nice things, but also to see others open our presents.

We had the traditional Christmas dinner with 14 people (Me and Cait with our families, Jess, Mom and Dad and two guests - Audrey from Mom's work who's plane had been grounded because of snow so she couldn't get back to Canada and Willhelm from Tanzania).  In the conversation we found out that Willhelm had 21 brothers and sisters - his father was king! So when he became king he had to take 3 additional wives (he already had one).

Nanny Henry opening the picture book we all put together for her

On Boxing day we had the meal all over again, this time with two missionaries and Henry, a student in the ward.  And we had a MASSIVE ham instead of the Turkey of the previous day.  And then the next day we did it again with the left over meats and with Nanny Henry and Berol :)

The kids have really loved it all, and have had fun with Ethan being here too, although we've had to break up a lot of fights between Zach and Ethan...

And it's been really nice for Ad and I to come away after our big news and let it sink in, whist being somewhere we can't do anything to start on the preparations - so we can just enjoy these few days of niceness together before the big headaches begin!