Xmas Eve/La Nochebuena

Peace, Joy and Light...those were the angel cards we got on Christmas Eve! We enjoy drawing them daily from a bowl held high as a way to bring positive focus into our lives and to remind us of individual angelic qualities that are always present with us. They are enjoyed even more during the holiday season.

On Christmas Eve in the evening our tradition is to allow Mozart to open one gift under the tree. DaVinci took her to the park where she had fun playing with some friends and they had a little picnic (using some new fun containers that just arrived from Grandma) while I wrapped gifts. Mozart LOVES to make things so we decided the one about making ornaments was the perfect one for her to open.

We love our gorgeous angel that sits on top of our main tree at home, but of course did not bring it with us, nor did we want to spend the money (or waste the space) on buying another one here. So we decided we would make one this year.I started it with an old water bottle and some aluminum foil and Mozart and DaVinci fine tuned it until it looked quite cute and fitting. Then Mozart found a bunch of jumbled thread in a drawer and somehow DaVinci helped her fulfill her idea and make some unique ornaments out of that one night as a project. We all love to make something out of nothing and Mozart does endless creative projects.

Most of Mozart’s presents come from Mom and Dad and we wrap them. They usually appear quite late like this as Mozart is the type who loves to savor food, but does not do well with gifts as temptations. Santa Claus (Papa Noel as they call him here) brings small gifts that are unwrapped to add to the pile in the morning. He fills the stocking too with sweets and small toys which is one of her favorite parts. We were also thrilled that we got 3 of our boxes from home to add under the tree which arrived the very last day
the post office was opened before Christmas. We have another two that should arrive soon.

I made a yummy Salmon & veggies meal while they had fun creating some felt ornaments for the tree (which I captured on video and film). We sang Christmas carols and recited “The night before Christmas”. We have been on a Christmas stories and poems reading jag and similar dvd bent. We still have not watched all of our Christmas dvds. Last night we watched the old Laurel and Hardy classic “March of the Wooden Soldiers” and tonight it will be “The Muppet Christmas Carol” and “Doctor Zhivago” will probably be our Christmas movie or maybe “The Sound of Music”. We will be doing lots of catch up with our dvd collection and looking forward to everything from “Chicago” to “Spirited Away” to
“Home Alone”.

We are very blessed that our church has broadcasts on the internet for webclasses and special events like Christmas Eve that people watch and participate in from around the world. We have been to some of these in person in Los Angeles, in homes and centers in places like NYC and SF and have hosted some of these events in our home on a large screen TV with family and friends. So it is a very important part of our Christmas Eve celebrations. http://www.msia.org/live/archives.php

Often we have gone to a midnight mass after watching it with friends or sometimes we all have a meal together with friends and in recent years Mozart has also gotten to light Hanukkah candles and sing Hebrew songs with friends of ours who hosted with their children who celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. It starts at three in the afternoon in California, but since we are in Spain which is nine hours later, it started at Midnight here. So we skipped midnight mass with our village neighbors and had our own little celebration with friends from our church via the internet. It was thrilling to still be part of it, this far away. We even saw Mozart’s Godfather and some of her friends and the hosts’ son Max was born just months before she was and they played as babies together. There is a community in Madrid (as well as London, Paris, Sweden, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Canada, Russia and Australia etc), but as far as we know, we were the only ones watching in Andalusia!