A Dominican Christmas

This Christmas was the very first time both Ryan and I were away from our families for Christmas. Though it was hard, we still had a great time. On Christmas Eve, one of our Dominican friends, Cristian, was nice enough to invite us over to his family's house for dinner. It's a little different here than in the States in that Christmas Eve is the day when everyone gets together for a big meal, and then Christmas day is pretty uneventful. So all in all, we felt pretty honored to be invited to celebrate with his family. The dinner consisted of an entire roasted pig on a stick that they had bought off the side of the road, chicken, rice, beans, apple salad, and another Dominican food that I don't know the name of. Everything was really good. It didn't feel too different from an American family meal...everyone ate a lot and then sat around and talked.

Then Christmas day we has a "Virtual Christmas" via Skype with both of our families. It was about the closest thing to being together without actually being together.

Our Christmas tree. The Troyer family was nice enough to let us borrow their Christmas decorations since they were going to the States for the holidays. And our families were nice enough to send us lots of beautiful gifts to put under our Christmas tree.

Skype! On the top is Ryan's mom. On the bottom is a close up of Booper, but if you look closely at the computer screen you can see my sister making a ridiculous face.

Ryan's mom bought us these Frog Toggs, which are completely waterproof clothing. Which is awesome, but at the same time a little goofy looking haha. Especially Ryan's because not only is it hot pink, but the sleeves are about 5 inches too short. We had fun taking pictures in them, and scaring Booper.


OK, so I don't want to be one of those people who is obsessed with their dog and takes pictures of them all the time, but we took Booper to a park the other day and some of the pictures are so cute I just couldn't resist posting some of them!