Christmas 2013
Thursday 26 December 2013 at 03:18 am.
Used tags: alya, around_the_house, food, lily, rafiq, toys
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So this year we decided to participate in the Christmas tradition. Yaya is old enough now to enjoy it and in fact, she asked for it. So here we go! Our first family Christmas. Also, since we have had a lot of work travels in recent months, we decided to forgo our usual end of year trip (someplace warm, usually) and stayed home instead. So bring it on! We start with the obligatory photo with Santa:
* Mouse over the pictures for captions
We begin with a build up to the big day. Progression of the Christmas tree (artificial as Yaya was sad that if we had a real tree, it would die), decorations, and presents under the tree in the week leading up to Christmas. We pretty much wrapped a few presents every day and Yaya loved running downstairs every day to see the pile of presents grow.
Lil - your gifts arrived on time! Thank you!
Here are a couple more photos from the session with Santa. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take our own pictures of the jolly old fellow, and each shot was a "separate package". Yeah. Capitalism at work. But Yaya got to tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas and she had a great time. Her brother wanted to run screaming from the man though. 
Over two days we made and frosted chocolate butter cookies. No pictures of the rolling and cutting of the cookies, but here's a tray of baked cookies:
So when one decorates cookies, does one "frost" the cookies or "ice" the cookies? I really do not know. Either way, we had fun.
Some of the other food we made included:
And now Christmas morning! Adik did not wake up until 9:40 AM so poor Yaya had to wait a while. But when Adik came down, we got down to business. Opening presents! I had been telling Yaya that the big box contained a huge lump of coal, or perhaps it was a big box but contained only a half a piece of crayon inside. Yaya said she would open that big box last! And she did!
I spent the next hour assembling the play kitchen (mumble, grumble!) but it looked great when finished and both kids loved playing chef.
The kids spent the rest of the day playing with their new toys. Vin and I had to help open boxes and assemble more toys. Luckily we ran out of batteries so decided not to open the race car toy until we can get it going. Papa got a new big thing for Christmas. Now hopefully there will be no more yelling of "My big thing!!!!" in the car when neither child wants the iPod. No, don't even suggest that we get an iPad mini. At this age, bigger is better. Apparently, size matters.
Thanks to friends and family for the gifts and cards during this festive season. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! A happy new year to you as well!
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