Our first family Christmas in Progreso, Mexico was celebrated with Lyn’s mom who made the trip from Calgary to stay with us over the holidays. Our goal this Christmas was to concentrate on new traditions like chicken burritos and stuffed poblano peppers for dinner, family game night with the super fabulous Mexican Monopoly, and spending more time together.

Our very special Christmas tree was given to us by Debbie from the Montessori School in Progreso on the last day of school. This tree, even after being starved for water for weeks before we got it, was one of the nicest smelling trees I have ever had. Reminding me very much of the home cut trees we used to buy from the Boy Scout’s tree lots, except this tree was beautiful and did not remind me of a Charlie Brown tree at all! We finally brought the tree outside on January 5th and it was still smelling like it was just cut and the best part, there were only about 18 needles that fell off as I dragged it through the house to the front door!! No clean up, no pine needles to be found weeks or months later, just simple quick sweep and voila!

Our tree was beautifully decorated by mostly hand-made paper ornaments which Evan and Noah colored and then with Lyn & Grammy’s help they added glue and sparkles to all of them. These decorations made the tree look beautiful and we are so glad we got to start a new tradition with the boys by making our own decorations. While we all missed and talked about our favorite decorations that are in storage, we had a great time looking at these new decorations. Mostly missed was the ‘pickle’ which is a new tradition we had started two years ago but we forgot to make a new one, maybe next year.

Yayyy BIG COOKIE and MORE CANDY!

This Christmas day started off great! Noah who still had eight days left of being a five year old, had crawled into Grammy’s bed instead of ours at 3am in the morning, so we got to sleep til almost 8am! Thanks Noah!! Noah was so excited to get things going, while his brother was still trying to wake up and I was running around trying to get the cameras all set up and ready to record. It was tough to contain him and he started in on his stocking right away, opening such things as toothpaste, underwear, coloring books, crayons, and of course Choclate!

The boys received way too many gifts yet again, and we really had tried to minimize things but they were certainly appreciative of all the gifts received from people back home. From Santa Evan received a portable chess set and Noah received a Mexican Monopoly board (which we have played at least once every day since!) and the Mexican Santa they received goal nets for water polo in the pool. Auntie Lisa, Uncle Mike and baby Cade got them Nerf Guns which fire discs at tremendous velocity at anyone in the way and the family game Blokus! Grammy got Lego for Noah, Star Wars Lego Pod Racers for Evan, Catan for the family from Yaya too. Grandma & Grandpa gave a Halo Lego Ship for Evan and ScribbleNute DS game for Noah and a gift of food and love for the entire family. Bobpa sent money and we paid for a month of TaeKwonDo lessons for the boys and a Playdo Activity center for Noah and Halo Lego for Evan. Raquel sent DS games SuperScribbleNute for Evan and Star Wars III for Noah. Jan, Dan, Keegan, Spencer, and Camble sent gifts along for the boys and us as they could make the trip this year and we hope their family is doing well. Ian, who arrived a couple days later, got Noah a Halo lego set and Evan got a Star Wars lego ship. Yaya gave Noah Bakugans and Evan got little Halo men. Thank you to everyone! The videos are priceless and we will look forward to watching them when you come visit us. The boys are still playing with everything and are very thankful for the new toys. We had come to Mexico with a very limited number of toys for the boys, so new items are very exciting to them.

Our Christmas dinner was certainly not traditional in any sense of the word, but it may become a part of our ongoing Christmas celebrations in the future. We had chicken burritos baked in the oven and covered with Manchego cheese and stuffed poblano peppers with rice, chicken, peppers, and onions covered in a rose sauce with chile & lime! Of course we ate our delicious Christmas dinner on the patio as the sun went down. (Our traditional turkey dinner was held on the 27th after Kayla and Ian arrived from Calgary.)

Then we had a very challenging game of Monopoly in which Evan was declared the winner, then I think it was Noah, then mom, then dad, then Grammy. Sorry Grammy She should have bought the ‘autobuuusssses’!

A beautiful day in Mexico, a fabulous way to spend Christmas with the family.

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