Christmas 2009

How did it get to be February already?? I've had a few complaints that I haven't updated my blog in a while, so here's the first installment.

Christmas this year was really lovely. I had 2 very good friends visiting for the holidays - Anna from St. Andrews/Cape Town and Britt from Norway. It was a blast having them both here and having 'family' to spend the holidays with. The tradition at the baby house is that the kids go out for the holidays (think Annie and Mr. Warbucks) and we then have an empty house. This year I couldn't quite bring myself to let 'my' baby go out (and we didn't have enough offering families) so he remained with us for Christmas but the others all went to 'Christmas Families'. Most of them had a lovely time although our oldest girl drove her family up the wall with her short temper and one of the baby boys got homesick and came home after 2 days.

Christmas in the summer still feels odd to me but having the 2 'northern hemisphere' girls with me helped and we still had that Christmas Cheer.We had a few "photoshoot" sessions with the kids in cute Christmassy clothes I'd found out in the garage (scrapbook pages to follow, rest assured). This is our oldest looking very handsome. He is actually in the process of being adopted! Hopefully by the end of the month all of his paperwork will be sorted out and he can go to his 'forever family'. He is such a charmer though - we will really miss him!

(Above and Below) - Christmas Day at the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden
On Christmas Day we began with a pancake breakfast prepared by yours truly (see below) in our PJs, opened stockings (even baby boy got one, although his was a mitten - it contained Purity and a teething biscuit) went to church, came home and cooked our lunch. We had decided previously to be a little 'non-traditional' and have a picnic at the botanical gardens. Many other people apparently had the same idea so we had to walk in a ways before we could find a shady picnic spot. Ours was on a slant and baby boy had so much fun trying to walk down it and rolling into the flowerbeds :-) In the evening we had some friends 'round for snacks and card games.


Christmas Eve felt especially Christmassy - we had ribs, rice pudding, cinnamon rolls, mac&cheese and other traditional foods from our various countries. Then we opened our presents by tree-light and watched a Muppet Christmas Carol.