Christmas in El Salvador

I haven't posted in months it appears and it's way overdue. So much has happened, many things in my life have changed, but still remain the same. I want to start by talking about our first Christmas in El Salvador.
Christmas is celebrated in most Latin America on the 24th, which is Christmas Eve to us Americans. I insisted the kids be at our house so that we could share this special day with them. My MIL and I did the cooking. One of our aunts had given us a turkey the month before and it was planned to be our Christmas dinner. So Ana cooked that in the afternoon with veggies and a tomato sauce, very Salvadoran which I didn't care for too much. I made mashed potatoes and gravy which were phenomenal and my MIL loved! I also made a green pepper and tomato salad that was very tasty as well. While dinner was finishing cooking we decided to open presents. Liliana was very grateful for all the new underwear and socks she received. But seriously, she was really grateful! It was so cute, she kept saying Gracias over and over. The kids were excited too. I'm not sure if their presents are usually all wrapped up like I did. Usually they just get a big box shipped from the States they all go through.

After presents we had dinner all together which doesn't normally happen so that was nice.
The goal of the evening was to stay up until midnight when the fireworks and celebrations start happening. I don't normally drink coffee, but had several cups that evening so help me stay awake past 8! We drank wine and chatted with the neighbors. Aunt Dominga came with her family around nine and that was fun. Her husband really likes to drink with us so we had a lot of fun with him listening to music and laughing while the kids lit off fireworks in the street. Now all this would have been more fun if I could actually partake in the conversations. Eduardo loves to talk when he drinks and he translated some, butI still end up lost. It was a good night though. I stayed up until midnight saw the fireworks and went to bed with Liliana. She had passed out around 9pm outside in the hammock amongst all the noise!

The next day, our ACTUAL Christmas, not much happened. the family had slept over and so there were lots of people still hanging around. Eduardo had stayed up until 3am or so and we were recovering from the night before. It was actually a pretty relaxed day. I can't say I missed having christmas in the States, it was more of a feeling of wishing I could start some family traditions, but there's always more time for that. Liliana and I started our first one of making banana muffins together. I've decided every Christmas Eve she and I will make batches of muffins. We made 4 dozen this time and it was so fun to do together!