Second Christmas

We had such a good second Christmas, too! The Christmas Eve dinner is supposed to begin the celebration, and traditionally it can't be eaten until the first star comes out. This year we were enjoying a wonderful snow storm, so no stars were visible. Bogdan found one for us in a Christmas book, though.

Also, to be very traditional, there should have been twelve foods on the table. We don't do that, but I usually do make kutya.

And then, according to my family tradition, we had a carrot cake for Jesus' birthday:

Just a pretty picture of our tree

Christmas morning started off with a little bit of excitement, when a bird flew down the pipe for our heating system and got stuck. We had to turn the heat off, and were already starting to feel the cold, when our neighbour came over to sort it out. In the midst of that, we ate breakfast and sent the girls off to church for choir practice. Then the rest of us went to church:

Again, the church service was a special holiday event. Asya and her friends played their song again, and the children's choir sang.

After church the children's choir headed our way to sing for "our" babushki. I had planned to be with them, but one of the moms wanted a place to sit and wait for her daughter, so I invited her over. She and I sat and talked and warmed up kids who got too cold outside. Will already wrote about the carolling part here....

One of the babushki came over and thanked us with tears in her eyes; the kids really touched their hearts.

Now we're back to school: homeschool and music school started yesterday, art school tomorrow. Jaan still has at least one Christmas play performance coming up and I have Christmas banquets for the orphanage workers to help with, but mostly we'll be settling back into regular life.

Oh, I almost forgot. On New Year's Eve, our kids talked to my parents on Skype. I heard them saying something about how they have nothing to do: "We're just sitting and reading. We can't do school with these holidays, and there's no art or music classes to go to." Poor kids.