Christmas morning was a big hit, as always. Santa found his way to our house and the kids were excited with their gifts. Dyllan loves her scooter, Dane his Lego, Deagan his Playmobil, and Danyon his Strider bike. Luckily, we had pretty good weather that Dyllan and Danyon could ride around the yard whooping and hollering. Dan loves his new bike. Grandma thinks she likes her new noise canceling headphones--she has yet to try them out. I loved all my gifts that I was spoiled with.
We started a new tradition of not having a huge Christmas dinner on Christmas. I loved not having to worry about another dinner. We just enjoyed our day. We spent time visiting with family, playing with new toys, and sleeping. Danyon for sure didn't want to have his nap, but finally succumbed after I promised him that his toys would still be here when he woke up. A good time was had by all. We did do a Christmas dinner on boxing day. We invited the missionaries and Papa J. We had a good dinner and everything turned out great. I think from now on, I will just skip Christmas dinner and do Boxing Day dinner. It seemed to work out really well.
We got an email from our cousins in Hungary, that their daughter was getting baptized on Sunday. We decided to head to Gyor, Hungary, for the baptism. The baptism turned out to be full of surprises. Dyllan was asked to sing a song, with a group as part of the program, and two of the talks were in English, so we could understand some of it. It was nice to see our cousins again. We decided to stay the night in Gyor, and then head to a hot springs pool on Monday. We spent Monday walking around Gyor, a quaint little town, but very cold. After chiseling the icicles off of our noses, we headed to the hot springs. We spent the afternoon swimming and sliding. The pools were full of minerals, so we should be healed of any ailments we had! However, they were not hot enough to melt off all the extra fat we picked up during the holidays.
Speaking of cold, we finally got some snow! We had enough to make some snowballs and a snowman. We've now had more snow here in Vienna than we did all last winter. The only bad part was that Dan couldn't go out on his bike and Dyllan and Danyon were also out of luck with their scooter and bike.
We decided to take it easy on New Years Eve. We were advised not to head downtown because the crowds usually got pretty wild. People throw glass from apartments (I think that smashing plates is a tradition), and the downtown is covered with a few inches of broken glass. Also, people are not very considerate of others. We had a friend who got hit with a firework rocket in the back and his coat started on fire. I didn't think that was an appropriate atmosphere to take the kids into. But, we got invited to a friends house for a small dinner party. Our friends told us of some Austrian New Year's traditions. First off, they have these small metal figures that you can buy in train stations and other random stores around Vienna. You melt these figures in a spoon over a candle. When you get it down to liquid, you then pour it into cold water. From the new shape of the metal, you can predict your future for the year. Also, the Austrians jump into the new year, by jumping off of furniture at the stroke of midnight. Then they promptly begin to dance a waltz. You waltz and kiss for the first moments of the new year. Of course, alcohol is heavily involved in most celebrations (grocery carts had more liquor in them than groceries for the entire month of December), but we left it out of ours. Fireworks are everywhere. We had one of the best fireworks views, as we were driving through the downtown just shortly before midnight. The fireworks over the Danube were beautiful! It sounded like a war zone here in Vienna. Fireworks were everywhere with booms echoing off all the buildings. It was definitely something to experience!
Happy New Year!!!!
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