Part 44: Christmas in Holland

For Christmas last year we decided to do a whirlwind tour of the US. It was one of those events that went something like: AMS to Houston, Houston to Dallas, Dallas to STL, STL to Peoria, Peoria to STL, STL to Houston, Houston to AMS... Something like 20,000 miles in 14 days. Too much.

Those trips (and we have done 4 of them so far) are nice because you get to see everyone, but very, very, tiring. Since Jacob is getting older and we don't know how much longer we are going to be here, we opted for something a bit more low-key --- home.

So, after getting back to town on 24-Dec from our mini-vacation, we then went straight to the grocery store for Christmas day / weekend feasts. Those are the best trips to the store. The ones where you have almost zero agenda on what to purchase and just mill around the store (through each aisle) until you find enough food to get you through. Normally, you end up coming home with 3 days of snacks and no real food. Fortunately, Amanda brings a practical personality to the trip.

We did, beforehand, pull together a list of things we used to eat as kids at Christmas. All of the favorites like monkeybread, pigs in a blanket, artificial crab meat, etc. Unfortunately, Holland doesn't carry everything needed, so we improvised.

We originally had an ambitious plan for Christmas Eve. It involved: (1) getting home, (2) buying groceries, (3) building a Gingerbread house, (4) baking cookies, (5) Voorburg candle service, (6) party at a friends house, and (7) Christmas Eve service at church. We did get most done, but not quite everything. As I write this 2 days after Christmas, the Gingerbread house still isn't built. Oh well, maybe next year.

By staying in Holland this year, we hoped to experience it like a native. One item that we didn't know about was the candle service in downtown Voorburg. We didn't see any advertising for it, but it is quite an event. Little did we know.

When we arrived, droves of people milled around looking at the candles in the windows of every home and store front. It was impressive. The town turned off all artificial lights so the only light showing was that coming from the candles in the windows. Some people put out village scenes, but most just lined their window sills with tea lights. It was a sight.

What surprised us most was the number of people in attendence. The streets were packed. In fact, at our friend's party afterwards, she mentioned that they actually bus people into town for the celebration.

It was one of those things that we never would have known about if we hadn't stayed here for Christmas. After the party and the candle service, we made our way to the church service where Pastor Blackman pulled together a great message.

That left the rest of the evening for Amanda and I to put Jacob to bed and get down the gifts. It was great fun discussing the Christmas strategies and melding our family traditions into our own. This was, afterall, really the first Christmas that Amanda and I have spent together without extended family. In the past, we always found ourselves in either Dallas or St. Louis to visit family.

This picture was acutally taken at the end of the day, but it just seemed like the right one to start the blog.

This was also the first Christmas when Jacob started to get into Santa Claus (or Ho Ho). While he didn't show giddy reactions to the the bated anticipation, you could tell he was really into the festivities.

The day was fairly equally spread between opening presents, playing with presents, and eating. When we woke up we started with the stockings and then moved to the bigger gifts. For Jacob, it was open a gift, play with it for 20 minutes and then open another. This started at 8am and ended at 8:30pm (for Jacob) --- but then again, he had about 3 times the number of gifts that we had.

The top gifts for Jacob this year were ane eisle / chalkboard, golf set, Matchbox cars / travel playset, multiple dress-up costumes (fireman and cowboy), cooking stuff (where the pizza was the biggest hit), and lots of clothes and books. It was a good year for him. He wanted to thank everyone for making the extra effort to ship (and pack) the gifts to Holland. From his perspective, it was well worth it.

Amanda did a great job with Christmas treats. Jacob and I woke up to the smell of gingerbread cookies, took our first break at 9;30 for cinnamon rolls, and our second break for breakfast tacos.

She says she enjoyed her gifts, too. I had worked all year to pull together the perfect gifts. It ended up holding the unintended theme of cooking and parties. She ended up with several Italian pots (one vase and one serving dish), a pasta maker (with ravioli attachment), cook books, clothes, a nativity set, and several DVD's.

My Christmas was very unique. Over the past couple of months I dropped many, not so subtle hints that I wanted a couple of gifts I could play with on Christmas day. Right? Who wants a pile of clothes and ties? You have to have something that you can immediately use. She didn't dissappoint. I ended up with a couple of Wii games (the Star Wars game is superb), several books, a couple of great board games (WWI - Diplomacy, and Railroad building in Japan), and a couple of gift cards for further online purchases.

The big surprise for me was Amanda's gift to me. She said she had this idea for several years, but never found the right year to give me the gift. I got a telescope. Which, in general, is super cool. But, in this case is even better.

To avoid massive shipping costs she bought it from an outfit in Germany. And, she says that they didn't have dimensions online. I think she probably overlooked the details; granted, she rarely overlooks details -- trust me on that one. Anyway, she did a lot of research and opted to get a "tier 2" scope; better than a beginner's scope, but not nearly the most advanced. She expected it to be about 2 feet long and 6 inches in diamter...

It was twice that size - literally. When I opened it, it looked like she purchased the Hubble Telescope from NASA. She was shocked and a little embarressed, but I was super excited. We debated sending it back for something a little more realistic, but decided to stick with what we got. Unfortunately, a second box hasn't yet arrived. So, we will have to wait a bit before we test it out. Won't it be fun to have a "star party"? I can't wait!

The rest of the pictures are just miscellaneous shots of Jacob playing with his gifts. He clearly had a great Christmas and continues to cycle between his gifts: like one play station to the next. Here he is with his new flashlight, wearing two new sweaters on top of his jammies and drawing on his new eisle.

This is Mommy showing off her new jacket while trying to coax Jacob to try on the new dress-up outfits. I think Mommy lost that battle and will have to fight the fires by herself.

Here is Jacob opening his new golf set. When playing with it, Mommy said "maybe you could be a caddy someday for one of the big golfers." What is going on with that? We had to have a quick talk about setting appropriate expectations. He won't be the caddy... he will be the golfer.

Jacob is a huge fan of Matchbox cars and Legos. Our first day we built a zoo for all his new animals and serviced several of his Matchbox cars.

We found a little time right before lunch to decorate cookies that Mommy had made. Jacob thought the cookies were good, but he clearly preferred the icing. We couldn't quite teach him to stop licking the icing off the knife. I know --- terrible lesson.

Isn't this a nice picture. Maybe we will submit it to Better Homes and Gardens. We tried to get a family picture without the flash, but Jacob couldn't sit still enough for the photo. We ended up with about 10 pictures where Amanda and I are focused and Jacob was a blurry ball of energy.

We had a very merry Christmas and wish everyone a Happy New Year!