The first few hours of Christmas Day were spent watching my nine month-old niece, Isabell, figuring out how to open her presents. She was slightly confused as to why, every time she opened up some new squeezable-lights-up-and-makes-noise-while-teaching-shapes/letters/numbers/animals-Baby-Einstein gift, we'd take it away and put a new wrapped present in front of her. She continued this while her uncle spent twenty minutes putting together her new lights-up-and-makes-noise-playhouse-thingy and then spent another twenty minutes playing with it himself.
Me and Isabell. In the back is the playhouse thingy
Isabell tired of opening gifts only halfway through (and was finding the wrapping paper more entertaining anyway), so it was time for the grown-ups to open their gifts. This would be the first year I got socks and underwear and was really happy about it (they just don't make them the same in Ukraine). Just goes to show perspective is everything.
Happy to be full of tasty food. Happy to climb without five layers and a ski cap. Happy just to be with my family. Much as I enjoy Ukraine, I've missed America and it's going to be hard to go back...
Working a lot on a Ukraine video. It's turned out to be a bigger project than I realized, now pushing the 45 minute mark and that's shaving things down to the bare minumum. I'll have it up on the net in a few days.