ACID Braden

Well, we certainly had a most interesting Christmas this year.

The interesting bits began on Christmas Eve. We, the families that stayed here in Riyadh, had a little get together with a pot-luck and bonfire at one of the family’s villas. There were about ten kids running around, dads throwing a football and people enjoying some holiday cheer.  It was a really nice chance to celebrate the holiday together, when most of us are away from family.

We even had, courtesy of Charmagne and some design help from Alex, a pinata full of candy and clementines! The evening was a lot of fun and a really nice way get into the holiday spirit.

As the kids had been sick for a week, we left the party a little early, came home, got into pj’s and began to unwind from the exciting day.  And as the story goes, “When what to our wondering ears should we hear, but the knocking of a gloved fist upon our door, so dear.  We flew to the portal and flung it wide, and to our great surprise, there stood St. Nick with holiday wishes to tide.

You should have seen Isabel’s eyes!  She backed up a few steps and did a bit of a “Am I dreaming?” check before she let it sink in.  They were both a bit cautious, but you can see from the picture that their hesitation did not last long. We had a great little visit and it was really wonderful of Santa to stop in for a visit on such a busy night.

After our visitor left we got the kids, and their huge smiles, off to bed, made all the necessary arrangements for a good Christmas morning and we too turned in for a little sleep.

The next morning we managed to get up before the kids and get the tree light on, but that was about it before they were there and ready to go. We had a lot of fun opening lots of gifts that made it from both families back home (Thank You!) as well as stockings and Santa’s gift. It was extra interesting when Isabel’s doll (which, by the way, she guessed what it was before opening it, based on the doll accessories that were in her stocking) seemed to be bleating, yes, bleating.

As Charmagne and I were looking at each other with a “what the heck?” look there was a knock at the door. Now who would knock on someone’s door, even in Riyadh, at 7:00am on Christmas morning? Answer: Paul, Armando and a goat. It seems that Armando (our facilities manager) was helping Paul (our friend) get some wood for his bonfire pit when they passed a goat souq. Paul had the idea that it would be funny to take a goat around to different houses Christmas morning and as Armando was going to buy one for the workers at school as a thank you for all their hard work…we ended up with a goat in our yard Christmas morning.  You might be wondering how someone could even bring a goat onto a compound, but let’s just say that as Paul drove the school’s van through our check-points and onto the compound, the guards said, “Ah, it is Christmas.”  Needless to say, it was a really unusual and fun way to start Christmas day.

That night Paul and the rest of the Lefebvre family came over for dinner and a little gift exchange. We were to have had dinner at their villa but as it was being painted that day…remember, Christmas is not a day off here…they catered dinner at our house.  We all got the kids costumes, which was a HUGE hit, and they spent about 2 hours running around in their costumes and we had a lot of fun sitting around a fire and listening to the kids play. It was a really nice way to wrap up the day. While we all missed our families back home, our families here helped make this a wonderful Christmas.

Here are a few more random Christmas photos: click to enlarge

(see below for the goat video)

Thanks go to Paul for making the video and uploading it to YouTube!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 9:01 am and is filed under Alex and Charmagne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.