Christmas Clean

The rest of Christmas was pretty low key, compared to the turkey killing. My favorite part was watching Anita and Javier, two little kiddos that Hugo's mom has taken under her motherly wing, open gifts. Anita and Javier come from a very poor family and their mom just can't take care of them. They were full of parasites and thin little sticks when they walked into Martiza's door a couple of months ago. She has fatten them up since then.

Anita opened all her doll, clothes and slipper gifts and was in full smiles and amazement the whole night. Her smile was my gift.

On actual Christmas Day there was no x-mas cookies or eggnog, it was all cleaning, all day. The good news is that the house was sparkling by the end of the day as we retired to eat more sweet bread as our reward. We did stop for about an hour at 4pmish to eat our turkey lunch, which turned out to be delicious.

The first of the visitors arrived safely last night. Mom and Ester, after a treacherous journey of missing flights and snow storms, got here in one piece. Hugo and I picked them up, late - of course - true Peruvian style - at the airport. Our taxi rounded the curve to drop us off at the path to our house and the kiddos came running towards us. They saw my mom and Essie and stopped full in their tracks. More white people!

We had a relaxing and fun filled night of spanglish and hand gestures. It is like home having family here; I am ready to start this crazy week now that Bedard love has arrived!