This year was another bang up year for Christmas. I’m actually not sure if that’s meant to be a positive adjective or a negative one, but I’m using it in a positive sense. It took me (Flo too) forever to get in the Christmas mood. Luckily, by the time we went to church, where Flo was playing keyboards for the service, we felt better. After church, on Christmas Eve, we went to Sebastian and Lea’s house, where they hosted the family again this year. It was quite nice. We got the game Risk, which Flo’s wanted for a while, so we’ve played it a couple times already. We ate Italian for dinner and chatted and enjoyed Emil’s first holiday season.

Christmas morning we stuck to what has already become a tradition of getting up late, eating breakfast, opening presents, eating apple fritters, chilling out and doing video Skype Christmas with my family in America in the evening. We sat on the floor and opened our gifts like little kids this year. We got each other a bunch of nice stuff and felt very thankful that, despite a bah humbug feeling going around this year and a tighter belt on our and everyone else’s bank accounts, we were still able to really bless each other and think creatively and just enjoy God’s favour in our lives. And the apple fritters were out of this world! We’re getting better every year. Flo kicked my butt in Risk. When we skyped with America, Liam was wearing his Santa suit, which I have to say, was adorable. He seemed to like playing with the ribbons as much as Emil did. It’s too bad they’re so far away from each other. They would love playing with each other, I’m sure. So Jer and Bonnie, for Liam’s sake, just move over here!

Second Christmas Day (the 26th, it’s really called that here!) we had brunch with four friends, which was different for us and very pleasant. Then we saw Flo’s mom and siblings again for Christmas with the part of the family who wasn’t at Sebastian’s. That was also very nice. Everything was nice this year. For some photos, click on Emil: