Thursday, December 24, 2009 - Christmas Eve

A little Dutch history for you folks:  Sinterklaas is Dutch for Santa Claus and is celebrated on St. Nicholas Day, which December 6th.  So, Sinterklaas had already come to all the kids earlier in the month.  While they do celebrate Christmas Day, the majority of the presents happen on the 6th and the 25th is reserved for celebrating family (with food, of course).

Today, we got up and packed to head to the house in Friesland, which is sort of in the middle of nowhere.  We would be there for 4 days and 3 nights and needed to pack up one suitcase for the time being as we didn't want to lug our huge luggage.  We were to leave at 1pm, so we were packed and ready to go.  With a group this size, punctuality never really happens, so we ended up leaving at around 2pm or so.  We headed on our road trip in a caravan of about 6 cars full of people, luggage, and food.

Ed is our driver for this trip!Our saving grace!Andy and family in front of usEd hasn't driven one of this in about 2 cars!

All three cars are filled with family and there are more behind us!

Yes, we are driving a Ford in Holland.  Weird!

We stopped for a photo op along they way to prove that the Americans from CA and AZ have seen real snow!

The snowball fights have begun!  Theresa is hiding behind Andy because Ed is getting ready to fire!

Carrie, Marsha, me, and Renee


After about an hour and a half, we arrived at "de schaopedobbe," which would become our home for the next 4 days.  Ed called it "scooby dooby" because he couldn't pronounce it at first.

We took a tour of our new temporary home.  Here is a look:

After we got settled in, we had dinner.  The Dutch folks cooked for us the whole weekend!  What a treat for us!!  For dinner, we had frites (fries) and croquettes.  I was excited to have frite sauce again, which is sort of like mayonnaise and is everywhere and so yummy!  Below is Carrie at the kids table with an adult beverage, which was pretty funny.

After dinner, we visited for awhile while the kids played.  In the midst of this visiting, different kinds of alcohol are brought out and we all try them to see what we like.  Of course, there are the bottles that we recognize, but there are also bottles we have never seen.  I tried this drink that was very good when sipped, and I mean sipped!  It was called, "Cuarenta y tres" and was sweet and almondy.  Imagine finding a drink that has a Spanish name in Holland.  Here it is:

I also drank a lot of tea and continue to do so.  It's so much better here!!

At this point, the kids were still playing and Marsha and I had not wrapped their gifts yet.  We went upstairs to track down some wrapping paper and tools to take care of this task.  Luckily, Mary (sister in law/Andy's wife) had wrapping paper, scissors, and tape.  So, Marsha and I took care of this before the kids went upstairs to go to bed.  Once this was done, we headed back downstairs to do some more visiting and watching kids play.  Here is a breakdown of the kids:

Shirley and Rudi have Inez (5) and Anouk (4)
Sandra and Wil have Quentin (11) and Pascale (4)
Theresa and Ewald have Victor (21) and Christian (20) - they weren't playing, I just didn't want to leave them out.
Donna and Jean-Pierre have Kim (9)
Wendy and Erik have Noah (10) and Carmen (7)
Fabian has Tara (3)

Victor is on the left, and Christian is on the right and they are looking over Geoff's (our nephew) shoulder.

Tara

Inez, Pascale, Kim, Anouk, Noah, Carmen, and Quentin in the back.  Poor guy is out numbered!

Finally, the kids went to bed and the Dutch folks prepared their game for us.  All we knew is that there was a pile of presents in the middle of the floor and we did not have a clue:

So, the game finally started and it turned out to be similar to the normal white elephant game that most workplaces have during the holidays.   This had a few twists though.  There were good gifts in the pile as well as gag gifts.  It was fun to see what people picked but, knowing how these games worked, you probably would not end up with what you opened.  There were a few gifts that were more popular than others....one was a lamp that could only be used in Holland because of the plug and the other was a fancy pair of underwear.  As you can see, fun was had by all in the pictures!

The first picture is funny because all the people who ended up with ski hats live in the desert.  Rudi (next to Ed) ended up opening the other hot item, which he is so fashionably wearing as a hat as well.  The lovely lamp had a special place in Andy's heart because it ended up following him everywhere!  You see, after all the gifts were opened, there was a die that was rolled and each number had an instruction.  Some of the instructions were to switch presents between two people, take something that you wanted, move to the left, move to the right, steal something from someone sitting two people to your left or right, or the most popular option (#5) of everyone getting up and moving one space over.  Somehow, the magic lamp followed Andy everywhere!  In the end, the last twist was that all the gifts were for us.  I was excited because I ended up with a little box for thee (tea) that I wanted to find and buy to keep my tea at work as well as different boxes of tea and some yummy chocolates.  My favorite item was the magnets that have universal signs on them (gag gift).  This game took forever but was so much fun!!  Here is my stash:

After the game, we hung out for awhile when another cart of food was brought out.  Below, you will notice the time.....this is not an uncommon thing in this family.

In the meantime, someone put a movie in and we ended up watching Firewall, a movie I had not seen before.   Otherwise, I would have gone to bed.  The movie ended at around 3:15am when we headed upstairs to go to bed.  Marsha and I walked into our room and just about died!  The heater had never really come on and it was an icebox!!  We were trying to figure out how we were going to sleep like this...at one point, she talked about going downstairs and sleeping on the couches but we knew the kids would be up early because of the presents under the tree, so that was not a good idea.  We had an empty room next to us, so we went in there to see how the temperature was in there.  I think the room was smaller and had two bunk beds as well as one single bed in it, so there was not a lot of room, which is why I think it was warmer in there.  Once the heater started working, it was a lot warmer than the other room.  Here is what we called our new room:

By the time we decided to just move rooms, it was about 4am.  Tomorrow was going to be rough!  What a great Christmas Eve though!!  The only time I did miss home was when I realized that I was missing Aunt Betty's famous seafood dinner.  I know it's only one year, but boy, did I miss that food!!  I will make up for it next year!!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas Eve!  I was happy to experience it in a different country with a huge family that is loads of fun!!