Christmas

Christmas morning has changed a little every year, as the kids have gotten older and maybe a little more into gifts.  This year was the first year N really "got" it.

Dead sprint into the living room.

Z was a bit more reserved.  Turns out, she thought Santa would be waiting for her.  She wasn't pleased that he had just dropped some toys and run. (Which is funny, because she refused every opportunity to meet the big guy this year).

I can't believe he didn't stay.

G spent most of the morning crawling around the floor with this (old) brush.

The gift opening continued after church.  Illness prevented me from sewing their dresses this year, so they wore last year's, which still fit (but just barely for Z).

G did get a new outfit.

S Pozhdestvom Christovym!

Chichilaki - the Georgian Christmas tree

Christos Rozhdayetsya!

While the traditional evergreen Christmas tree (or New Year's tree, as is more commonly practiced in this part of the world) is still popular here, Georgians have their own unique Christmas tree tradition - the chichilaki.  Chichilakis are pruned hazelnut brances that are shaved so that thin pieces of wood hang down in a cascade of spirals that is said to represent the beard of St. Basil the Great:

Because of the link to the saint, chichilakis were banned during the Soviet period.

They are typically decorated with berries, according to my reading, and the ones I have seen range from eight inches high to taller than me:

 

They are meant to be burned on the day before the Epiphany (because Christmas is 12 days long, people!).  We plan to try to save ours to display it again in the future.  Think packing peanuts will work?

And to all a good night

Holiday happenings

After months and months of sticking around the house on the weekends due to massive and cumulative sleep deprivation (Gabriel will be a year old in just six weeks ... at some point he has to figure out how to sleep through the night, right?), well, we finally decided that enough was enough and we needed to get out.

So on New Year's night we drove downtown to see the lights ... of which I somehow neglected to get any good photos.  But we did capture the girls' first cotton candy experience.  It was great until they dropped it.  Ah well, never too young to learn to hold on tight, right?

Then on Thursday we headed up to Gudauri, the ski resort about two hours north of Tbilisi.  There wasn't enough snow on the bunny slope to teach the kids to ski, but we did a little sledding and then rode the gondola up where there was more snow and a few skiers - and a killer view of thick cloud cover floating slightly below the peaks.  Natasha worked on her snow-angel technique.

Yesterday we went to a New Year's kids' performance of Zolushka (Cinderella) at a theater downtown.  The girls were enraptured.  We will try to hit some more performances like this before we leave town.  They are just at the age to start enjoying them.

Then today we made a gingerbread house.  I had actually baked the pieces a couple weeks ago, but today we assembled it.  It is not structurally sound and I fully expect that it will have collapsed by tomorrow morning, but the girls had fun.