Merry Christmas

Christmas in our home was pretty low-key this year. We were pretty hopeful that our air shipment that included our tree and almost all the Christmas gifts for the boys (luckily I took a few in my suitcase) was going to arrive in time. We were told it was scheduled to arrive in Manama on the 19th and would go through customs and be delivered to us on the 20th. No such luck.

I won't go into the annoying details, but let's just say I made a late-night run the night before Christmas eve to find a tree, some trimmings and a couple more gifts. Davey was excited to trim the tree with us and we tried to make it feel a little like Christmas by baking and decorating cookies and making a countdown chain.

Christmas eve we spent at the home of one of Dave's co-workers. It was nice to finally meet a bunch of nice, friendly American women. I am looking forward to getting to know them better. Someone else is having another party tomorrow night, though we'll have to see if we're going to go. 7pm parties are difficult with our children.

When Davey went to bed Christmas eve he kept saying he didn't want Santa to come and he didn't want presents. Finally, though he changed his tune when we were talking about how Santa has to bring the gifts to children all over the world. He then asked, "Can Santa come to my house first?" Uh huh. We knew you wanted those presents.

As I mentioned, our camera was broken so these pictures aren't really great, but at least we have some halfway decent ones from Dave's phone.

Our sparsely-trimmed tree

Christas morning Davey showed an incredible amount of self-restraint when we asked him to wait to open his gifts until Charlie woke up an hour later. He passed the time enjoying the Starburst the elves left in his stocking...

I got distracted and I think he ate 8 red starburst before I realized it.

Davey and Charlie ready to tear into the gifts!

Davey loves to plaly doctor so he's been loving the doctor kit!

After opening gifts, I had an adventure in the kitchen trying to make a chocolate cream pie without a fully-stocked kitchen. Not sure why I thought I could do it, but it turned out okay in the end even though I had to mix the crust and wisk the pudding and whipping cream with a fork and make the pie in an oval pyrex dish. Then it was off to church, since church here is on Friday, for just Sacrament meeting and then a pot luck. It was nice to have some time to chat with people at church and get to know them better.

After church, Charlie and I took naps, which was so nice, while the turkey cooked. Then we had a simple dinner with just turkey and sweet potatoes. I still haven't gotten much into cooking here (as you can imagine with my limited kitchen supplies - also groceries are pretty expensive here since everything is imported and I never want to buy too much...). I'll have to get over that soon.

Anyway, even though it was very low-key we had a very nice Christmas! It was nice to be able to talk with Davey more in-depth this year about the true meaning of Christmas and let him know how grateful we are for the gift of the baby Jesus. Merry Christmas everyone!