We Had Ourselves a Merry Little Christmas

This post is a bit late, but we still wanted to share about our first Christmas together. Our little Christmas tree does not look like much in the picture, but we were so excited to at least have a tree. We found it in the Del Sol warehouse and decided to borrow it for the holidays. The only ornament on it was one that David's mom sent that said, "Our first Christmas together 2007." David's family has the tradition of each child receiving a new ornament each year. I'm excited to get back to the states and decorate a much larger tree with all of his childhood decorations, as well as some of mine.

We did not get home from work until midnight Christmas eve, so needless to say we were pretty tired when we opened our Christmas even pajamas and read the nativity story. David did some last minute wrapping and I fell asleep pretty quick. 

We woke up very early Christmas morning because we were both excited to open gifts. We were like little kids. We thought about all of our memories with our families on Christmas. Every year with my family we always had to wait for our parents to wake up and then after they finally woke up and we were ready to open gifts, we had to wait for the video camera to be set up. In more recent years we'd have to make sure the memory cards and batteries were ready for digital cameras and Emerald would get so impatient! I missed her this year. She always makes Christmas so much fun because she gets so excited about her gifts and gives the best facial expressions when she opens them. My mom loves taking pictures, so we would always have to take a picture with every single gift we'd open. Usually the pictures would be of one of us hugging the person giving us the gift. We have hundreds of pictures like that! Another memory I thought of was how each of us would organize our gifts under the tree after they would all be unwrapped. We'd play with all of our toys for a while and then set everything together in our own little corner under the tree. I was always obsessive compulsive about being organized! A memory that I am still embarrassed about was the year that I cried because I only had 19 presents and everyone else had a count somewhere in the twenties. Our parents spoiled sure spoiled us. 
Here is a picture of David in his Christmas Eve pajamas and all of his presents. Can you tell that he likes tennis? Everything he wanted had to do with tennis- tennis shoes, a tennis bag, etc. 
David got me some fun gifts. I love my new purse, and of course, my new bread maker. A lady at work had only used it once and sold it to him for a great deal. Please note the cute little lint brush that was in my stocking. I have the cutest husband. He knows exactly what kind of random little things make me happy.

We actually had a very busy day after we opened up gifts. A lot of people must have felt bad for us since we had to be away from home on Christmas, so we got plenty of invitations. We had breakfast at Sarah Black's house. She is a friend of ours from the branch. She made a delicious meal. Jenna and Elsie, the Del Sol interns, were there also. After breakfast we went to Pipino's house. Pipino is this cute little Italian man in the photo above. He owns a little pizzaria next to the two Del Sol stores. He had us come over so he could give David a Christmas present. He gave him a surf board! Somehow he got it as a gift, but he said he sinks every time he stands on it! David recently bought a board from our friend Kody, so now he has two!

After Pipino's we stopped by Olga's house. She is a Del Sol employee. From there we went to Cynthia and Chad Powell's family's house. Cynthia and Chad are friends from the branch also. They had a feast of all the local Caymanian food including turtle, conch, and other delicious sides. After that we ended the day by going to another Del Sol employee's house. Marla and Steve are so much fun. We do dinners with them quite a bit. Marla's daughter, Loranie, has been in town for a couple months. She's close to my age, so we have a lot of fun together. A highlight of the day was definitely talking to our families. Marla has a phone line to the states, so we talked to everyone for a while. We even got to talk to David's brother Chad who is on a mission in North Carolina. He is doing great and we are so proud of him. 

So, we had a great Christmas and we enjoyed reading and hearing about everyone else's. We loved receiving everyone's Christmas cards also. My brother Simon always sends the funniest cards. One year he made his wife and kids wear sombreros and had the card say, "Feliz Navidad." This year he had their newest baby, Libby, wearing a Yoda hat and the card said, "A Merry Little Christmas, Have Yourself." He also sent us a Christmas card/invitation card. They must have ran out of cards because they customized the invitation card to fit us. The front said, "You're Invited..." and Simon hand wrote in, "To Have a Great Christmas." Then on the inside it had a places for "For, What, Where, When," and he wrote, "For- being my loving family, When- eternity, etc." He's so funny! I'm trying to talk him into starting a blog.  He'd have a fun and creative one. Sometimes I feel like mine is so boring to read, but then I don't worry about it because it is a great form of journaling and it forces me to take more pictures which I am usually very bad at.