Feliz Navidad...

This past Sunday we threw a Christmas party for all of our neighbors. We had so much fun! Before the Shindig began at 3 (which it actually started at 3 and people showed up according to american time....quite unheard of and shocking to say the least). But anyways, we invited the kids to come early and help decorate cookies. For one they didn't know what a cookie really was and i'm sure didn't know what we were talking about but all they knew was that their April Deedee and May Deedee asked them to come early to do something special! I found an eggless sugar cookie recipe that turned out to be GREAT!! THe kids helped decorate and even had races to see who had the most and whose was the best. It was quite humorous.
All you need to please these ladies is some cookies and really loud punjabi music. THey can entertain themselves! We learned quite a few new moves and probably laughed off more calories than danced them off. I don't think i have laughed this hard in quite a while. I taught one of the girls how to do the Pretzel (a swing dance) earlier in the week so we tried it out to some indian music. It can work but its just not the same i must say.

But first i would like to introduce you to one of craziest aunties....she is the same age as my mom but loves the attention of dancing for us. We have had many of dance parties with her just because. You might be wondering and thinking ohhh your poor auntie has fallen down - you should be helping her up and not taking pictures..... Oh no my friends - this is the cause for aches in our sides from laughing. She hasn't fallen - this is one of her famous dance moves.

For refeshments, we made some excellent apple cider to drink with the newly decorated cookies. THEN we introduced them to the amazing phenomenon known as chips and queso. Everything was a hit except for the apple cider. WHO KNEW?!! Maybe one or two people liked it and actually drank it!!! How can this be?? its apple cider!! we decided to look at the silver lining and think about how much apple cider was left for us - YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Maybe in most other counties, one would think that if your guests stopped dancing to knit then your party probably wasn't the geat humdinger of a party as you thought. Oh no, friends this is not the case here in the land of Nimda*.

I would also like to introduce you to our Auntie ji - she is our landlords wife. He loves her so much. Uncle ji came by after the party to see pictures... after a few pictures of not seeing her, he asked - where is my lady?? Then we came to the ones with her in it and he just laughed with delight and said "Yes! this is my madam. She has a good personality, no?"

So afterwards, we told the Christmas story using an interactive nativity scene where there are 7 boxes... each box must be opened in number order before finding out the surpise in box number 7. Each box contains a character so we had the different kids open them and set them up in the manger scene. Then we would follow it by telling the part of the story that had to do with that particular character. And then our friend Atmum* would read it in Hindi for us. Here is a picture right before we got started.... I copied down the Roman Road in Hindi and had it taped to our walls so that when we were done, a volunteer could read the passages in Hindi. We explained why we give gifts at Chistmas because of the ultimate gift that DAD has given us. Atmum* translated for us. So then we brought out our gifts for them. THANKS to my mom and her wonderful SS class, we gave each of the ladies a Yankee candle votive with holder and the kids nailpolish, bindees and/or bacelets. It was so fun watching their faces as they opened their gifts. Here in Nimda* you can't buy candles with a good scent - you can buy all the incense you can take but no scented candles - it is a sad thing.