Before this past Christmas becomes a bit of a blur, I better make a post about it! We had a great Christmas in Heidelberg! My first Christmas away from our family and friends... as well as the kids first time not traveling to Illinois for the holiday.
We received package after package after package and had loads of loot under our tree. Christmas Eve we kind of stuck with tradition and enjoyed homemade lasagna (just like Mom's!) and opened gifts from the Duda side of the family (as we would have in Illinois). I got on the computer and video conferenced with my mom and Harry through skype.com so they were able to "join" us for our present opening. The kids had a blast opening gifts and playing with all their new gadgets. (Grace slept through most of the gift opening but Samuel enjoyed opening her gifts as well).
That evening after our boys were asleep, I was able to again get onto skype.com and video conference with my family while they opened gifts and visited. It was the next best thing to being there with them! Every time someone was about to open a gift from us
they would say "Here's a Chapman present" and they would turn the camera onto that person so I could watch them open the gifts we had sent. I ended up staying up late cooking as well as taking care of Grace that evening so I was able to "join" them for most of their Christmas Eve festivities. Illinois is 7 hours behind us and I think they started their gathering around 2 p.m. I stayed online with them until around 1 a.m. our time and I was thankful that my boys slept until around 8 a.m. on Christmas morning.
Christmas morning was a great time in our home! The boys were thrilled to find presents restocked under the tree that morning. And they enjoyed opening gifts from Santa, as well as us and the Chapman/Ford side of the family. They loved opening gifts and wanted to play with everything they opened right away. So much excitement in their young lives! woo hoo.
Once we recovered from the morning festivities we had some neighbors over for dinner around 2 p.m. We have made friends with a family that moved here shortly before us this summer and have two boys very close in age with our boys and another baby boy on the way! So, it was perfect to have them over. The boys were thrilled to share Christmas day with them. And they brought over some great food to share as well. We all had a great Christmas Day.
We were also able to skype with Don's family later that day and
enjoyed spending some time with them online. Don's parents just got a new camera for their computer so it was our first time that we were able to skype with them since we've been here. (We have since been able to skype with them a couple of times which has been awesome!)
Overall, there were many things I missed about not being "at home" with our family and friends in Illinois but we truly enjoyed our first Christmas away from "home". But I have already been warned that we better not get too used to it because our families are looking forward to us joining them for future Christmases!
No comments:
Post a Comment