Since Santa always comes during the night on Christmas Eve, and in my family we open all of our presents on Christmas Day, I saved my gifts for the family for Friday. I kinda felt like a dick because I didn't have anything for Silke and Gunther, but I completely forgot about it. I was really surprised that Olaf had never seen Christmas Vacation before, because it seems like his kind of movie. But Esther said it's one of her favorite movies so I know they'll enjoy it. Gustav was so funny when he opened the little wooden train that I got him. I bought it at the Weihnachtsmarkt so it didn't come in a box that I could wrap. I found an empty box in the cellar from the thermal saucier that Esther recently bought, so I put it in there. When he unwrapped the box he looked at it and basically said "Hey, cool! Look what I got!" and then he put the box down and went to open the books that my parents had sent for them. He didn't even care that he was given a saucier (or so he thought) rather than a toy or something he'd enjoy. It was really cute. I put the train on his window sill, and I hung Pauline's new mobil on the ceiling to replace the one that I broke. (I don't remember if I wrote about that or not, but a while ago her mobil got caught in my hair and I didn't realize it until I bent over to pick something up and I tore it out of the ceiling.) And of course Esther is excited about all the new muffin recipes she has to try out, so I think I did ok. The cutest thing, though, is that both of the kids love their books probably more than any of their other gifts.

Yesterday Esther's sister Anne and her family were supposed to come to visit, but her daughter, Marlene, was sick and had a sore throat. Johannas still came because he had a concert (he's a professional organ player) in Duesseldorf and didn't want to drive all the way back home to Bielefeld. He's really nice, and he speaks pretty good English. He's funny, too. He had a bandage on the back of his hand and when Esther asked him what happened he said, "Well I punched my wife and ended up injuring myself." It was kinda like when Olaf threw a bottle cap at Esther and when Esther told Gustav that it wasn't a nice thing for Papa to do Olaf replied that normally he just throws the whole bottle. I love their sense of humor.

Anne and Marlene came this afternoon to spend the rest of today and tomorrow here. Anne is the next closest in age to Esther of all her sisters, but I think she's still 14 years older than Esther. Marlene's 6 years old and she just started school last fall. She's cute. Since they all had gifts left to exchange with eachother we gathered around the tree once more to open presents. They gave me a bottle of lotion and a Christmas tree ornament, which was really sweet. I didn't expect them to give me anything at all. Johannas had to go back to Duesseldorf for another concert tonight, so he left shortly after the gift exchange and he won't be back until about 9. We're about to eat fondue again for dinner (yum!) and just hang out for the rest of the night, not really much going on.