'Twas the night before Christmas

Christmas in China is pretty much a non-event. No holiday for us. And because it fell on a Friday this year, Alex had school and Brett had work. What to do, what to do? We also had received a note from school saying that parents were invited to come view what the class does on different select days - so we decided that Christmas Day would work just fine. Part of our tradition in the lead up to Christmas is having an advent calender each year - and this year Aunty Chelle came to the rescue! The day before December started, with nary a calendar in sight in Xiamen, a box arrived from Australia and in it - our calender!Each night we would count the windows that were empty and find the next one - and take it in turns to eat the chocolate. It seems that we missed days here and there because usually when we did this we were doing two or three days at once - so Alex and Sebastien didn't have to watch the other eat the chocolate. There was even one memorable occasion when they shared one piece between themselves! They did like it when it was Mummy's turn as she would give hers away.
On the night before Christmas, we prepare a little something for Santa and his reindeer and then read our Christmas stories ("The toys' night before Christmas" and "A Bush Christmas") before heading for bed. Actually, we usually manage to read these stories a few times in the week before Christmas - and listen to Christmas carols too.