Frohe Weihnachten!

Joey says "Woah!"

When the kids tumbled into our room and informed us that it was time to get up, my knee-jerk reaction was to punt them right on back into their beds: I assumed it must be no later than 5:00 AM. What herd of children sleeps until a reasonable hour on Christmas morning?

But Ella insisted that it was wake-up time, flinging open the curtains to prove her point.  And, indeed, it was all of 7:30, and so the sun was making the Alpine mountains outside our window glow pink and orange.  Sometimes awe and wonder works even better than coffee: definitely, time to wake up.

In my family, my parents always let us three open our stocking presents before breakfast, so that's what we do with our kids, too.  Dennis wryly observed that Santa must not like us very much as the kids serenaded us on their little wooden harmonicas.

After the kids had each stashed away their loot in whatever hidey-holes that they'd staked out in our hotel for their treasures (Ella, a drawer of a dresser; Alex, in the television cabinet; Joey, the center of the living room carpet), we got the kids dressed for Christmas breakfast.

I was surprised to see that we were some of the last of the hotel's residents to eat: the last few lingerers had dressed in their snow pants and were finishing their breakfasts hurriedly so that they could get their kids to ski school on time.  Dennis and I had read that the week's ski courses started today, but that, we decided, wasn't how we wanted to spend our Christmas morning. A slow breakfast, playing with toys, followed by more and more food, is more our style.


I owe my kids' teachers a debt of gratitude this year: my presents from the kids were really quite special.  Ella's teacher had each child do a wood-burned picture on a wooden spatula, something to hang in the kitchen. And Alex's teacher did her one better: he proudly gave us with a calendar, each page decorated with an elaborate collage picture.  Alex says that each page took them a day: a treasure.

The snowman is made of makeup puffs

Ella's gifts to her brothers were equally charming: she gave Joey and Alex each a considerable portion of her candy stash, and for Joey she'd made a little toy knight and horse (because of his persistent love of Sir Dolly) out of bent wire.  Joey happily galloped his favorite gift across the coffee table.

We did have one chore for the day: a hike downtown to rent skis for the week.  The local shops give the kids free skis with any adult rentals, so there was no reason not to equip the smallest of the Geelses.  And our hotel offers ski lessons for children as young as three on the play slope right in front of our building. It looks like young Joseph is going to learn how to ski.

The boots provoked a second "Woah!"

The ski shop is about a half-mile from our hotel, downhill, so, as our reward for carrying five sets of skis and boots and helmets back from town, we stopped and played on the sledding hill for a little while, trying out the little shovel sleds that Santa provided last night.  The hill includes a little magic carpet ski lift, which the kids serenely rode to the top after each run. Have I mentioned that these kids have it good?

After lunch, the kids were clamoring to go to the daycare center, to run around on that wonderful playground, leaving Dennis and me to a rest. I hate to admit it, but I think I got a cold for Christmas, so although I like keeping the family together on holidays, I was really glad for a break. Dennis and I stole one of Ella's Christmas gifts, a Settlers of Catan card game, and cozied up in the dining room with cake and coffee. (You can tell you live in Europe when, if you play Settlers in a public place, instead of getting quizzical looks, you get nods of recognition from passers by "Ah, Settlers!")

Since swimming usually makes me feel better when I'm sick, I volunteered to take Ella and Alex to the pool before dinner. Those two kids have already had the cold that's dragging me down, so I let them play in the hotel's outdoor pool. The water out there is very warm, but the patio is banked with piles of snow. Following the lead of the other kids in the pool, who were having snowball fights in the steaming water, Ella and Alex hopped out of the pool, time and again, and scooped up great armfuls of snow and ice. These they threw into the pool to melt. That insane game, along with a long, strobe-lit waterslide, kept the two of them joyful.

Meanwhile, Joey fell asleep in the room, just in time for our 6:30 dinner.  We managed to wake him up, but he was still pretty groggy.

While Dennis and I sat down to the second multi-course banquet in two nights, the kids raided their own little kid friendly buffet. They kids plowed through their protein and vegetables, eager to cash in on our promise of multiple bowls of ice cream for dessert.  What good is Christmas without massive amounts of ice cream, after all?

Just like yesterday, Dennis and I weren't even close to finished with our food by the time the kids had eaten their second bowl of ice cream: we waved goodbye as our three ran up to the room to play and, in the case of Joey, to pass out on the couch.

And that left Dennis and me to enjoy the bits of our Christmas gift to one another: a day of perfect ease (with a side of "Essence of goose with beetroot pearls"), well-earned after a long and frenzied year.