Merry Christmas

 On Christmas morning we slept in late - again.  This sleeping in thing has become a habit.  Well, let's be clear it was 8am, so not really "late" but late for us.  Marty is typically very much a morning person and up by 6am even on the weekends.  But this last trip to Seattle knocked him out as he was working nearly the entire week he was home. He didn't have any jet lag really so sleeping "late" seems a nice trade off.
We got up and shortly after the kids woke up.  I popped a baked oatmeal with blueberries in the oven to bake while they opened their stocking stuffers.  These were the physically smallest gifts but not the smallest financially. I had been looking at buying Josie Hamilton tickets to see in London but we just couldn't make the times work.  The show ran only through mid April when I started looking and our holidays from school and Marty's work were just not aligning, even for a long weekend away.  A few days before Christmas I got an alert that the show extended its run through 3 weekend of May which did it for us.

Memorial Day would work well.  While the Kitcheners were here we bought 8 tickets all seated together so not only did we have a super awesome gift for the kids (Benjamin has been into musicals nearly as much as Josie of late) but we have another adventure with the Kitcheners on the books.
They opened all of their other stocking stuffers and we saved the tickets for the end.  Josie was thrilled.  We weren't sure how she would react because she knows how much I love to travel and she has put a foot down on nearly any future trip (clearly this will have to change!!) But she was SUPER excited.  Benjamin too but he still preferred his Google Home over the tickets.  Oh and his

Before the movies we took Mogli for a long walk
We don't leave him home alone much but before we
do we always make sure he has had a chance to get
his energy out.  

Risk game which we broke in at the end of the day on Christmas.
After we ate and cleaned up, etc we got ready to go to the movies. A movie gift certificate was also wrapped up for the kids.  There is a huge theater here with mostly English movies. Or OV - meaning Original Version.  Most of the Theaters play the American movies dubbed over with German.  Not nearly as much fun for me and Benjamin.  Marty and Josie would be fine, probably.

We headed downtown and were a bit early.  We didn't know how crowded it would be.  I know it is often a thing in America but not as much here.  Funny enough while living in the States I always wondered "Who really goes to the movie on Christmas day""  How lame I thought.  Don't they have family?  Well, living over here has taught me many things and one very big one is that a lot of people don't live near their extended families year round.  And as much as I would rather be with our family at Christmas this has become our Christmas tradition as we did it last year too.  The kids love it as we buy the "family pack" which means 3 large bags of popcorn and 4 large drinks (who really needs that much pop??) for just an extra 10 Euro.  Total for 4 movie tickets, 3 large bags of popcorn and 4 large pops was 38 Euro

(about 42 USD) so I would say movies are cheaper here?  I haven't been to a movie in the states in forever!!  We saw Jumanji - The Next Level and it was pretty good.  We had all just watched the first one together a few weeks ago on a weekend in the house.
When we got home no one was really all that hungry due to the junk food so we just had left overs and played Risk - for HOURS.  I had forgotten how long that game takes!!  But Benjamin was in heaven.  All in all a quiet, nice and cozy Christmas for the 4 of us.