The boys let me sleep until 8 o'clock, yay! After being up for 2 1/2 hours in the middle of the night the sleep felt really good.
We made ourselves presentable and prepared for our friend to come over (the same friend who was over on Christmas Eve, she's a very good friend) and she got here at 8:30. John and I were in the middle of preparing for breakfast and then Malachi and I started the arduous task of passing out the presents.
Us with our huge pile of presents, almost all presents sent to us in the mail made it on time. Plus John and I might have gone a little overboard this year.
Opening presents took a long time. We let Malachi go first (Lesson #1. I don't think we'll do that again because he then wanted to play with all of his stuff and needed us to assist in opening and putting batteries in and what not, and we just wanted to open our own presents) and that was not quick. I finally had to "police" how much time he took with each gift, plus he had a ton. During the gift opening John was making his monkey bread (so tasty!) and he had to get up shortly after we started opening our gifts to check it - and then had to keep on getting up. After his monkey bread came out, I had to assemble and put in my quiches. So unfortunately the time for John and I to open our gifts was rushed, and a little more stressful than it should've been (Lesson #2. Leave time enough for gift opening to be free of stress and not rushed).
Our friend got her ketchup as well as a scarf from Guatemala. She was nice enough to keep Malachi occupied with his new Animal Encyclopedia while John cooked.
After a delicious breakfast of quiche, monkey bread, and fresh fruit, we played with our gifts. At the same time that our friend had to leave, John, Malachi and I needed to get ready for Puerto Rican Christmas. We drove over to the Maryland side of the city and spent the rest of the day with some good friends (who grew up in Puerto Rico). They had a boy about five months ago (I think, I'm horrible at remembering when he was born), and Malachi loves going to their house to watch their big TV and see their baby. I also learned that he also really loves our friends, especially the husband, who got a running start to a hug around the leg. We enjoyed a really delicious dinner that they prepared for us, and we played a gift exchange game with their neighbor. I got a frame for three pictures, Malachi got his very own playing card set that's just like Mommy and Daddy's but all his own, and John got a pair of earings. That's right...earings. He was gracious enough to give them to me.
We drove home that night during a rain storm. Earlier in the week I had heard that it was going to be a wintry mix, and I was really afraid we were going to hit some icy patches, but it was warmer than I thought it would be and it was just wet. Not a hard ride home (except for the difficutly of seeing because of the shiny-ness of the road). Malachi went to bed almost on time, and John and I made it to bed early. We were all pretty exhausted. I'm very sad that I didn't take pictures at our friend's house. I had the camera - I was just lazy.
Over all, we had a great couple of days. My fears that it wouldn't feel like Christmas were proved wrong. We spent the days with some great friends, ate some good food, and really enjoyed our first Foreign Service Christmas.
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