Christmas

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Having learned from last year that Moroccans do not come to parties if you put signs up, we personally invited as many friends as we could find - often through their kids (Party! Food! Let's go, Mom!). The result was a wonderful group of people - Moroccan, American, French - in our home the week before Christmas. Since our apartment rather neatly divides into two parts, we put kids in one half and adults in the other. One room was quiet, peaceful and full of intelligent conversation (I didn't say I was a part of it, did I?). Then when you opened the door to the other half of the apartment, a blast of noise, light and action hit all who dared to enter. I think you can figure out which room was which!

Christmas Eve we gave the girls their presents. Hamsters. Dogs (our favorite) offend Muslims and our cat was evil and caused too many allergy problems. So we bought our children rodents to keep in the house. Ugh. Sadly, Katrina's died a few days ago. He was a crazy guy - constantly escaping, falling and doing flips - we think he did one too many circus tricks and ended up breaking his back. With many tears, we made a sorry little procession outside in the wild, freezing wind to bury the little guy while Kendra said unhelpful things like, "We're going to bury Katrina's hamster. Not mine. Mine is still alive."

For Christmas day we had Ron, Laurie and girls over as well as two Americans who did not travel over the holidays. We had a great time of eating, singing, talking, helping the kids do crafts, playing outside and wishing for snow.

There's no doubt about it - Christmas is better with family and friends all around!