Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas! A tad late. This is Nuala's drawing of the Nativity for this year.

Now, my lameness has reached new heights, because I took ZERO pictures of my children in their Christmas outfits. Not that they had special, matchy outfits, but it's kinda the thing to do, and I forgot about it until after church on Christmas day, when 2 of the 3 had already changed. The thought flitted across my mind that I should re-dress them for a family photo, but common sense quickly shoved it away. Nuala and Maeve do have cute little matchy dresses that they wore at other times during December... like above! See? Cute and matchy.

And Santa Claus. Dyado Koleda, in Bulgarian. This is the fellow from the embassy party. Again, I didn't even think to dress my kiddos Christmas-y. Nuala did it on her own. Then, as usual, there were so many cute children there, all in their special outfits! Sigh. I have other strengths. Maeve was not a bit disturbed by the big guy. Well, okay... she was a bit wary, but not enough to keep her from tromping up there after Nuala and Bran. I did think she might not want to go up by herself, but it totally seemed to me that she was just steeling herself, watching her big bro and sis, and then headed right up as Bran slid off Santa's lap. She didn't pretend to enjoy it, but she put up with it to get her goodies.

Nuala drew Santa a picture. There've been a lot of Christmas pictures popping up around the house. I like this one of Daddy and Nuala. He has cool gloves on, AND his name is mirror-image. I think it's so funny when she does this! It doesn't happen often, but when it does she's always paranoid for a few days: "Mommy, did I write it backwards?"

Top: Bran's Santa, Nuala's tree, Nuala's picture of Baby Jesus. These are mini-drawings. Bottom: Nuala's Santa, etc.

Bran and Nuala versions of elves...

And some reindeer.

Z and I took Bran and Nuala to The Nutcracker. That's them, in their seats, and the statues memorializing the "liberation" of Bulgaria by the Soviet Army. They looked pretty cool on our way downtown.

So, yes. Their very first ballet. It would be great if I could say we all loved it, but... I can't. It was lovely, but also somewhat boring. The dancing was beautiful and mostly fun to watch, the costumes were nice...but it was long. And poor Nuala, who loves ballet and beautiful things, had it in her head that the Swan Princess was going to make an appearance... I'm not sure who put it in her head, but it might have been me. I honestly don't remember. All I know, is she kept asking, "when does the Swan Princess show up?" and I said, "I don't really know... soon probably..." And then I thought, "hmmm... I'm pretty sure there's no Swan Princess in the Nutcracker..." Yes, I know, I should know the story better. I've never been before, though that's not really an excuse. I did get invited once, at BYU, but luckily I was already going to be on my way home, because the guy was strange and I'd already "broken up" with him, as much as you can do that when you're not even officially going out, but I probably would have gone just to see the performance, and that's not fair. (So, obviously, it wasn't Zac. I know the "strange" bit had you convinced for a moment.)

Gingerbread-ish men. And Ikea gingerbread houses! Next time we're hot gluing them together, like our friends did.

Annnnd... sugar cookies! Wait, no. These are actually salt dough ornaments. Still fun, just not (so) edible. We had a lot of fun this year cranking out the ornaments. Lots of watercolors and lots of glitter. Oh my... LOTS of glitter. Also, I had the grand idea that the Primary kids (I'm Primary president now, but we only have 8 or 9 kids, plus 3 or 4 little nursery-goers, but a small, sometimes-bilingual Primary is a challenge all in itself) should make ornaments for all the branch members. So, two Sundays before Christmas I brought 60 ornaments and the kiddos painted them. And glittered them. Then I mod-podged pictures of the Savior on them. We had plenty for the branch. THEN we found out on Christmas Eve (don't even get me started on the "miscommunication" that led to this) that our branch and the other branch here in Sofia were meeting together the next morning, so I had to make MORE. Late on Christmas Eve. It was okay, though, just kinda wished I'd known beforehand.

We took the kiddos downtown to the German Christmas Market that was set up by the Nevski Cathedral. It was fun, and pretty authentic!

The kiddos liked the big Christmas tree roaming around. The little one is not Maeve. Just a random child. Actually, Maeve did NOT like the Christmas tree. She saw there were no goody bags involved, so no need to cozy up to it. They all liked riding the Bulgarian merry-go-round. They seem to just attach any sort of toy car or little bike or whatever. Great fun!

We also ran into a bunch of missionaries, out on P-day! It's always fun seeing these guys.

We've had a fair amount of snow, so of course we've been sledding! Just at the end of our street (2 houses down) is a great little driveway-ish slope. The kids love it, and we pretty much always have it to ourselves. Maeve's lucky that Bran likes to pull her around. Actually, that makes me pretty lucky, too.

Christmas Eve we had six missionaries, two families from church, and our friend, Maria, over for a late lunch. That's when we did the turkey and ham and all the fixin's. It was a lot of fun. The kids all ran wild ("kids" includes the missionaries ;) and had a blast. Elder Wheat is a good sport and gives lots of shoulder rides. They all do. I did pull Nuala off the poor guy so he could eat, though...

Here's Maria with Maeve. She's our friend/babysitter/photographer. The kids love her!

The whole gang -- minus Ivy, Maeve's little buddy, who was sleeping, and me. Because someone had to take the picture.

It was a fun Christmas Eve, but despite starting the get-together intentionally quite early (2pm), it still went long. We didn't get to have a nice, slow night with the kiddos, like we had planned to. They were pooped from playing so much, there were no taxis out so Z needed to drop off some friends, and the kids DIDN'T EVEN put out cookies for Santa. Sigh. Luckily Zac and I did, and it was good enough for Santa! We all got some lovely things. And, as seems to be the case with little ones, the smaller presents were the biggest hits. Know what had earned "favorite" status by Christmas night when I asked them? For Nuala, her harmonica. Bran? A small Clone Wars figure and a Playmobil catapult from Ebay.

After opening the first gift, which is the picture of the Saviour and the story of His birth from Luke, it was time for other presents. It is so much fun having Christmas with little kids. Seriously, the best. Here's one of the two pics of Maeve from Christmas.

The one pic of Bran-man. With his Wicket backpack.

And Nuala. Tired after church. It was nice, actually, having church on Christmas. We heard two lovely talks about Christ, and sang lots of Christmas songs. Bulgarian or English, Christmas songs are beautiful. So, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year to you all! Vesela Koleda i Chestita Nova Godina :) May we remember the special gift that is our Saviour all year long.