TCP & CPK

It was Ali's turn for a date.

Will we get chocolate?  She wondered.

We need a kiss sandwich first!

She needed some new clothes, so first we made a stop at The Children's Place to find some.  She was more impressed with the balloon she got, ha ha!  We went to California Pizza Kitchen for dessert afterwards.

Yes, chocolate!

Ali loved her brownie sundae.

I thought my trinity cake was quite divine!

Leonard's turtle cheesecake was tasty too (but not as good as our friend, Jackie's!).

Life is just a bowl of cherries!

Sentimental Gifts

On Christmas morning, our kids had sweet little gifts for us.  Kaleb has started recording his music compositions and hopes to complete 12 songs in the coming year and will give us a CD of his songs next Christmas.  Noé instigated the kids making these colorful hearts with little notes to us on them.  My favorite says, "To the parents in the world!"  I think they forgot the word "best" or some other adjective there, ha ha!

They also made these cute cards with Merry Christmas written in dozens of languages and pipe cleaner people representing our family.

I always love the gifts the elementary school kids make.

Gavin made a cute photo ornament.

Teague made a cute snowman.

Hiram made a cute hand-print Christmas tree and some snowmen ornaments.

All of my kiddos are the best gifts I've ever received.

I'm so grateful for my 4 boys and for my 2 girls.

I'm also so grateful I saved this dress of Noé's and that Ali got to wear it.

We moved far away this year, and I am so very grateful to the friends and family that still sent us Christmas cards!

Our Christmas Miracle

Our prayers were answered and everyone felt well for Christmas Day!  We began our day with a prayer of gratitude and then opened our gifts.  We had planned on going to church, but after our illness we didn't want to press our luck or share our germs.

These are my favorite presents always!

Especially, when they're silly!

We've simplified our gift giving over the years.  We get a visit from the Christmas Eve Elf who brings new pajamas, then on Christmas Day Santa brings a gift for everyone and stuffs our stockings.  Leonard and I also give a gift to everyone.  Both of our sets of grandparents send money, so this year we used it for the kids to have a gift exchange with each other.  The great thing is our kids don't feel deprived at all, they still feel spoiled!

Ali got from Santa some new Ever After High Dolls, and from Hiram she got a dozen of the cutest cupcakes that turn into Princess dolls.

Hiram's Santa gift was more Paw Patrol puppies with their vehicles.  From Kaleb he got a cool code-pillar, caterpillar.

Santa gave Teague over 100 Shopkins, while Ali got him some kinetic sand.

Gavin got some Lego Ninjago Airjitzu sets from Santa with a coupon to have Minecraft installed on his laptop.  Teague picked out a huge classic Lego set for him to build even more with. 

Santa gave Noé lots of girly-girl stuff: make-up, perfume, jewelry, and hair things.  Gavin gave her a half-dozen arts and crafts sets.

Kaleb got 9 new books from Santa, and 4 new Xbox games from Noé.

Santa got me new silk pillow covers for the throw cushions on our couches.  Leonard got me an Indian menagerie consisting of a painted elephant, camel, peacock, and turtle.

I got Leonard a plasma ball while Santa got him Newton's cradle.  I had wanted to get him a weight bench, but it has to be ordered.  I also ordered another thing for him, but it didn't arrive in time.  He's a good sport though and loves his new toys.

I had to share this picture of Ali's new cute dollies.  Princesses, cupcakes, what's not to love?  Our gift to the kids this year is a trip we'll be taking the first week in the new year.  We're going to tour India's golden triangle, visiting the Taj Mahal, going on an elephant expedition, watching a dances of India show, shopping at bazaars, and passing through the 16th century Mughal city Fatehpur Sikri.  The kids also snuck a gift under the tree for Len and I.  It was a box filled with hearts they had colored and wrote different things they love about us on them.  I love my kiddos so much!

We opted to make a simpler meal for Christmas.  We made some honey mustard chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, green beans, rolls, and more sparkling cider.

For dessert I made up a treat that reminded us of home- chocolate pudding pie.  I just made an oreo crust with crushed cookies and butter, blended up some chocolate pudding from the expensive import store, and whipped up some sweet French cream to top it off.  This would be such a cheap dessert back home, but here it cost as much as 2 fancy cakes from the bakery, ha ha!  Sometimes it's worth the splurge!

We called both sets of grandparents and Len called his brothers.  We also watched A Christmas Story.

A day late, but the kids were finally able to have their Christmas slumber party. (Which they'll now have every night until school starts again.)

The day and season ended on a happy note.  And we're already counting down 365 days until next Christmas!!  I'm so grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ and love that we get to celebrate His birth every year in such a wonderful way!

