Christmas At Casa de Esperanza

The excitement level continued to rise around here yesterday. I put everyone down for a nap, but Daniella was the only girl that went to sleep and none of the boys slept. They played all afternoon and I started showers early so we could eat and go to church.

Siomara served her tamales. Since they were made with chicken, I ate one. They were wonderful. Elvia made a wonderful bread for dessert before she left. It was a pretty good Honduran Christmas meal.

If our guests from Kentucky had not wrapped the presents, I am not sure they would have been wrapped. Not by me at least.

We walked up to the church and were just barely there when the power went off. We herded our kids back to Casa and sang a few songs while Marc got the generator out of the bodega. He said he only had about an hour's worth of fuel. I was thinking it was going to be a long evening. I didn't think there was any way the power would come back. I was sure no one would leave their family to help restore power in Santa Ana. Marc got the generator running and it took a while to get the dvd player hooked to it and operating. Just a few minutes after our movie started, the power came back. I was amazed. This was almost one hour after we lost power.

After the movie was going for a few minutes, we fixed hot chocolate and popcorn. The kids loved that. We watched a whole movie and part of another one. I told the kids the last one to sleep would be the last one to open their presents. I had every one in bed by 10:00 and I think every one was asleep by 10:01. I am not sure if that is because they were that tired or because they did not want to be the last to open their presents.

I read a while and listened to the fireworks. Here people shoot fireworks on Christmas eve. I was not awake at midnight, when, supposedly, a bunch of fireworks are set off.

We started around 6:30 this morning. There was a bunch of happy, excited voices. One by one, each child opened their presents. There were dolls for two of the girls, rollerblades for three, boots for the older girls. The boys got remote control helicopters. Every one got a new soccer ball.

Oh, the look on Nohemy's face when she saw that doll. Reina carried hers all day. The poor doll is almost worn out already. The girls loved rollerblading. One of the helicopters was broken before they were charged. It had hair in the rotor. I was not present when the helicopte was turned on in someone's hair and no one knew whose hair in which the helicopter was put. When Brayan turned his helicpoter on, he said, "this is good, very good."

There was enough tamales left to have again for breakfast. There was also enough chocolate milk. I passed on breakfast. Tamales and chocolate milk was not appealing to me.

Getting through chores was a huge chore for me. I am not sure everything got done this morning. Everyone played with their new Christmas presents all day. Nearly everyone took a nap today, and then we played some more.

I told the kids no one would eat tonight until everything, inside and out, was clean and put away. I think they believed me because they had things put away in record time. I also had them all in bed a little after 8:00.

It was a fun day. I started yesterday morning at 7:00. Our staff all left at 2:00 yesterday afternoon so they could be with their families. No one came in today until 8:00 tonight. It has been a really long, really fun two days. Tomorrow is my day off. I hope I wake up in time to get the kids ready for church on Sunday.

Terri