Noel 2009

Our first Christmas season in France was amazing. Don't get me wrong, the family and friends were dearly missed, but I just found the sparkle in Andrew's eyes over everything "Christmas" made me feel like a kid at Christmas all over again. Even though they do fairly little around here in terms of Christmas decorations (in comparison to North America), Andrew's eyes completely lit up at each Christmas light, jingle bell and Santa Claus we saw in the stores. Decorating the tree was also a huge highlight. We had three Christmas parties, two for Robert's work and one at Andrew's school, all were a total hit, and in fact, Andrew is STILL talking about his school Christmas party to this day. Our month of December began with the purchase of 3 advent calendars. Each evening, we opened a new window, but before doing so, we counted to the current date. The first one we counted in English, the second in French and the third in Spanish. On Christmas Eve, we captured the counting all the way to 24 by Andrew in all three languages...if I can figure out how to do it, I'll post it on this site. Since my good friend Bec was alone with her two boys for the holidays, we invited her in to share the holidays with us. On Christmas Eve, I made ajiiaco, a traditional Colombian dish, which has now become our family Christmas Eve tradition. We ended the evening by writing a letter to Santa and reminding him how good a boy Andrew (and Baby Ryan) has been all year long! It was my intent to keep Christmas "small" as I want Andrew to understand from an early age that the true meaning of Christmas goes far beyond the opening of presents...though I guess that would not have been evident if you saw the way the bottom of the tree looked on Christmas morning! Our first Christmas as a family of four was a quiet, yet very joyful and relaxing day. We have started the habit of talking about the favourite parts of our day at the dinner table...Andrew's favourite part of Christmas was making Daddy blow up with his new blood pressure checker!!! Andrew would put the blood pressure thingy on Daddy's arm and each time Andrew squeezed the bulb, Daddy would pretend to be inflating, until he exploded. To this day, I've NEVER seen Andrew laugh so hard in his life.