Feliz Navidad from Guatemala!!

It was great to be together as a family of five for the first time on Christmas. When I last blogged, Jenny and I were getting ready to go to bed on Christmas Eve. Well, the tradition in Guatemala is to go to church late and at midnight shoot off fireworks. So from midnight till past 1am Antigua sounded like a war zone. Fireworks were shooting into the sky and exploding everywhere. So I did not get to sleep until that subsided. At 3:20 Christopher came in to our bedroom to let us know Santa had visited and he had seen him.....interesting from a boy that "knows" the truth. We sent him back to bed.

We were all up by 5:45 and were opening presents shortly after that. It was great to watch Luis' reaction. He is so expressive with his "WOW!!" and "Awesome!!". We had opened about half of the gifts before the kids decided they were hungry. We took a break from opening long enough to gobble down some toaster strudels (we found those at Hiper Paiz). Here are some photos of the of the gifts and the frenzy of opening presents.



Luis with his new Play Dough toys.



Christopher with his new DS.



Caroline with Mariposa which we watched later in the afternoon.



We spent the rest of Christmas playing with our new things and talking to family and friends on Skype. Christopher put together all the LEGO's in short order and has set up a Star Wars Lego base in his room. Caroline was working on leveling up Pokemons in her new Pokemon Platinum Game and Luis spent a good portion of time playing with his new remote control car (when he could get Christopher to leave it alone).

Jenny made a great dinner with ham, stuffing, potatos, rolls and mac and cheese. We followed that with our traditional Happy Birthday Jesus cake. Here is a picture of the kids with Jenny's cake. It was delicious.



After dinner Luis enjoyed a bubble bath with the bubbles he got from Santa in his stocking.



By the time we were going to bed, my knee was feeling some better, but I still think I am in line for an appointment to see Dr. Big this week. Hope you had a Merry Christmas!!