Christmas

     Our Christmas followed our tradition on this side of the world.  We spent Christmas Eve with our teammates and Christmas day at home as a family.    I was thankful for the comfort and love of our "family away from family" as I was grieving the news of my Mom's recent cancer diagnosis.  It was good for all of our hearts to be together, acting out the Christmas story, singing meaningful Christmas carols together in several different languages, and just hanging out.

     I love watching everyone play their roles each year.  We loved having Heather Ann and Adam with us this year.  The guest always gets to be the donkey.  Lucky Adam!  ;)

     We ate good food, and the kids opened meaningful gifts.  We also had a fun gift exchange game.  Then we spent time sharing with each other parts of our lives.  

     Leif was very happy to share watching an American football game with friends. =)

 Anneka and Christina brought their spa supplies and gave out manicures and pedicures.

     Then we came home and slept in the living room (an annual tradition).  We were thrilled that Heather Ann and Adam slept in the living room with us!!!

 The next morning we enjoyed opening stockings and gifts together.

     It's fun that our kids are reaching the age where they're more exciting about giving gifts than receiving them.  They were each so excited for Heather Ann and Adam to open gifts they'd gotten them with their own money.  Ella got them special Buryatia chocolates.  Anneka got them homemade soaps from our neighber, and Ike got them a pig towel (as they are very popular right now- 2019 will be the year of the pig!)

Anneka loved the earrings Ike got for her!

      The Wicker family sent us gifts through Heather Ann and Adam.  How special to open them!  One gift is a box of conversation starters that are based around word teasers (American sayings).  This is a perfect gift, as most third culture kids don't know a lot of sayings like "let the cat out of the bag" or "take the bull by the horns" because most of their English just comes from us and interactions with teammates or family over skype. We've already started dialoging about these fun sayings, and Leif and I are learning some new ones, too!

 My dear friend, Erin, sent us gifts to open!

     The rest of the day we hung out and rested.  The kids tried out their new gifts.  Here, Ella was making chocolates with a kit she got from Baba and Grampa.

Ike and Leif put together a mechanical building set from Gramma Irene.

It turned out pretty cool!

Anneka read Ike one of his new books.

     We played new games together.  Heather Ann and Adam gave us one that they enjoy and we gave them one that our family enjoys.  It was fun to play them together!

     The next day our family went to the banya (local bath house) with some Christmas money from Leif's mom and grandparents.  We enjoyed having these down days together as a family.