Fröhliche Weihnachten!

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is having a nice time with family and friends. Here we are having a White Christmas. It's been snowing yesterday and today. "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas...." Anyway, like I said before here they celebrate on Christmas Eve for reasons I don't really know. So yesterday we had our Christmas celebrations. Going along with tradition at about 4 o'clock I helped Andrea decorate the Christmas tree (they don't decorate beforehand). We put on lots of ornaments and real candles. Plus we put out some other nice decorations. At about 5 when it was dark we lit all the candles and turned off the lights and Andrea rang a bell to let Ryan know he could come and see the tree. Normally all the presents would be under the tree to signify that Santa or the Christkind had come, but since we were going to see Urs's mother and planning on the presents later, Andrea put out 1 present for Ryan to open so he'd have something to play with. He came in the room and the first thing he said was "where are the presents?" hahaha. He managed to find his and opened it and then we sang a couple of songs and tried to fill up a bit on milk and cookies so we wouldn't be starving for dinner later.

With the lights off

with flash so you can see the ornaments

After that we bundled up and piled in the car and headed to see Urs's mother. I'm not going to lie, it was horribly depressing. She was doing very badly indeed and was very weak. They were told a couple days ago to be prepared for the worst in the next few days. At one point she seemed to be in a lot of pain so we all left the room while Urs stayed with her for a little while. We didn't stay too long seeing as she really wasn't up for visitors. Then we headed home and started dinner while Urs put the rest of the presents under the tree. While dinner was cooking we went to open presents and Ryan goes "which ones are mine?!?" He was so excited and was doing his "ants in his pants" dance. He got what he had asked for which was lego tracks for his lego train, plus some other things and books. I also received some nice things. Andea gave me the videos of our vacations we'd gone on, plus a new purple scarf like the one I had lost and a calender she had made online with our pictures that was very nice. Ryan also gave me a little present. Andrea had helped him make a little cookie house that had gummy bears inside. It was quite cute. Then we went and had a nice dinner of duck in wine sauce with pasta and red kraut, plus some mango tiramisu. Then Andrea and I watched Harold and Maude which is kind of a funny movie and by the time that was over it was midnight so we headed to bed.

presents!

My calender

So now it's technically Christmas day which for Ryan will be filled with playing with all of his new toys. Later this evening we'll have a nice dinner again. Andrea told me that Urs's mother died this morning so that puts a bit of a damper on the festivities. The original plan was that on Monday Andrea's parents as well as her sister and nephews would be joining us for a couple of days, but I'm not sure they will come now with all the arrangements that have to be made. I suppose we'll have to see what's in store in the next few days.