Our last Christmas in Burkina

The day after Thanksgiving Isaak and the kids could wait no more, so we pulled out our one small box of Christmas decor and got to work decorating the house. It took like fifteen minutes. The lego building took the longest. I love love love how we've simplified Christmas.

Isaak and Sydaleigh hard at work putting together our Christmas lego villages.

Part of the completed village being played with by Marvelly. She doesn't have much patience for following the directions to build Legos as the booklets dictate, but the girl does love to build them with nothing but her imagination to tell her how it should look. And she loves to play with them!

Our little tree. It has served us well for the second year now and will make a great addition to our church's decorations next year. But for this year, I let the kids have at it one last time and decorate as they saw fit. It is really the perfect height for my kiddos. We may never go back to a big tree again, this is just so convenient for them.

Hard at work making the tree beautiful with all the special ornaments we've made since moving here.

Steve's first time decorating a tree. He just followed the girl's lead and got right to work. After they finished I left it on the floor for a while because Steve was having the best time taking all the ornaments on and off again and again, putting them in new spots each time.

Our simple little tree that I love. And my handmade stockings. I made one for Steve this week out of some extra Air Force fabric I had.

Late Friday night me and Isaak stayed up till near 1:30am watching the new Planet of the Apes movie, which was so bad in my opinion. My gosh, after the first thirty minutes of hearing nothing but grunts and sign language and your occasional "huumans. gooo." I was over it. But, it made for good background noise (not really) while we wrapped presents.

I started a new buying tradition this year to keep our gift giving simple and prevent the tendency of going overboard. And I LOVED it. The kids get one toy, one puzzle, a book, and a movie. And that's it. Something to play with, something to read, something to watch, and something to put together. And it was perfect. They didn't ask for more presents (except for Steve-who actually got three toys, but it was his first Christmas. ) It was all very intentional to their interests and they were so completely satisfied and it made buying easier, less to wrap, less to clean up....it was just good. I am sticking with this for as long as I can.

Before we went to bed Friday night (Saturday morning) I put the girl's suitcases filled with their clothes by the tree and put their plane tickets in their stockings. We couldn't wait to surprise them with an early Christmas and news that we were heading to the U.S.!

We were certain that they would wake up before us Saturday morning and run into the room after seeing the tree, but they were dead tired and me and Isaak eventually had to go in and wake them up ourselves.

We told them that it was time to open presents and they did not even bat an eye, they didn't ask a single question or find it odd in any way! They just ran to the tree READY!! Ha ha! I loved it. They were just like, "yeah, lets do this!" No questions asked. I was really hoping that they actually would ask, "hey Mom, why are we opening presents early?" to give me a segue into us going on vacation. But they didn't. =)

So we had them sit in front of the tree, by their bags, which they were not at all perplexed about why they were sitting by their presents. I had each girl open up their bag, and when they did their little brain wheels finally started spinning and they wondered why there was clothes in their suitcases. I then handed them their stockings and they pulled out their tickets and we finally told them we were going on vacation to the States in six days! They gave a little squeal, shook their arms in delight, and then were ready to get down to business of opening their gifts-ha ha!!

It wasn't the over the top I'm so excited I'm crying response we anticipated them having....but it was still awesome.

Steve has been asking, like, every single hour when we are going bye-bye on the airplane. That's been fun trying to explain to him who has no concept of time. =)

So happy.

I am gonna be rockin' out on my new Zumba for the Wii. There is no better way to exercise than by dancing, or something that promotes fierce competition.

Steve was hilarious. He would open a present and then immediately say, "me want more Mommy". Ha ha! I know buddy. Christmas is a special time. The girls were so excited for him. They loved watching him open his gifts and share in his excitement. They were excited for themselves, but they were equally excited for him and shared his enthusiasm and joy for celebrating his first Christmas with us. 

It was such a good morning. We loved getting to surprise them like this. It was such a fun way to celebrate our last Christmas in Burkina.

Next up....Christmas in Virginia!!