Brunch

On Christmas Eve us girls got together in the morning for a nice brunch and gift exchange. It was so nice to have everyone together again, it has been awhile since we were all in the same state! To add to the excitement of the day, Froujke has been living with Keri in Gainesville and is an exchange student from The Netherlands at UF. She came home from UF with Keri to celebrate Christmas with her family so she was able to join us for brunch and our adventure in St. Augustine (another blog coming soon). This was the first time Froujke had ever experienced an American Christmas, and the picture of her is the first Christmas present she ever opened! If you were wondering, in The Netherlands they celebrate Sinterklaas which is like Christmas in some ways. On December 25th the celebrate but it is not about gifts, Froujke explained it to me and described it as a day filled with family and food :) We all love Froujke and enjoyed having her around throughout Christmas!

This picture has a funny story: I thought this nice man looked a lot like Santa so I asked him if he wouldn't mind taking a picture with us. He was more than happy to and as it turns out he is a professional Santa from Texas and was in FL for Christmas. He is used to taking 900 pictures a day, so he said one more was not a problem :)
The girls all got glittery crosses from me (and Stephen, because he actually bought these for me) and they loved them. The pink one was perfect for Keri!
Here is Froujke opening her first Christmas present ever in America...I'm so glad we all got to be a part of that experience for her!

Sadly, Froujke is back in The Netherlands...but we will meet again :) There are more Christmas posts and New Years post from my trip to Indiana coming...