Merry Christmas!

We had a great first Christmas in Seoul. The kids were so excited about all of their gifts!

Kennedy had been asking for a bed for Baby Jane and Santa delivered. She was quite surprised that Santa delivers presents made in Korea when you live in Korea. Who knew?

Cade was equally excited about his golf clubs. Without uncles around to actually open the toys as they unwrap them, they plowed through the unwrapping pretty quickly.

We were very blessed to have our friends and family send us so many packages from the States!

Remember how I felt guilty about the lack of toys the kids had when we first moved here?

I definitely don't have to worry about that anymore!

And Eric and I had been getting pretty tired of the small number of books we'd brought with us (about 20), but we scored on books this Christmas, too!

And many, many thanks for the kids' clothes and pajamas! They are so expensive here!

Aunt Nancy could tell we needed more cookie cutters if we're going to keep baking the way we have been!

Eric and I are really excited to finally have our own Bananagrams game!

The book from Uncle Alan and Aunt Molly was a huge hit! They love it and it brought tears to my eyes hearing voices from home!

The caramel rolls turned out perfectly even with the adjustments I had to make.

And I decided to make persimmon salsa for an appetizer. It was delicious! I will be making more today, so I'll take a picture later. Let me just say that avocado, cilantro, black beans, and lemon juice made me feel like home and the persimmon was the perfect accompaniment. Yum!

We had some friends over in the afternoon and the kids had a great time playing with all of their new toys all day! We had bulgogi, rice, and salad for dinner. Not your traditional Christmas fare, but we don't very often have anything traditional for Christmas dinner anyway, so that's okay. Embracing the Korean traditions makes cooking a lot less stressful!

Some friends of our sent us a wonderful care package of some of the more "traditional" foods, but it didn't quite get here in time, so we'll enjoy it for New Years dinner instead. The only thing we were missing for Christmas was our family. It has been great to get to Skype with so many of you! We love you and miss you! Merry Christmas!