Christmas Eve & Onward

On Christmas Eve, we like to have over friends we have met over the last year or people we have relationships with from years past.

Kylie helped make and label all of the food since sometimes things we are used to in America are unfamiliar here.

We had a such a good time visiting with everyone and Doug sharing the Christmas story.

When everyone left, we let the kids open their stockings.

One of the things in each of their stockings was a deck of cards that I had gotten made in America and tried to ship over.  I chosen a picture for each kid for each deck; however, when they reached the shipping agency, I received an email telling me that "gambling paraphenelia" could not be shipped into our country (although they sell decks of cards here in all of the grocery stores).

So...thankfully, there had been a friend of ours that lives in this country but who had gone home in November, and she was still there when I found out.  She was gracious enough to let me ship the cards to her parents' house, and she brought them in for me.  

Christmas morning, we always have monkey bread, but this year, it turned out looking like a large, over-exploded, burnt popcorn kernel

Thankfully, when I turned it over, it looked more edible.

Someone from America sent us some Christmas muffin cups and toothpicks with designs, so we put those to good use, too.

Kylie and Keira read the Christmas story, and since we had invited a couple of friends over for Christmas morning, they took our picture.

When we were in Prague, we bought something we knew Keira wanted, and wrapped it up to give it to her from my mom.

I love the excitement of kids on Christmas!

I also made her a baby book, since I had never done that for her before.

Kylie framed one of her works of art for her dad for Christmas, and he loved it.

It is a teapot filled with English letters, but it's spilling out Arabic letters into a tea cup that becomes a mix of both.

It represents Kylie's life and who she is.

The day after Christmas, we took some of Keira's old clothes to our former neighbor to give to her granddaughter.  The little girl immediately put on the cultural dress and danced around.

Then Kylie went to get her nails done for the holidays.

 

Some of our Christmas gifts from America arrived two days after Christmas, and when I went to pick them up, I saw these tires had been shipped, too.  This is a good advertisement for Goodrich Tires.  Someone was willing to pay $8/pound to ship them overseas!!

And we finish off the Christmas holidays with Noah sailing away in "her" ark.