Merry Christmas from New York City! I have to say, waking up on Christmas morning in the Ronald McDonald House in New York is a new experience. Actually, News channel 11 was downstairs and they had a gift giveaway (Holiday Presents) for the kids at 8am, so Eli was on the news this morning along with a dozen other kids getting their gifts from the Santa-ly clad news anchor man. Just your typical Christmas morning, right? 🙂 For all of the talk of Santa, we try to go out of our way to talk about the real reason we celebrate Christmas with Eli. Last night we had a quote for the record books. Lacey was explaining that Christmas was really a birthday party for Jesus. Eli thought for a second and said, “How is Jesus going to eat His birthday cake if He is up in the sky? How is He going to get it up there?” We assured him that God could make good cakes in heaven. 🙂 As the “Why?” questions kept coming, we essentially made it through the entire gospel story of Christ’s birth to His death to His resurrection. Knowing Eli, those “Why” questions will keep coming for years and years and it’s our privilege to answer them.
I actually did get to see my nativity scene. And a LIVE one at that! We got last second tickets to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes and they had a reading of the birth of Christ from Luke 2 with actors and sheep and donkeys and camels. The whole works. It was very cool. Eli preferred to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Zobian, so Lacey and I just took Isaiah and ended up walking back, so it was best that Eli wasn’t with us. When we got back, they pushed us out the door without any boys and made the two of us go have dinner at “A La Turka”, a Turkish restaurant on 2nd Ave just up the street from the Zobian’s place. I have to add it to my list of recommended dining places. It looked VERY fancy with nice tables with candles and a very low key atmosphere. I was expecting a pricey menu, but everything was around $15, so not as bad as I expected. The food was incredible. Lacey had chicken kebab and I had a lamb cubes over eggplant puree. We also had Almond pudding (probably not worth the $6 charge, but good) and Turkish tea (VERY strong tea if you’re used to the American stuff) that I thought was great, but Lacey passed on. I highly recommend it for a nice evening out.
Saturday we went to Central Park since Candlelighters was invited to celebrate with the Central Park Police Precinct. It was a really fun time. Eli and I strapped on some ice skates, but were only on the ice for about 30 seconds before he decided that was enough. We also got to go to the Central Park zoo and ride on an old Carousel that Eli had an absolute BLAST on. It was a bit chilly, but totally worth it to hear Eli giggling ‘WHHHEEEEEEEE!’.
Click Next to see the update from our Christmas Eve doctor’s appointment…