Christmas

This week between Christmas and New Year’s has always been my favorite week of the year. The frenzy and stress that precedes Christmas is gone but the decorations and good feelings remain. There are few obligations at this time of the year, so it is a quiet time to enjoy the tasty treats and presents. I like to continue to play Christmas music, right through to New Year’s, though I tend to choose instrumentals now.

So how was your Christmas? Ours was wonderful. We started with Mass on Christmas Eve. Here are Boo and Pumpkin Girl all decked out. If you look carefully, you can see the remnants of Pumpkin Girl’s black eyes.

They were both in the Christmas play. Pumpkin Girl was a sheep again and Boo worked up enough courage to be a Wise Man. Phil sang a solo during the play. Unfortunately, I missed most of it because I had to be in the crying room with Bip. Here’s a picture of Boo afterwards.

Back at home, we had our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of tamales, rice and beans. I don’t know how it happens, but every year my mom manages to get us some homemade tamales. Even when we live in Korea. Got them right past customs, even. Right before dinner I heard a lot of sirens in the area. I thought how sad, to need an ambulance or fire truck on Christmas Eve. But ho ho ho, look who it was:

The next day, children were up bright and early. They were genuinely surprised and delighted to find their stockings filled, especially given their behavior of the previous couple of days. They got everything they had wanted for Christmas “and more,” as Pumpkin Girl said. She got her very first Barbie doll. We managed to hold her off until this year, when she started asking for one. No matter what, she always came back to Barbie. I had a Barbie as a child, and I turned out ok. Well, more or less. But whatever issues I may have are not Barbie’s fault. So we are now a Barbie household. I need some help, though. Where does one buy Barbie clothes? Our base PX only carries the dolls, no extra clothes. Of course, her clothes need to be conservative and modest. If anyone knows of a good online source of decent Barbie clothes, please let me know.

Boo was please to find a popgun and a Lego Star Wars Gameboy cartridge. He and I are spending all our spare time playing Gameboy now. I really like the Lego Star Wars game. Boo plays Star Wars with his friends all the time, but he’s never seen the movies. Even Episode 4 or whatever we call it these days, the first one that came out in the ’70s, is still a little too violent. It’ll definitely give Pumpkin Girl nightmares, and there is no way for her not to see it if Boo is. Anyway, the Lego version is fun and cute and gore-less. You don’t even need to know the story line to play. We’re enjoying it very much.

Bip really got into opening gifts. He was thrilled with all of his gifts, which aside from a wooden rocking horse fell into 2 categories: things to pound and cars. Such a boy!

My gifts were almost all from Europe. A beautiful rosary and rosary box from the Vatican library collection and a Swarovski crystal Nativity from the Vatican are some of the highlights.