An Orthodox Nest: Christmas

Christ is Born! Indeed He is Born!

What a whirlwind this past week has been! The children and I survived 4 days of services in a row, some days two services. It was butter cold out as well, so we had to bundle down to hats and gloves each time we left the house. It was a challenge, but it was worth it. A lot of memories have been made in the process!

I had LOTS OF fun decorating the sugar cookies this year on my own after the kids were in bed one night.

Our tradition each year on Christmas is to come home and break the fast together with a few yummy snacks, and also break our cesnica (pronounced ches-nee-tsa), which is a Serbian Christmas bread, together. The bread contains a coin and the person who gets the coin gets good luck that year. Our younger daughter got the coin this year :-).

After that, we head to my brother-in-law's place for some Christmas fun and feasting!

I was supposed to go visit family in New York this week... but I ended up completely overexhausted and not feeling up for it. The good news is my airline gave me a credit for the full amount paid for the flight to use at a later time. The other good news is that we have been having a great week together as a family. My husband has also been taking it easy with his responsibilities this week, so we are all recuperating together and enjoying our family time very much. I knew it in my heart that the right thing to do was to take our Christmas break from school this week! Our week has included a certain special 3-year old's birthday, eating out several meals, doing very minimal housework, spending lots of time lounging around and knitting for this Mama , and playing a board game as a family.

Here are a few photos of our festivities!