Since we got to bed so late, it was really a blessing that Henlie slept in. She came into our room maybe around 8am. Matt was still very much asleep, so we took a selfie. Then she got the obnoxious giraffe toy, and I'm sure Matt was no longer asleep lol
The flash was REALLY bright :)
Please ignore my face. I had Henlie send some Merry Christmas WhatsApps to family and thought it was so adorable that I wanted to record it. So, I'm trying to make sure she says it and keep the camera on her....plus, we just woke up :D
Simultaneous best and worst toy ever.
By 9am, it was time to do presents!
Hmm, a bow...
"It's Daniel!" Thank you, Uncle McKade!
We let Henlie pick out a chullo when we got one for the baby at Inka Market.
Pretty pink PJs from Grandma Biggs.
They match Charlie, Danica, and Jennifer's! Michelle only got pink silky PJ pants ;)
Grandma tells us this was purchased before they knew we were moving to Peru. Fuzzy hat and mittens.
We got her a little Spanish book. All of the books at Wong are plastic-wrapped, so you can't actually open them. This one doesn't have any story, but is more like pages of flashcards. She loves it, though.
Reading her new book.
Opening another present from Grandma and Grandpa Biggs.
Two books, some paper-doll-esque dolls, and a flash drive with videos of Grandma reading lots of different books. Grandma made sure not to put any Clifford stories on it, though, so Henlie would still want to talk to Grandma ;)
Watching her new Daniel Tiger DVD and my messy house. I swear we didn't have a big Christmas, but it still ended up everywhere :)
I did much better taking some actual photos this year. It helped that I was able to record most all of Christmas morning on my phone, which lets me take stills while I'm videoing. (Okay, my video camera does that too, but it's not as easy, and the still picture quality isn't super.) I got everything on the phone except for our stockings. Fortunately, I brought the video camera for Christmas as well, so I pulled that out to document the stockings.
Relaxing after presents. Henlie is sucking on the key ring part of her llama key chain.
My morning - Henlie watching Daniel Tiger and Matt playing computer games :)
Matt and I just had candy that I brought from the States (fun size Snickers and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups). Grandma also sent two cake-in-a-mug mixes, so we each got one of those in our stockings as well. Grandma also resupplied us with fruit snacks, so Henlie got fruit snacks in her stocking, along with some knitted finger puppets we got at Inka Market, a puzzle ball from Grandma Biggs, her new ornament for the year (a knitted llama from Inka Market), and a llama key chain from Inka Market. (It was too cute to pass up.) And we all got our traditional orange in the toe of our stocking.
Later, she put on her hat and wrapped herself in her pink nightgown lol
After that, we had some morning Google Hangout time with Grandma Biggs. I think Matt made us breakfast. I was going to make caramel cinnamon rolls for breakfast, but I didn't get to it. We did make them later in the day, though. The recipe calls for instant pudding....I don't think I got instant pudding..... so we used twice as much flour to make the dough not so sticky. Which left me with virtually no flour for the counter to roll out the cinnamon rolls. Once I was out of flour, I used Baking Pam spray. It mostly worked, but I think it hindered the cinnamon filling from sticking. I don't know, maybe it gets pushed out anyway? Maybe it was because I couldn't roll them thin enough, so there was too much? I've never done this before! But, I ran out of room on the counter, so they were a little thick, and the filling was all coming out all over the counter. The cinnamon rolls ended up being HUGE, but they still tasted yummy. I was glad since I'd had to use nearly 2 bags of flour and a liter of milk in the dough. I spooned the filling back on top of the rolls to bake them. I found a caramel sauce recipe because Matt and I both love the caramel Rhodes rolls. It turned out very yummy, although the caramel never quite set up as much as I thought it would. Either I screwed something up there, too, or it is the humidity here. Regardless, we had yummy cinnamon rolls in the afternoon. Which meant we didn't do the soup I was going to make for dinner lol We had it a day or two later, though :)
Finished product - really BIG caramel cinnamon roll :)
Turns out it made quite a few..
The disaster that was my kitchen afterward.
Can you tell where I rolled the cinnamon rolls? :)
Caramel sauce and rolls waiting to go in the oven.
We had a really relaxed, low-key Christmas Day. Henlie played with her new toys, and we just hung out. Later in the evening, we Google Hung-out with Matt's family again because everyone was coming over for dinner and gifts. We got to watch people open their presents, and we got to see the matching jammies in action. We also got to say hi to some grandparents who stopped by. Then it was bedtime. Two nights of going to bed late do not a happy Henlie make. Fortunately, she recovered after a couple of nights :)
Playing with her new finger puppets.
Watching one of the videos. Grandma is reading one of the new books Henlie got.
It kind of sucked being away from family and all of our usual traditions at Christmas, but I'm glad we have Skype and Google Hangouts so we can see and talk to family. It was also kind of interesting to be on our own for Christmas and really decide what is important to us in terms of Christmas traditions. (Apparently caramel cinnamon rolls are important to me now lol) And, not gonna lie, it was kind of nice (although weird) to not have snow for Christmas. Hello, Summer! We hope everyone else had a very merry Christmas!
