Nochebuena

It is the chilean tradition to celebrate Christmas on the Eve of Christmas. The feast, present opening, and other festivites are all part of La Nochebuena. A few years ago Rodrigo, my Mom, and I added our own little spin to the tradition. We decided to add a little fun to our Christmas eve Dinner. Partly to relieve the cook - moi - from having to do all of the cooking. Our Christmas eve dinner consists of us researching and planning a menu with foods we love but prepared in a way that we have never tried before. So as usual in preparations for Christmas eve, Rodrigo and I sat down Sunday and planned our menu. So here is a sampling of our christmas creation :) (Of course you can afford tenderloin and shrimp when you are only buying enough to feed two...I wonder what our dinners will be like when we have to feed 5? Horseradish crusted hotdogs and basil lemon cucumbers? :) Anyway, the food was DELICOSO. It turned out better than we even imagined.

Joaquin and Ezekiel fell asleep unusually early which turned out to be a nice treat for Rodrigo and myself. We had a wonderful dinner just the two of us and we talked and laughed and then we watched a movie together. It was so peaceful and relaxing with the candles and the christmas tree lights. Around 10 Rodrigo gave me my stocking. Inside were some sports socks and a warm cozy pair of slippers. He opened his stocking as well and in it found a dark choclate orange (he loves dark chocolate). We got ready for bed and watched the Christmas broadcast (I think this will become part of our christmas eve festivites in the future as well.) and then we started watching "It's a Wonderful Life" - one of my all time favorite movies! I say started because as you can guess...we fell asleep.