Christmas

Luis slipped in to our room about 6:30a in the morning saying, "Momma, it's time to go downstairs." Seeing the time, I told him it wasn't time yet. He said, "But Momma, I need to see if SANTA came!" We managed to keep him up in our room until 8a - the agreed upon meeting time for Christmas to start. In keeping with Coward family tradition, Mom had sent us a Kringle (coffee cake) to share and Jules made home-made cinnamon rolls. I (of course) made lots and lots of bacon to go with it all.

We enjoyed all of our stocking gifts - seeing what Santa had brought before enjoying breakfast. Though Luis new to ask if Santa had come, he clearly did not really have any idea what to expect after that. He spent several minutes looking at his stocking (and the unwrapped gifts on his chair) before digging in. Even then, he picked up one toy (the plastic black-and-decker tools) and basically played with that for the first 24 hours hours.

Liz and Jules had made home-made stockings for JF, RC and each other, so that everyone would have a personal stocking. Everyone contributed to the stocking stuffing, allowing each of us to find some surprises Christmas morning.

After that, there was present opening, and snow playing and more breakfast eating and coffee drinking and then more present opening and playing and left-over eating and relaxing and more eating. It was a great day. The snow from the night before stuck around most of the morning, giving me maybe the second or third White Christmas of my life, a special treat in itself.

Luis wanted to spend as much time as possible outside in the snow. And then, he was very bossy about exactly how each person was play in the snow.

JF & RC gave Luis some legos - a very big hit!

Luis loved loved loved the candy canes on the tree

Later that evening, we had a great Skype call with Diego's family in Tamesis (Colombia). We were able to share with them our exciting news: that we are expecting a second baby ~ July 1, 2010!

(This picture is actually from a Skype call on Christmas Eve. I didn't have a picture from Christmas Day, but it looked essentially the same)

[Though this post is being published in December, it was actually written in March.]