We began the morning with our normal snowman pancake breakfast. When they boys get too old for foods like this I am going to be sad.
Afterwards David and Cruz went into town to buy fireworks and I got busy doing some prep cooking and baking for our Christmas meals.
It has been our tradition here on Christmas Eve to go do something fun that morning, eat out for lunch, and then plan to be home for the next few days. It was hard to decide what to do this year because we have a lot more options than we have ever had in the past. We decided to visit Finca Filadelfia in neighboring Jocotenango. It is a beautiful coffee farm. It has two restaurants, a hotel, coffee tour, zip-lining, horse riding, and more. We first visited there back in July with one of our teams. I have been wanting to return ever since. I could just go there to sit, drink coffee, and take in the views. It really is a beautiful place.
The boys chose to ride the horses. They offer several different tour options. We chose the 30 minute ride through the coffee plantation. They were so excited!
Those are coffee plants all in the background. Many were loaded down with beans ready to be picked.
What a fun family outing!
Ben said it was the funnest thing he has ever done. Cruz said next time he was taking the 10 minute tour. ha (He loved it, but he just thought it was too long.)
Next we walked up to the cafe for lunch (and coffee!)
Enjoying Christmas Eve lunch at Cafetenango.
A few family pictures on the beautiful grounds
That evening we invited some new friends over to celebrate with us. We met this sweet family though the homeschool group. They arrived in Antigua from Canada just a few weeks after us so we are all navigating it together. We have enjoyed several fellowship times together already, but especially enjoyed getting to have them over for Christmas Eve.
We had pizza, popcorn, jello jigglers, and a "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake.
Our cake this year. Our theme was John 3:16.
singing Happy birthday and blowing out the candles
our Christmas themed jello jigglers
Later that night we shot fireworks.
the boys sweet little neighbor friend came over and brought them cookies
The boys got to open a gift. It was their Christmas pajamas.
We then got busy putting out their gifts.
In Guatemala it is tradition to shoot fireworks at midnight on Christmas Eve. It is a huge celebration time all over the country. David and I always stay up for it even though we know the boys will be up early. I think next year we will start waking them up to enjoy it with us. Maybe then they will sleep in a little later. We got to sleep around 1:00 and the boys were up at 4:30. I will share about our Christmas Day celebration in my next post.
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