Merry Christmas to all! We had a wonderful holiday with plenty of time to relax and enjoy one another. We started our festivities with a delicious family dinner of manicotti, salad, green beans, and garlic bread. Yum! Then after some prayer and the reading of the Christmas story, we opened presents. I still can't get over how many gifts our families from the States sent us, and every gift was chosen with care. And of course we had presents from each other to open as well. We all felt so loved.
Seth's Christmas presents included lots of Matchbox cars, markers and chalk for his art easel, a SpongeBob play-dough toy, SpongeBob SquarePants Season 2, a plush SpongeBob toy, some very cute clothes, several books, a measureing tape, and a train set. The train set and the SpongeBob play-dough toy were his hands down favorites.
Benjamin received a video game, The Office Season 5, a philosophy book (of which one chapter was written by a friend from seminary), some DVDs, a laptop bag, a card game, two shirts, and lots of chocolate. I got a crock pot and a very pretty cake plate, a shirt, a manicure set, The Closer Season 2, an ice cream scoop, a card game, some Christmas decorations, and lots of chocolate.
Many people have asked us if we have received their Christmas card in the mail, and the answer in most instances is "no." Actually, we've only received a handful of cards so far, mostly ones that were sent in late November. We expect to get a lot more Christmas cards in January or even February, which will still be nice and will remind us that the joy of Christmas should stay with us all year long.
