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This is how our first Christmas away from home started… bright and early on Christmas morning.

Jake: Daddy! Wake up… is it daytime yet?
Me: Jake, yes, it’s daytime.  Today is Christmas!
Jake: No it’s not.
Me: Sure it is… why do you say that?
Jake: There’s no snow.  Where’s all the snow?

So, after a little explaining about how it doesn’t always snow at Christmas and a short lived but seriously disappointed Jake, our first Christmas in Lima was off to a roaring start.  Well… actually, per tradition in Latin America, our Christmas actually started the night before.  You see, the custom here is that the big deal happens on Christmas Eve.  Everybody stays up late and at midnight the festivities max out.  That’s when you open presents here… if the kids couldn’t stay awake that late, then you wake them up to open presents and generally join in the craziness.  Here lots of people have a Christmas tree, but just as common is a nativity scene.   It’s pretty common to wait until midnight to put the baby Jesus in the manger.  There are a lot of particular traditions about Christmas here that we find interesting but we pretty much decided to just have a normal American style Christmas.  Except for one major part that just can’t be ignored… the fireworks.  Yep, apparently somewhere between waking up kids and plopping the little golden fleeced porcelain baby Jesus in the little manger filled with easter grass every single person in Lima goes outside, or maybe on the roof, and lights off industrial grade fireworks.  No joke… Industrial. Grade.  Think 4th of July show in your town from every single block in a city of 8.5 million people.  Crazy.  Here’s a short video of the view from our rooftop… be sure and turn your volume all the way up to get closer to the real effect… it was LOUD.

Lima Christmas 2009 from theyoakums on Vimeo.

Ok, so after that settled down we went to bed and got on with our normally scheduled Christmas.  We really missed our families but we had a really good and relaxing day with just the four of us.  We just opened presents first thing and then Stacy fixed us some tasty french toast and then ate leftovers from our Christmas Eve lunch we had with our team the day before.  This was really the first Christmas that Jake could really appreciate and our first time to deal with things like Santa Claus.  Well, he’d been counting down the days and was so excited.  He got his first bike… a pretty awesome little blue bike that was way overpriced and then a little $5 siren attached to handle bars… that sealed the deal right there.  He was stoked.  Not to be outdone by big brother, Derek got a little tricycle.  The usual for two little boys topped off the Christmas loot… balls, toy trains, dinosaurs, cars with race tracks… stuff like that.  Sometimes it’s really great having two little boys… ok, pretty much always.

Jake with a new for real deal digital camera, just like Dad.

It’s really been great though… We realized in hind sight that we had sold off too many of their toys before leaving the country and they’ve been missing them.  The last couple of days have been nice… a lot less whining to watch TV and a lot more of happily playing like a 3 year old should.  All in all, it was a great Christmas… couldn’t have been much better without having all of our family with us.