Christmas

Our first Christmas as a family of five! 

Our three beautiful children. We couldn't be more blessed! 

On Christmas Eve we went to our church's candlelight service.


Then that night we had to say goodbye to our Elf Nicky.  Lily slipped in one more request for Santa at the last minute. She old Nicky to tell Santa that she wanted a pair of clip on ear rings for Christmas...

Christmas morning the kids were excited to see all the presents. First they opened the gifts that their Elf left them. They each got a pogo stick type jumping toy. 

Jack was excited to see it and Lily burst into tears "I WANTED EARINGS!!!" She is not the type to throw fits, but she threw one Christmas morning. She screamed and refused to open any more presents since she didn't get her earrings. And since the earrings were a last minute request, I wasn't even sure that we had any earrings in her presents. But then I remembered one small gift of play jewelry that had earrings and I found it and we coaxed her to open it. Once she saw the earrings she was a happy girl and didn't even care to open the rest of her presents. 

Meanwhile Jack was tearing through his gifts looking for the eagerly anticipated skateboard. Unfortunately for him, there was no skateboard

Poor pouty boy was so sad

And then Luke led him to the stairs where he found a small string. Jack followed the string all through the house, upstairs and downstairs and then out to the garage where a big box was waiting for him. He was happy to unwrap his skateboard

Christmas morning after opening all the gifts

Jack enjoying his gifts

Lily enjoying her gifts

And we had a visit from "Santa." The kids were very skeptical "Why do you sound like Papi?" "Why are you wearing Papi's shoes?" "Why are you carrying a trash bag? Santa has a red bag!" It was so funny hearing the questions they came up with and the confusion. Needless to say Santa didn't stay very long...

Lily was so excited for her dress up shoes

For Christmas dinner I prepared a charbonnade similar to what we had in Switzerland. We had raclette cheese and then an assortment of raw meats to cook on the grill: bacon, chicken, steak, pork & lamb with several dipping sauces: curry, horseradish, tomato/ginger and yogurt mint.

As Luke was cooking the snow began to fall:

Nothing like charbonnade on a snowy day

Nani and Papi with the grandkids

After the charbonnade we had a "Buche de Noel" aka Yule Log aka Chocolate cake roll:

And it continue to snow. We have never had a snowy Christmas before so it was really special.