Santa, Santa, Santa, how you never let us down:)

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!  As you can all imagine, we feel very blessed and had the best Christmas ever.  Since we arrived home on Dec 4th, Sha has been counting the days on her calendar for when Santa will arrive. She understood he came down the chimney and she had to be sleeping in order for him to deliver her gifts.

We did our annual Christmas Eve dinner at my mom's that included the 7 fish dishes (yum in the tum tum).  We were not sure how Sha was going to do with this meal and it was difficult to explain to her that we had multiple dishes so she could not fill up on the first one.  To our delight she liked everything and paced herself quite nicely. Of course while my parent's were cooking she pulled her stool right up to the stove and insisted on helping.  My parents have instantly turned into fun, relaxed grandparents which is really nice to see their relationship forming.  My dad, although very nervous when she is around the stove, let her help fry the fish with him and my mother after dinner let Sha put makeup on her and Aunt Joan.  Oooh yes, Sha met Aunt Joan and as AJ always does with all her nieces and nephews, she has her laughing in about 5 minutes after she met her.

On our way home that night, I sat in the back seat with Sha because Jack had to sit in the front (yes the pug is still king in our house:).  At one point I saw a plane in the air with just red lights.  I yelled out "Sha look up, it's Santa's sleigh".  Folks, I kid you not, the girl went into total magical imagination and freaked out, it was awesome.  I kept saying "Baba hurry up and get us home so we can get in bed before he gets to our house".  Well that plane was the best thing ever because when we got home, she ran into her room and put her pj's on and brushed her teeth immediately. She then started telling us that she was so happy, that Santa does not stop in China.  Then in typical Sha fashion, she gave Paul and I her allowance money (total of $25) and said she was going to buy Dong Jia (her BFF in China) a DSI since Santa does not go there. Paul and I told her we would help her save so she can buy DJ that and she had a look on her face of sheer happiness.  After that I stayed with her and watched some tv then about 10:00 I turned it off thinking I'd have a mini argument over it and again to my delight, she fell asleep.  We had everything set up for Santa and were back in bed by 10:30, how awesome is that.  Granted I owe most of that to my mother who wrapped all her gifts at her house or we would have been up to 3:00 in the morning:)


We woke up at 7:30 Xmas morning and Sha appeared excited and nervous a bit.  We went into where the tree was and what we thought was going to be an outburst of joy, she went into typical Sha mode and just stared at everything and took it all in.  She looked around the room first, saw Santa ate the cookies and left his hat in the chimney.  About 2 minutes later we heard her say "Oooh BIG" to one of her gifts.  Now here is our one little setback.  Before we opened anything, Sha went to pull my stocking down and she took the stocking holder (which is a reindeer) with it.  It ended up putting a little cut in the top of her head.  She didn't cry but did have a look of "Ouch, that hurt".  We quickly patched it up and then on she went with her gifts.  She first wanted to give Jack the one from Aunt Joanie.  My other Aunt Joan makes all natural dog cookies and sent some to Jack with a little stuffed pug for Sha and some ornaments.  Jack LOVED those, thanks AJ.  The doll house, which was the "Ooh Big gift was by far her favorite. Next was the Wii came "Just Dance" (thanks CBasil for the recommendation:) and then the McDonald's cash register Ayi Lisa gave her.    I won't go on further about the gifts because the pics below tell the rest perfectly. They are of Xmas eve and Xmas day.

I do have to conclude with this one last story (sorry guys for the long blog).   Earlier on I had asked Sha what traditions they do in China on Christmas day and she said they cook "Hot Pot".  We wanted to incorporate her traditions with ours so we let her pick out the Hot Pot ingredients. For weeks she kept saying she would cook this for all of us. Since it was just my folks and Aunt Joan we decided we would let her do this ( yes I did have a few back up meals just in case).  No lie folks, she did the entire hot pot, which was beyond spicy but it was fantastic. I do have a picture below, mainly for Ayi Alicia and ShuShu Billy.  They sent Sha a wok for Xmas which we ended up using for this meal.  Sha cut up pork, made noodles, cut tofu,scallions, cabbage and snow peas.  We never needed my backup's.

We ended the night with watching "Despicable Me" which was a gift from Grandma and Grandpa.  Grandpa fell asleep about 3 minutes into the movie which Sha thought was the funniest ever because he was snoring.  She then said with huge delight " Grandma and Grandpa sleep here" and pointed to the floor.  She loves them.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, as always thank you ALL for your love and support.