Our Christmas

We apparently celebrate Christmas late for a family living in Costa Rica.  Here, the big celebration is Christmas Eve, where everyone eats tamales and opens presents and stays up until Midnight.

But I think a 6 am wake up with kids is better than Midnight, so we'll stick with the Christmas Morning bit for a while.  Anyway.

Christmas morning we were able to sleep until about 6:45 when the big boys got us up.  We actually had to wake Quinn up, which as you can imagine, we were conflicted on.  But who wants to let a kid sleep through their second Christmas?

We do stockings in our family and it was comical how different each boy approached them.  Forrest took everything out one by one, with a running commentary the whole time.  Quinn got as far as about two things and just played with the Duplo lady while watching his brothers.  And Elliot grabbed the stocking by the toe, dumped the entire contents onto the floor, shouting "WHOOHOOO!!!" and then precieded to throw the stocking in the air like a graduation cap.  We are nothing if not diverse.

This indeed was the year of the Lego, and both boys completed two sets (rated ages 8-12) in the matter of hours.  These children do indeed carry the engineering gene.

The funny thing about living here in Costa Rica is that most Ticos assume you are leaving the country for Christmas, and any expats or missionaries that can, do indeed leave.  We however, stayed.  We found another family that stayed too and we had Christmas Dinner with them and got to know them more.  It was a great lazy afternoon full of great food, chasing kids (there were 5 kids, most under 3 years old) playing games and just being.

Overall, it was a very nice Christmas.  Our second one here.  A bit strange to think that if all goes according to plan, next year, we'll be in the Mitten for Christmas!