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The night before Christmas Eve was a little disastrous with Gavin and Noé and Kaleb all throwing up during the night.  They spent the day resting and were pretty much wiped out.  We still did some of our traditions.  In the morning, we finished reading our 24 days of Christmas book with the Nativity story from Luke and Matthew, then we watched It's A Wonderful Life.  In the afternoon, we went caroling to our neighbors.  Earlier we had decided we wanted to go swimming since we never have before on Christmas Eve.  With everyone being sick we cancelled that plan.  We still had cookies and cocoa and sang through our book of Christmas songs.  In the evening, we set up both hide-a-bed mattresses in the girls' room for the slumber party and while we did that the Christmas Eve Elf stopped by with new pj's for all of us.

We watched The King Is Born and 'Twas The Night Before Christmas.  We left out cookies and milk for Santa and had family prayer.  Then disaster struck again, Noé and Leonard threw up, so we had to cancel the slumber party.  I was wondering if we should call Santa and ask him to postpone Christmas until everyone was well.  Leonard had faith that all would work out though.  We tucked the kids into their own beds and called it a night.

When I went back to check on them, I found one of my cuties all snuggled up with his teddy bear.

Sweet Teague.

Ali decided she was not ready for bed (she has been our worst sleeper ever!), so we set her up on the playroom couch with a cartoon.

We caught her trying to watch for Santa.

Sweet babe!

Secret Santas

We love giving Secret Santa gifts!  This year we bought Oreo cookies instead of baking treats (well, it's hard to find things like flour, sugar, baking powder, etc. here) to give to the nine bus helpers our kids have.  We also got six more little packages that we gave to our neighbors (that live on the same floor as us) when we went Christmas caroling.

I have been wanting to make cupcakes for a long time to go and deliver to the people that live near the Arabian Sea by us.  However, when baking day arrived I couldn't find my mini-cupcake liners so I wasn't able to make enough full-size cupcakes this time.  We gave these to all of our apartment security guards, elevator operators, janitors, etc.  We wore our Santa hats when we passed these out and got lots of smiles.

Our school distributed plastic shoe boxes to the youngest sibling in each family.  If we wanted to we could fill them up for the Save The Children campaign, then wrap and return them.  We filled ours with toothpaste & a toothbrush, soap, shampoo, Oreos, gummy bears, dried apricots, and a coloring book with markers and crayons.  Hiram happily took it back to school.  (Unfortunately, we missed the big Christmas Tree lighting at the Grand Hyatt Hotel where our school presented 400 shoe boxes.  Leonard was out of town and I wasn't brave enough to battle Mumbai traffic with 6 kiddos by myself.  Hopefully, we'll make it to the event next year.)

When we caroled to our neighbors we were only able to visit with 3 of the 6.  We left the other 3 treats outside their doors.  Later that evening our closest neighbor, stopped by with these yummy chocolate suckers for us.  We thought that was so sweet!  

(We also gave gifts for the 12 days of Christmas for the 5th year in a row.  This is one of my personal favorite traditions!  I want to keep it a secret though, so no pictures :).

I love to give and hope I am always able to.

Gift Exchange Shopping

Every year we think how great it would be if our kids could have a gift exchange for Christmas.  However, we usually don't have the budget to supply them for this since none of them are earning their own money.  I love families that do a homemade gift exchange, but I don't feel that our family age range is conducive for that  yet (plus I don't know where we'd buy supplies here).  

Also every year, both sets of grandparents send a nice chunk of change for each of us.  We decided this year to use the grandparents' money for the gift exchange.  The kids were really excited to shop for one another, and both sets of grandparents thought it was a great idea too.

First out, was Kaleb shopping for Hiram and Ali shopping for Teague.  

Next out, was Noé shopping for Kaleb and Teague shopping for Gavin.

Look who we ran into when Gavin and Hiram were shopping!  Gavin shopped for Noé, while Hiram shopped for Ali.

Len and I also decided to exchange gifts.  We went to Kala Ghoda to visit Fab India and The Bombay Store.  After our shopping trip we stopped for lunch at Paratha Mantra, and it was so yummy!

We tried Almond Kulfi (traditional Indian ice cream) with a hint of rose flavoring.  Another new favorite!

Back at the mall near our house we watched these candy canes being freshly made at Papabubble.  We were so excited to have fresh peppermint candy canes.  However, when we bit into them we discovered that they weren't peppermint flavored, but spicy Indian flavored, ha ha!  Luckily for us, the kids got some peppermint candy canes from the Primary presidency and they shared with us.  You have to have a bit of Peppermint at Christmas time!

Not an unusual sight when you're out and about in Mumbai.

However, these traditional homes are harder to find.  I just love the window!!

I usually don't enjoy shopping much, but it was fun to take the kiddos out to buy for each other.  Perhaps a new tradition?