Christmas Wrap Up

How was your Christmas this year? While I'm still getting used to spending holidays away from extended family, I can say that our Christmas 2010 season was quite happy.

The festivities began on Christmas Eve with a barbecue. Two of our friends, Jo and Andrea, were visiting us from Mbeya, so we had the privilege of sharing the meal with them. Paul is getting really good at grilling over charcoal. It was delicious!

After our Christmas Eve feast, we snuggled up in the living room to watch a Christmas movie with the kids.

On Christmas morning, we had grand plans to enjoy a Christmas breakfast of eggs and homemade cinnamon rolls, but the electricity company nearly foiled those plans. Just after we put the rolls in the oven, the power went out. We do have a generator on our compound (for which we're extremely grateful), but 6am just too early for the loud noise it makes. So, thinking quick, we all piled in the truck and drove over to the office to make our breakfast (the office has access to a generator that keeps computer servers going, so it comes on automatically whenever the power goes out).
Thankfully, just as the cinnamon rolls were finishing, the power came back on and we were able to return home and still enjoy a nice breakfast.

After breakfast, we let the kids look in their stockings. At the bottom of Josiah's was a clue. They were about to start a gift hunt.

We sent them around the house and the compound looking for clues.

With his newly-acquired reading skills, Josiah got to be the designated reader.

We even got our guard involved.

At the end of it all, they found their Christmas gifts - bicycles! Thankfully, it was a lovely, sunny day, so they could take them right outside and give them a try.
In the afternoon, we joined a group of friends for a delicious Christmas dinner, then we returned home and got the opportunity to Skype with both sets of our parents.

It was a good day!