Merry 1st Christmas!

This morning at 5:58 a.m. I was woken up by Marina ready to wake everyone else up to open gifts! James was crabbing that it wasn't even day-break and that she should go back to bed, but by that time she had already woken up the girls and things were on their way. Then we had an issue of not being able to find a blank video tape to record the first Christmas, but eventually we got it all together and had a good time opening presents. Marina was so thrilled with everything and kept saying how much she liked everything. I think it was a good first Christmas!

Right now she is on the phone with her best friend Julia who was adopted two weeks before we adopted Marina and she is in Italy. We are trying to exchange email addresses, but trying to speak English to her father who speaks Italian and a little English, is not so easy to do. However, I do have their mailing address that the counselor at the orphanage gave me, so we will mail them our information so that the girls can continue corresponding even though they are miles apart. I still email and mail a friend of mine in England who I haven't seen since pre-school when we lived in Belgium! We have been pen pals all these years and I hope Marina and Julia can do the same.

Later this morning we will go to my brother Pete's house to have Christmas with the rest of my family and then on Friday we will head to So. IL to have Christmas with James side of the family. Marina just thinks this whole idea of multiple Christmases is the BEST!!!

Last night my sister and her family came over and brought our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of cheese fondue and raclettes for dinner. We all ate until we were totally stuffed and it was delicious!! I look forward to that meal every year. We first ate fondue and raclettes when we lived in Europe and our entire family loves it. I think the we ate raclettes in Switzerland and I'm not sure where we tried the cheese fondue the first time, but it is very good. We get the cheese at The Cheese Place in St. Louis, but there are other stores that carry it too. If you have never tried Raclettes, you can rent a raclette oven or grill at The Cheese Place as well as buy the cheese there. We have two raclette ovens that my sister bought in France last time she was there, because you can't buy them here, or at least we couldn't at the time - you can now.
http://www.jill.net/recipes/recipes/raclette.html or http://www.raclette-suisse.ch/home.html?l=en

This past weekend we went over to see some friends of ours who had never met Dillon or Marina and I have been friends with them since I was 15 years old. Anyway, they enjoyed meeting all 4 kids and then we went to Columbia IL to a Christmas party in honor of the 4 girls who just came over for a hosting program during the Christmas break. Marina is friends with one of the girls, Natasha, who we spent every day with while we were in Ukraine. The other girls she does not know, but we enjoyed seeing them all and talking with other families who either have already adopted or who are interested in doing so. Everyone was so amazed at how well Marina speaks English already.

After that, we went to Bellville IL to Our lady of the Snows to see The Way of Lights, which is a Christmas lights display that you drive through. There was also camel and donkey rides, a petting zoo, food to buy, a puppet show and Christmas tree display from around the world. We didn't see it all, but the kids did ride camels and enjoyed that. Hannah and Marina rode one camel and Dillon and Jordan rode another. I wish we had remembered our camera so that we would have a picture of it! They also saw the animals in the petting zoo - all of which were animals that may have been in the manger where Christ was born. The girls hung out the window of the car to see the lights - all 3 of them crammed out one window. Dillon was then complaining that he couldn't see out that window and I let him know that there was a HUGE long window right next to him in the 3rd seat of the car as well as ALL the windows on the other side of the car to look out of. Why they all thought they needed to look out one little window is beyond me??!! Crazy kids.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all and Happy New Year too!