More Cochabamba Christmas

Here in Cochabamba Christmas Eve is generally a bigger celebration than Christmas Day. The tradition is that families eat a huge dinner at midnight, sooo we did the same thing at House 1 with the tias! We ate a tonnnn and then played ridiculous games (with penetencias,) until 4am.

I spent Christmas Eve with these guys:

Tia Techy

...Tia Consuelo...(she lost)

...and Katrina, too.

We got up bright and early to make panqueques for the tias who had to work the Christmas day shift.

Katrina, Jennifer, and I headed to House 2 to kick off Christmas morning with our older kids

We didn't get a picture with evvverybody, but most of House 2 is here:

These 4 siblings are headed back to live with their mom on Monday - so glad we got to spend Chrismas day together. (Their mom, too!)

Reading the Christmas Story

Accessorizing

Presents!

Thanks, Claire!!!

A few more presents at House 1 on Christmas evening (Thanks, Mom, for sending stickers!)

woooo!

A very special day with lots and lots of happy kiddos!

Christmas in Cochabamba

Merry Christmas from the Baby Home!

Can you imagine the chaos of trying to get a Christmas picture with these guys? Here someone decided it the pic would look better if we just covered up the baby.

But we think she's pretty fun to look at!

Here at Casa de Amor we celebrated Christmas nonstop for 2 days with the different homes. Christmas Eve this year felt more like Christmas Day with all of the festivities celebrating in House 1 with our babies. First off, we have a new volunteer who arrived on December 23rd from New Zealand, Katrina, so I now share a room with 2 Katrina's! She is super, and we started off our Christmas celebration in House 1 with a little project in the form of a birthday cake for J.C.!

The picture of the cake does NOT accurately portray the disaster that it was. Though there were tons of disasters throughout the baking process, the most evident problem was that after stacking the layers and icing them, one by one all. four. corners. of the cake fell off. Yes. We're that good.

But we could just blame the whole thing on her:

This 2 year old went missing for a few minutes during the festivities, and we found her chowing down in the kitchen by herself...completely unaware that she probably wasn't supposed to be eating the entire Christmas cake.

Christmas Dinner! Yep...another year that I'm stuck at the kids' table! :)

Baby Line-Up

Cake time!

Our new Katrina! She's an old pro - she worked here for 7 months about 2 years ago and is back visiting until February. So fun having her here! (These 2 seem to think so, at least.)

We got everyone all dressed up for our Christmas celebration!

Baby's 2nd mom, age 5.

The 3 amigos! These 2 year old girls all arrived at House 1 this Spring on the same day.

Sometimes we prefer to go commando underneath our Christmas best:

ha

Let the chaos begin! Giving our presents!

wahoooo! Trucks! Barbies!

We love our baby dolls...

...

...

We got some pictures of all of the sibling groups today, too. Sidenote - the twin on the left here is wearing a slightly different outfit than the rest of the bunch. As we lined up kiddos on the stairs for pics, we quickly realized that he had a VERY dirty diaper...also a very leaky diaper...because as soon as he got put down, he made a mess ALL OVER himself, the stairs, the tias, and some of the other kids, too! Great timing, buddy!

Someone's excited!

Sweet sisters

Typical. The 2 year old twins.

Both of them smiling at the same time? A Christmas miracle right here.

What do the following 5 babies have in common??? (Besides matching outfits!)

They're all WALKING!!!!!!!

Just over the past 2 weeks or so, ALL of our babies (minus the 3 month old,) have started taking steps! SO exciting and so funny to see some of these guys waddle around - they think they are big stuff! Personally, I am crazy excited about the little guy in the picture above - he's our 2 year old with cerebral palsy and just this Monday started taking his first steps. We've been working hard walking around as much as possible with him over the past few months, and it is so fun to watch him. He has too much fun standing up on his own and moving around a little bit. We've still got work to do, but this is the best Christmas present ever.

A huge, huge, huge THANK YOU to my sweet grandmother, Mrs. Ford, and friends who made ALL of the Christmas outfits for our babies!  I know that these ladies worked so hard. It was worth it - our kids look precious!

Hope your day was just as merry as ours!