After breakfast and a cold walk to the park, we opened presents. It took a while to get the rhythm going. Julien was frantic and wanted to open them all at once and Sebastian didn't quite understand the concept and wanted to sit and read a book. But soon Julien slowed down a bit (the Tintin book helped that), and Sebastian started to understand that there were presents for him and it all went well. And after presents Sebatian took a nice long nap.
Although it was not an easy feat. Sebastian woke up at 11:00-ish with an ear infection in the making and I couldn't get him to sleep until 2:30. Ugh. Needless to say, this Santa did not get much sleep.
Richard found a site that tracksSanta's progress across the globe. Julien was mesmerized! Clearly Julien wanted to believe this year...however Deigo informed him that there is no Santa, just parents pretending. Julien wasn't sure what to think of this. We told him that we believed in Santa. This site confirmed it for him.
On Christmas eve day I baked a Bûche de Noël. It has been a LONG time since I made one. I learned to make it in eighth grade durring my semester in London. In cooking class in Tucson we learned to make nachos with cheeze whiz, in London we learned to make bûche de Noël. This recipe was quite a bit more complicated, but worth it! It was scrumptious! I rolled a thin chocolate génoise cake with a layer of chocolate mousse and then covered it with a chocolate whipped cream icing. The day before we made meringue mushrooms, which we then used to decorate the buche. It looked beautiful and tasted even better.
Sebastian was particularly excited by the process. When we unpacked the ornaments he was very happy to find a santa hat. When he found the stocking he imediately began to put them on. "Want big Santa socks!" he exclaimed.
Thankfully it was fun decorating the tree, because we had to do it twice. The first time round the cats knocked it down in the middle of the night. Needless to say, we were not pleased with them. The boys were thrilled by the whole process.
Julien went to his friend Dylin's B-day party at Wonderlab. (Dylin is in the dark blue shirt). Julien spent most of his time at the party with Avi (in the red shirt)- who is a friend since pre-school. In this photo they are working at animating figurines.
We had some snow last week. It was very exciting for the kids (and fun for me too). I wish we would get more. We had a snow ball fight and went sledding down the hill in our yard.
Our neighborhood park has new playground equipment! They knocked down the old equipment a couple months ago. We have been watching them gradually build the new equipment. The kids were thrilled to finally climb on!
Not only did we watch the Macy's parade, we also watched the dog show. It was surprisingly fun! Julien was routing for the very cute cocker spaniel.
As usual, there was lots of reading. As far as Sebastian is concerned, nothing could be better than that. Julien loves reading too, but he might argue that a good wrestle could be better...
Emmett enjoyed cuddling with Bill. On several occasions he jumped right up on Bill's lap. he thinks he's a lap dog.
Bill and Jan came down for Thanksgiving. It was a nice relaxing day. Somehow I remember Thanksgiving being more work, but it all came together quite easily.
Sebastian would like to go to school with Julien. Sometimes he puts on Julien's back pack and carries his lunchbox. Julien wouldn't mind if Sebastian took his place at school sometimes.
