Merry Christmas!

We had hoped to visit Indiana for Christmas this year, but Mario's factory only shut down for the 25th, so going anywhere was out of the question. Fortunately, Mario's family was able to come and visit us. And fortunately, Mario's brother just bought a new minivan, so both Mario's parents, his aunt, brother, sister, sister-in-law, and 2 nephews could make the 10-hour trip in "relative" comfort. Last March we saw the same amount of people squeeze into Nacho's Pontiac Grand Am . . . yikes!



Mario's family arrived at about 10pm on Christmas Eve and immediately commandeered the kitchen, warming up bacalao, a traditional Mexican Christmas fish dish, and a variety of other food they brought with them, even though Mario spent all evening making pork. Christmas dinner in Mexico is traditionally eaten after the late-night mass on Christmas Eve, so generally around midnight. Ugh. I'd so rather be in bed at midnight. But I can't fight tradition.


As my nieces and nephews get visits from the 3 Kings on January 6th, Santa Claus tends to skip our house. Therefore, only Clara was up at the crack of dawn (which of course had nothing to do with the fact that it was Christmas). Once all eleven of us made our way in and out of our only bathroom, the plan was to attend mass downtown and then come back home and feast on leftovers. However, eleven people don't more through one bathroom very quickly, especially after staying up well past midnight the previous night, so we wandered around downtown until the 6pm mass. The Plaza de Armas has been decked out for Christmas for the past month, and we meandered down to the children's playground in the Alameda so the boys could run off some steam.



Clara decided that she had all the Christmas she could handle, and dozed off on the way to the park.

All in all, it was a great day, and I've loved having Mario's family here!