Christmas Eve and Day 2014

Christmas was very different for us this year but a year we will never forget.  It was a great day to celebrate with family although we missed our friends and family back home.  It was a very quiet day with business as usual outside of our home.  It was weird seeing people go to work and go to the store as normal on Christmas day.

On Christmas Eve we went to a friends' house to celebrate with other believers complete with LOTS of food, games, worship and fellowship.  Our Mexican friends made us homemade tamales!!!  It was a delicious Mexican feast!

Christmas morning was started early of course because we had some very excited kiddos.  Also Lolli and Pop stayed up to Skype in and watch the kids open up their gifts.  It was 11 pm their time and around 7 am our time.  The kids were so blessed this year with gifts from Grandparents, us and our friends at the Bend.  It was a very special Christmas for them!

Our friends at the 'Bend sent the kids each several gifts, most of them picked out by their very best friends.  It was one of their favorite parts about Christmas.  It blessed them (and us) in ways they will never know.  Sometimes on this side of the pond it is so good to be reminded we haven't been forgotten.  My heart is soooo full!!!

Reading…."Picked out with love from your best friend Eli!"

THANK YOU 'BEND!!!!

Now stocking time….

And the tornado that hits Christmas day about this time…..

(and notice Lolli, Pop and Allen skyping on the computer to see all the fun!)

All of Karis' loot….

Karis' loot from the 'Bend….

Lucy's loot from the 'Bend….

All of Lucy's loot...

All of Brayden's loot….

Brayden's loot from the 'Bend….

Lucy is ALL into Frozen just like all the other little girls everywhere and is sporting lots of new Frozen gear...

 Christmas Day we had tea parties with Lucy's new tea set...

We played with all of our new toys….

And this is my new Christmas things….purse, wallet, new 2015 calendar, a new computer cover and keyboard cover and a tervis tumbler.  

 Jay got a new Columbia pullover and some new shoes (not pictured ha).

And a quick walk down memory lane from years past….

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We also got to Skype with some of our family around the holidays….

And we ate lots of delicious Christmas goodies!

Christmas goodies…chocolate and veggies ha!  

"Eat your veggies and then you can have the fudge!"

 Christmas breakfast…homemade biscuits (with preserves and jelly from the States) and homemade sausage (only beef of course because we can't get pork here)….

Homemade hot chocolate in our new Frozen pj's of course….

The kids got some money from great-grandmother Lucy and Pinto that was burning a hole in their pockets….

Christmas was a great, quiet year celebrating with gifts but the greatest gift came in this form….

More thankful this year than ever before the free gift we have in Christ.  Thankful He humbled himself to pay my debt I owed.  Simply blessed and grateful!