Christmas Eve...

This was most interesting and culturally enriching Christmas Eve I've had in a long time, if not ever. It starts with me getting up and eating cornflakes, and it ends with our yearly tradition of bread and cheese (Mary and Joseph style) on the living room floor. The interesting part comes in between these. :)

Yesterday the ward missionaries came over. One is from Tonga and the other is from Chicago. They were there to make a test call, since the Tongan elder is making his annual phone call from our house today. Anyway, they ended up staying at our house most of the day, playing ping-pong in the backyard and serenading us on the guitar and the ukulele. Our Tongan elder even played us a song he wrote for his girlfriend.

My family is really good friends with a Mexican family in our ward, and I didn't know this until last night, but it's a Mexican tradition to make tamales on Christmas Eve. After having their boys over the whole day to hang out with my little brother, they invited us over to learn to make tamales. We ended up making dozens and dozens of tamales with them and taking them home with us. We even got to speak a little Spanish. :)

Christmas Eve ended with the usual tradition. We read the Christmas story in the Bible and sang "Silent Night," complete with random harmonies everyone made up on the spot (this is normal at my house). We stayed up and talked a while, I wrapped my present for Madelyn, and then I went to sleep.