Christmas Hollidays

On Christmas Eve morning we had pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast and then decorated the Christmas tree Garrett had found and brought home at midnight thirty the night before. We took naps and played around until it was time to make one last run to the store for stocking things I forgot to tell Santa to get. ;) So for Christmas Eve we went to dinner at Deb and Eddie’s house. Deb is a close friend of my good friend Jennifer in my last ward in Petaluma. This is a very fun connection for us to have. Deb and Eddie had invited Mark and Mandy and their three kids to dinner as well and we all had a really great time. Deb’s family tradition for Christmas Eve is to do a Cuban meal, and she made delicious black beans and rice. Thanks Deb and Eddie for inviting us! The food and conversation was wonderful and we stayed until we needed to put the kids in bed to get ready for Santa.

Christmas Eve night.
We should have packed our stockings in our luggage, but instead we sent them on the ship so needless to say we had no stockings for hanging. SO, we improvised and everyone was just as happy :) We decided to tie up the legs on their PJ bottoms and let Santa Clause fill those up. You can kind of see them on the mantle.Enoch gave us the idea for the PJ's as stockings. He said that is what Lola (from Charlie and Lola) did when she didn't have a stocking :) Next to Enoch is a plate with a cupcake on it. That was from the cupcake shop in Miramar since we had no way to make cookies and we forgot about it anyhow. There is a cute video of Ezra asking about the cupcake and if it would "work". I will see if I can add it to this later.


Here is Ethne in her hat brushing her teeth before bed Christmas Eve night. These are her new Christmas Eve jammies. I didn't think about us coming here in summer so I bought them very warm flannel jammies, but it was a good thing because the nights in our house can be quite cold.

Watching a Veggie Tale Christmas show about the real meaning of Christmas before bed. on the computer since our Blu-ray player was sent off to get the region code undone so that we could watch all our movies from the USA.

Christmas Eve night after Santa came. Can you see the colossal squid and the kiwi hiding in the tree?

Christmas morning we had bacon, eggs, and toast. We read the Christmas story and then opened presents. Ezra was mad that we had to read the Christmas story before opening gifts and he had a big tantrum and a bad attitude during the whole thing. He said some pretty horrible things about hating the true meaning of Christmas and that it was boring and he wasn’t going to listen etc…
Not one of his finest moments, and made Garrett and I feel that sinking feeling of-where did we go wrong kind of thing. Later that day Enoch and Ezra were sitting in the back seat of the van as we drove to the beach and Enoch asked Ezra “Ezra, why don’t you like the true meaning of Christmas?” To which Ezra replied “because it’s boring.” Enoch: “it’s not boring it’s the most important part. It’s good.” I wish I could remember all the sweet things he said, but I can’t. It brings tears to my eyes to think about it though because it was a tender moment to hear him talking to Ezra that way. Ezra seemed to be less on edge and I think a little of what Enoch said might have sunk in. Thank goodness for older siblings. Ethne was in heaven with the Ketchup (which by the way is hard to find and very expensive. They use what they call tomato sauce as ketchup and it is readily available. From what I understand this kind of Ketchup is fairly new here.)

Waiting for the prayer and their hot chocolate with anticipation. I wish you could see Enoch and Ezra's PJ's here. They are Star Wars and they just LOVE them. I kind of broke our "no characters on clothes" rule by buying these, but I didn't mind so much since they are really adorable in them and it made them SO SO happy.

The rest of the day we spent at the beach swimming in the frigid water and building sand castles. It actually isn’t too bad after you get slightly numb. There really are few things that make me feel more carefree and happy than having a huge ocean to swim in. It seems so limitless. I swam as far as I dared and then came back in to help with the kids. We came out of the water when Ethne looked like she needed to be warmed up and we laid the towels down in the scorching sand and it was like heaven. So very warm and toasty we didn’t want to get back up. We truly had a blast and Garrett left determined to get a wet suit so he could stay out in the water longer. . .

Here we are building sand castles while Garrett boogie boards.

Garrett with the kids.

Ethne heading off into the water. This is her kind of sand. packed down by water and not getting all over her. :)

Enoch fetching water for sand castles.

Wow look how strong and determined he is even in the wind. What a little man. We sure love you strong man!

Garrett got a really nice boogie board for Christmas and enjoyed using it. We went to one beach with lots of waves until he was done with that and then we got in the car and hoped over to scorching bay where we could swim out quite far without huge waves. It was a better beach for kids to swim at

Dinner was VERY simple. We didn't have anything to cook in or with really yet. Just one cheepy frying pan we bought at "The Warehouse" to use until our things get here. So, we had a veggie tray with hummus and...

SAUSAGES..."sizzles will do anything for sausages". That is a favorite line of my kids from Charlie and Lola. Sizzles is the dog who can do anything. Garrett picked this up from our local Seatoun butcher. He seems like a nice guy and he sure does know his meat. So let me see if I can remember what they are. The bright red is a spicy one. The middle three are just regular-nothing special. Then one of the other is African?? maybe and I don't know I better ask Garrett.
We were glad to have a simple dinner so that we could stay at the beach until late. It was a wonderful day. We had a fabulous time and we even got to talk to several family members :) Merry Christmas.