Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas! It was so nice to have Dusty and Missy here.
In the Czech Republic, Santa doesn't come, instead it's Baby Jesus. (I think this is really strange since about 70% of Czechs are atheist, but it's just what they do.) Also, the closest thing to our tradition of hanging out stockings the Czechs do for St. Nicholas Day on Dec. 6. Since we didn't have stockings, Jason suggested that we hang our toques (beanies) instead. So before going to bed we all set out our beanies, hoping Baby Jesus would come fill them in the night. He did! Baby Jesus brought Dusty and Missy a sampling of Czech beer (they wondered if he got carded), which we used in a blind taste test that afternoon. Baby Jesus also brought a few other small treats and goodies.
We ended up not having carp (I know, you're all disappointed -- though I can honestly say that I'm not. It would have smelled!). In fact, the whole meal situation for Christmas Eve and Christmas didn't go at all as I had planned. The carp stands, which we expected would be out until Christmas, actually packed up on the 23rd. Though Jason had decided that he didn't think he could manage getting a carp from the stand, since they essentially whack it on the head and hand it to you. He doesn't know a thing about cleaning, gutting, etc., so he thought it'd be better to get pre-cut fish at the supermarket. Well, we couldn't find any when we were out on the 23rd, but we were going to try another store on the 24th. We also had planned to eat at a fondue restaurant on the 24th -- keeping with the Arizona Thomas family tradition. We had checked the restaurant a few days earlier and they didn't have any special Christmas hours posted, so we thought we were ok. But, the restaurant was closed ... and so were all the supermarkets. So we had barbecue pork (which I had in the freezer) and potato dumplings for Christmas Eve dinner.
I went into a bit of a panic because all of the stores were also closed on Christmas day, and we really didn't have enough food in the apartment. After trying several different places we finally found a small market that was open and were able to get enough for dinner -- we ended up having spaghetti and vegetables. Not exactly what I'd planned, but it all turned out ok.
I received a nice new camera for Christmas (Thanks Mom and Dad!!) and it's fueled my picture-taking obsession. I'm really enjoying learning how to use it and I hope that you'll notice better pictures on the blog. Dusty and Missy were good sports and let me take lots of pictures of them, though at one point Dusty did say that he was having wedding flashbacks. :)