We spent most of the Christmas holiday close to home. It was one of the sweetest Christmases we have had. Having Cruz around this year made it extra special. We look forward to starting many Christmas traditions as a family with him in the coming years. Below are a few photos of him with his first stocking. Notice he has on shorts. The weather here was nice and warm for Christmas. We loved it!
I baked a cake to celebrate Jesus birthday. That is something I plan to do every year. I can't wait to have two extra little hands to help me.
This was before I wrote "Happy Birthday Jesus" on it. We planned to eat it on Christmas Eve, but put it off until Christmas day.
During the afternoon we spent time in town. We visited the market and bought some fruits and we also visited a local grocery store so David could buy some coffee and I could buy some of these-
it wouldn't be Christmas without them, ha. We planned to shoot them that night at some friends house.
Because our families wanted to know... Cruz ate carrots and oatmeal cereal for Christmas Eve dinner.
Cruz and I getting ready to go to our first party.
Our neighbors/ the family that lives on this property invited us over to eat supper with them. It is tradition here for everyone to be with their families on Christmas Eve. They always eat tamales. The ones they served us were some of the best we have ever eaten. Oh.so.yummy! We also had turkey, bread, grapes, cake, and hot chocolate- thick, rich, sweeeet hot chocolate. Not what we are used to drinking, haha. It was a delicious meal and we really enjoyed spending that time with them. They have really welcomed us and made us feel like part of their family.
Cruz with Rosendo, our landlord.
He owns all of the property that we live on. He adores Cruz! I think the real reason they invited us over was so that they could all love on him.
Cruz with Anna Victoria.
She is Rosendo's granddaughter. She also lives here on the property and comes by often to play with Cruz. She, and her little brother, like to take him walking around outside. He enjoys their company and I enjoy the short breaks. :-) They are so sweet to him.
We came home, gave Cruz a bath, put him in his p.j.'s and got ready to go to our next party. The Christmas Eve gatherings here do not start until around 8:00 and go until after midnight. We were concerned how Cruz would do since that is usually his bedtime but he did well.
our family on Christmas Eve
While I was gathering all of the stuff to go, David took Cruz to put him in the car. When I got outside I found them playing "peek-a-boo". I had to take this short video of them together-
A new friend, Anita, had invited us to spend the evening with her family. We are enjoying getting to know some of the families that live here.
Anita (whose house we were at), Keturah, Cruz, and I
(this photo was taken about 11:55 p.m. right before we headed out to shoot fireworks)
She fixed a lot of food and snacks for everyone to enjoy.
We played Phase 10 while waiting on midnight to arrive.
(there were several more people there, but I didn't take many photos of everyone)
Here it is tradition to shoot fireworks at midnight, similar to what we do for New Year's in the States. It is a BIG deal and almost every house in town will be shooting them. It is always SOOO loud, but fun and exciting at the same time. Cruz only took about a 30 minute catnap that night. The rest of the night he was up and taking in all of the excitement that was going on. When midnight came he was still awake and so we took him outside with us to watch the fireworks. We didn't know if he would be scared or not, but I am happy to say that he loved them. We tried to keep his ears covered because of the noise but he would twist and turn and wiggle around so that he could see all that was happening. He was not scared one bit, and had himself a good time. Soon after that we went home. It was the latest we have all been up in a long time. We got into bed around 1:00 a.m., but it was worth it because we all had such a fun day and night!
