Merry Christmas to you all!! We had a great celebration, amalgamating some traditions from both Austria and Canada. Rigth now I am just glowing with that warm Christmas feeling, as we just returned from a lovely Christmas concert at a beautiful church. I definitely teared up when the excellent choir boy sang ‘Stille Nacht.’
On Christmas Eve we all sat down for dinner together. Markus made Beef Wellington (this is becoming our family tradition!) with almond crusted potatoes, beans and carrots. Delicious. It was a lively and large crowd. Markus, Rebecca, Annie and I, Susi and Lili, Renata and Franz, Renata’s mom (who is a very upbeat 90 year old), as well as our 4 guests from Canada, our friends Ryan and Renata, and Rebecca’s mom and her partner, Catherine and Katherine. Whew! Here are some shots of everyone:
We were going to open gifts in the Austrian tradition of the 24th, but Annie is getting over a bad flu and conked out early, so we decided to move it to Christmas morning. Good for mommy as well, as I had been up the last 3 nights with Annie so I was certainly ready for bed early.
Christmas morning was a very relaxed affair; Rebecca is old enough to wait and Annie is too young to really understand what is about to happen. We had a calm breakfast and then about 10:00 moved to the living room to open gifts. Annie was very over-represented, as we don’t exchange many gifts with adults and Rebecca was getting ski boots (quite expensive, so that was really the only gift from our side.)
Here is the pre-opening scene. We decided on a little tree (3 flights up with no elevator) and didn’t get organized to purchase a tree-topper, so Catherine worked with Rebecca’s origami and made an awesome substitute.
All of us had a little something to open and enjoyed the morning. Annie, like most 2-year olds, wanted to play with whatever was opened, so she really didn’t get to all the gifts until the next day. A very relaxed, sweet Christmas day. But pictures say so much more than words in these kinds of situations.
More festivities to come!