A Merry Christmas at our house

We had a very fun Christmas day. I hope you did too!!! I thought I would share some of our day's highlights. Above is the Vanocka Braid that I made for breakfast. It was fun to make but the bottom burned so we had to cut it off. Oh well! The joys of baking. I think it would have worked much better if I had thought to use my silicone sheets underneath. After we had cut the bottom off it did taste good and was enjoyed. I will try to share the recipe later. We had a fun time opening the gifts from our stockings. Jonathan kept saying: "I think this is the best Holiday ever!". The kids really appreciated everything. They liked the gifts made by their siblings. We don't spend to much on gifts, nor have a lot of them but that didn't reduce the fun in any way. Megan was quite into opening her gifts this year. If anyone tried to help her she would usually say "Stop" quite firmly.
Here is one of the very frugal gifts that the boys received this year. I am sorry I didn't do a post on how to make them as I am sure they were in much demand at your house as well. (Doesn't everyone need an eye patch? Ha Ha!!). They were well received at our house as they had been much requested and I was reminded quite a few times that I had said I might give them one for Christmas. The boys had been to visit some friends who had an eye patch and they needed(?) one too.
After opening presents we headed over to my parents where they have a very large and fun sledding hill. (It is the biggest hill I have ever been sledding on, even when we went in the mountains ~though you certainly could find steeper places in the mountains, I never saw anybody sledding on them) The above picture is some of our University student friends. These girls are all from Malaysia. The one in the middle actually attends school down south and this trip up here this month was the first time she had seen snow.
Here is my Mom heading down the hill. This is only her third time down this hill in her life. Most of us(our family) have gone down it hundreds of times but usually when we had sledding parties she would be busy in the house. Also I don't think sledding was really her "thing" but she seemed to be having fun yesterday.

And here is my very handsome husband who had a blast sledding in more ways than one. When getting to the bottom of the hill you would generally get an enormous spray of snow that would sometimes make you almost impossible to see by those above. Ken chose at least once to slide down face first and he really got a blast in the face.

Here are Linson and Priya (from India) and Megan. Priya, Megan and Aaron were the only ones who didn't go down the hill. I had thought I would take Megan but when I went down with Jonathan we ended up rolling over each other quite a bit. We were fine but I didn't think that would be a good idea with Megan. Aaron and Priya decided they didn't want to try it.

After sledding we went in and Mom and her helpers (Pei Lin, Priya and Keren) had a yummy lunch waiting for us. We all got quite stuffed. I helped to clean up and then we headed home for some nice naps.

We had supper at our house. Pretty much everybody that had been at Mom and Dad's came over to our house. We had a total of 18. We set up two table together and were able to fit everybody around. Mara and Keren tied up the silver ware in the napkins with a red ribbon and attached a little bell to it. Mom provided little nut cups. We decided it would be fun to eat by candlelight so we lit all the candles that I had in the living room, put a bunch of candles on the table and brought out one of the candelabras Dad had made for our wedding and had it in the corner of the dining room. It looked very pretty with all of the candles.

I made this for the occasion as well. I have a mold to make a swan ice sculpture and then I put it on top of a block of ice. It didn't turn out as well as usual but It was still fun.

We set up a buffet for the food. This picture doesn't look to exciting but the food was yummy. Mom and Co. had brought stuff to help. We had: Ham, Pork Roast, Smoked fish (which Dad had smoked), potatoes, carrots, green salad, fruit salad, oriental salad, fresh whole wheat bread, olives, and pie.

Here is Pei Lin, a friend from Malaysia.

Ken and I. Our happy table full.