Christmas in Brussels

This year was year that Ben and I have had our own little Christmas. Usually we would just split Christmas Eve and Christmas Day between our families but since we're college student's in Europe we really couldn't pull that off this year. I thought I would be really sad about it but having Christmas with just us was really special. We missed our families and friends of course but it was a really quiet and peaceful Christmas. As new parents we got our first taste of Christmas shopping for a child and now I understand why my mom always bought WAY TOO MANY presents for us at Christmas. There's something special about buy a gift for your own little one. You want to give your child everything she could possible want and you definitely try to. But, like all babies, Brooklyn was more interested in the wrapping paper and boxes than the actual present but c'est la vie!

We started a few Isaac family traditions this year. Ben and I actually read the entirety of Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" which lived up to the expectations of awesomeness that it had built up. The book, like always, is better than any of the movies and the best part is that it actually talks about Christianity in the book. I thought it was really awesome. I was hoping that it would solve our yearly Christmas debate between "Scrooge" (1970s musical) and "The Muppet Christmas Carol" (1992 musical) but for some reason Ben still thinks that "Scrooge" is the better film. What can ya do?

We also had our first Isaac Christmas feast. We went all out and bought a turkey, non-frozen because they don't freeze anything here but who's complaining when it comes to cooking a turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans and an Italian Christmas Cake (they don't have Libby's Pumpkin here so my pumpkin pie plan was foiled). Needless to say we cooked WAY too much food and were eating leftovers for about two weeks after the fact.

It was a great Christmas though. We read the story of Christ's birth, watched the Christmas devotional and even substituted the Grand Plaza Christmas lights for Temple Square (one of my favorite Christmas events).We didn't have stocking but we did have 5 bars of Belgian chocolate which made up for it and even snuck a Belgian waffle in during our visit to the Grand Plaza. We missed our families but still got to Skype with them and even got to talk to Mike on his mission (something both of us were worried we'd miss out on). Bottom line Christmas in Belgium rocked, though next year I think we'll make about one-fifth of the food :)