Our Christmas

So, here it comes - my yearly christmas recapitulation.

We celebrated our actual Christmas Eve one day early, on December 23, as to keep up with our tradition - doing something really extraordinairy together as a family, and also to have more time to spend with Tim´s parents, before they went to London.
So, our annual Christmas family goodie was going to a theme park, and that really was nice. We got up early in the morning, and then spend the whole day riding rollercoasters, watching 3D cinema in shaky seats and rolling around in crazy houses with warped mirrors and turning tables.
A good thing about visiting a theme park on a rainy December day just before Christmas is that there are relatively few people around, so you don´t really have to queue up and basically have the whole place to yourselves.

We came home really late at night, everyone tired and frozen, and then we sent the kids upstairs, either to dress in their finery or just to chill with a good book, while we set the table:

We had Raclette as our fine Christmas meal - just in case you don´t know what that is, since it´s pretty European, you can find a decent explanation here. We went a little easy on the cheese and had more veggies to roast on the grill instead, and it was warm and communicative and smelled delicious. I made a Thai dip that was so hot nobody could eat it, but I also made a spanish dip that was really, really lovely.

So - when everyone was full, and tired, and sleepy, that´s when we brought out the presents.
Ronnie got books...

...and Eva got a ukulele and sheet music for her favourite Taylor Swift songs:

...and the boys... the boys got lots of smurfs. They love smurfs at the moment, which is a shame, because I find smurfs really dumb, but however... they love them.
So we spend a lovely night playing the ukulele, reading books and playing with smurfs, and then, the twins were allowed to sleep the whole night under the tree:

Okay, they did wake up at half past 3 in the morning to play with their new smurfs, but I guess that was part of the deal all along :)

And then, in the morning, we cleaned up the mess and headed to Münster, to repeat the whole eating-and-then-giving-presents thing all over again - just that Tim´s parents are a lot more generous with both food and presents than we are, as, I suppose, all grandparents are.

When we went for a walk that day, we found a tiny hedgehog on the middle of the walk.
You know, there´s a hedgehog living in our garden, he´s been coming out each spring, spending the whole summer eating the apples that fall from our trees and the rests the cat leaves, but then he goes into proper hibernation. And "our" hedegehog is a really fat guy.
This one, the one we found, was tiny, it easily fit on my hand, and obviously it was confused, or it wouldn´t have been out on a walkway on midday in midwinter.
So... well... my animal friendly family picked it up to save it.
Sigh.
We did a lot of googling. We meausured and weighed it, and read all the literature about hedegehogs Ronja could provide. We also called a vet, and the animal shelter. So, now we know that the little guy we found is to small to go into hibernation, probably because it was born too late in fall, and we know what hedgehogs like to eat, and, believe it or not, my husband makes him eggs with oatmeal and minced meat, every morning.

First we had him in this box:

...and he only had Tim´s hat to cuddle in, but by now, we have a gigantic paper box in our basement, and the hedgehog also got a proper little hut to hide in, and my family is allready organizing a proper cage for him to stay in, until he´s fat enough/the weather is warm enough to let him, slowly, loose into the wild again. Where he, after all, belongs.
But right now, this is a big rescue mission.
And I think especially for Ronja and Miro, this was by far the best Christmas present. They need to learn that a wild animal doesn´t belong to them, or to anybody but itsself, but they are actually very gentle, and not too pushy, so I think it´s okay, and I hope this project goes well.

Oh, and to finish off our perfect Christmas...
Tim and I went clubbing last night. Like, smoking mango-flavoured shishas in a really hip shisha bar in Düsseldorf, and dancing Salsa in a crazy flirt bar, even putting on flirt stickers, and dancing to really bad House music in a bar called Papagayo, among all kinds of sweet couples.

So, yep, our Christmas was really lovely.
Rollercoasters, raclette, a hedgehog, a ukulele and a gaybar - what else do you need for Christmas?

Ah - I know - some clay!

The twins got some clay from grandma, and I had lots of fun with it, too.

So... how was your Christmas? Who did you visit? What did you give, or get, and where did you go? If you´d like to, I´d love to read about it in the comments!