Christmas Eve

We had such a great Christmas Eve! We made our traditional Christmas dinner with turkey and all the fixings, both the Danish and the american kinds, so we were totally stuffed. Natalie helped set the Christmas table, and it was beautiful:

We watched the Dora Christmas movie while we had dinner. Natalie knows it by heart by now, we must have watched it at least 50 times in December. But it is so cute, and the music is so well made, that I'm still not tired of it!

While Natalie was watching the movie, I cleaned up a little after dinner, and Karsten put the presents under the tree. When Natalie came in and saw all the presents her eyes lit up like the lights on the Christmas tree!

We followed our traditions and walked around the Christmas tree and sang Christmas songs. I had printed the lyrics, so we all had a copy, and Natalie "read" along and sang along happily, even to the Danish songs that she doesn't really know or understand. She really enjoyed that part.

Then we unwrapped presents. It took us a couple of hours to open them all, one at a time. Natalie was so good, taking her time and really enjoying the process. We made sure she said thank you for the presents, even if the gift giver wasn't here. I got a little video of her unwrapping, (the video is a little long and probably a little boring to anyone who isn't a close relative... Don't say I didn't warn you...)

After we finished all the unwrapping, we had our special Christmas desert called ris a-la-mande. And per tradition, someone had to find a whole almond in the rice-almond-cream-pudding-like-desert, and of course that someone was Natalie. She got an ornament with Tinkerbell on it as the present for winning the little game. And the ornament had Tinkerbell candy inside. She was very happy with that.

And of course, we had to sprinkle the reindeer food on the front lawn that she had made at the daycare party. It was made of oatmeal and sparkles. The glitter from the sparkles in the moonlight and the smell of the oats were to make sure Santa's reindeer would remember to come to our house. A little magic at Christmas time couldn't hurt, right?!?

Natalie went to bed very tired and very happy on Christmas Eve. It was wonderful to experience it all with her. Seing the joy in her eyes was the best present I could ever have gotten this year!