Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Hello my friends,
So I ended last time with my return back in Houston after my holiday in Kentucky.!It was the best to see everyone again. I went to bed right away because I was so tired of all the traveling and the next morning was Christmas morning. So Mathilde and I sleep in the same room right now because Danielle (youngest sister from Pennsylvania) sleeps in my room. So we're just gonna have sleepovers everydays for a couple of weeks :)

We woke up the next day and we looked at each other and ran downstairs in out pajamas's. The Christmas atmosphere is just the best. We were waiting for the rest to come down and when everybody was downstairs it was Mathilde, mom, dad, Stephanie, Jake, Danielle and I. We were all sitting on the floor and couch in a big circle. Danielle was the Christmas elf, what means that she passed all the presents around the circle and called the names for who the presents were. I was so surprised when my pile was soooo big, it was amazing. So then the Jones household has a couple of rules. We don't open the presents all at once because we want to see what everybody got. So we go in a specific order and you can only open one layer at the time. Danielle rapped some presents with 3 layers rapping paper...... So those people had to wait 3 rounds to see what their present was hahaha. The history of that is that Kat got a phone for Christmas long time ago but that's really expensive so that was the only thing she got. They just rapped the box in a box in a box in a box in rapping paper so it took her as long as the others to find out what her present was.

Mathilde started because we started with the youngest. It was so much fun, when I think of it again it just makes me happy. Everybody was really happy with their presents and when Larry had a bow on his presents he put it on his forehead and said: I am a unicorn!
I got so many presents such as a painting that Stephanie made and I really liked and a painting that Danielle made. It says: Home is where the heart is, and then Texas and The Netherlands connected with each other. They have given me a photo album so I can put all my memories in it and cards to write the memories on, it is the best. Mom made us pyjama pants and pillowcases. My pyjama pants are blue with penguins on it and the pillow case has little Texas flags all over it, it's amazing!!
I got the new Harry Potter book 'Cursed Child' and we did a secret Santa with Christmas ornaments with Kat, Chris, Mathilde, Stephanie, Danielle and me. I had to buy a Christmas ornament for Stephanie and Mathilde bought one for me. A lot of times it is Disney related and Mathilde bought me a Joy&Sadness ornament form the movie Inside out, because we watched that movie and it was fun haha. We also got some candy and a toothbrush because you know you can never have enough toothbrushes. And I actually need one so thanks :) Stephanie gave Mathilde and me a card that says we can come with her and paint our own masterpiece with her, because we liked it so much when she came home from her paint lessons with pretty paintings.
And Jake also gave us cards with activities we can do to make memories, because we don't have enough room for a million of presents in our suitcases but there is always space for more memories :)
At last I got 2 presents that weren't from here, they came from home. My parents sent me a box with more stroopwafels, licorice and hagelslag :) Wies also sent me a box with stroopwafels, autodrop, a bracelet and the muffinmix for the muffins we used the make once in a while back home, thanks girl! By the way, the trashcan was right behind me so my job was to get all the wrapping paper and trash in the trashcan with my head. Because of the 194738152 presents I have a lot of changes but I think I only got one in the trashcan oops..

The whole family came to our house again and we had Christmas dinner. We ate German spaetzel, meat and green vegetables. We ate apple pie and cookies for dinner yes! And grandma brought poppers with her. You had to pull from either sides to pop it and inside there was a paper crown and a mini game with a bad Christmas joke. It was really fun to see everybody with their crowns on telling their jokes. Oh yeah, I don't know how, but it was 26 degrees Celsius on Christmas whaaatt?! After dinner we had more Christmas presents for the people who weren't there in the morning. We got a bookstore gift card and Aunt Nancy bought all the girls Llama Pajama's and it was amazing! We watched the Princess Bride, because that is a tradition, everybody knows the story of it, except for the foreigns ;)

The next day was kind of normal, everybody was just chilling and Mathilde taught me to make a French braid. Mom and Aunt D'anne prepared for Hanukkah dinner, which was a couple a days later. They had to make some cookies and cake, but special ones. So the next day it was really hot, something like 30 degrees Celsius, and Mathilde and I just tanned while making our own bracelets. It was a really nice day and in the evening we went to the drive in movie. We brought stuff to make breakfast taco's with us and watched the movie Sing.

We celebrated second Christmas the next day for Kat and Chris because they celebrated the real Christmas with Chris's family. Jake's boys were there too. It was great too see all those happy faces again when everybody opened their presents.
We had just an amazing breakfast next morning. We had home made waffles, sausage, bacon and scrambled eggs! Bad news is that our dishwasher broke right when I came back from Kentucky. And now it's extra busy with all the holidays so we have a lot things to clean up without a dishwasher, just with soap and water yaayy.......

So Jake brought Mathilde and me to the bookstore one day, because we had that giftcard we wanted to spend. A lot of people got coloring books for Christmas and we also really liked that so we both bought one. It's one with big cities all over the world, Amsterdam is in there too! :)
We thought it would be fun to walk home.. Worst decision to make.
First of all, there are almost no sidewalks. When there is one, sometimes it just stops right in the middle and goes over in grass... So we had to walk through the grass beside the highway to get to the traffic lights. We were waiting there for 5 hours or something (only 10 min but it felt longer) and people kept staring at us. Had they never seen two blond girls, looking foreign and confused who want to cross the road walking?? We thought it was broken though, because it took so long hahaha. But we could finally cross the road and we ran for our lives bc we didn't know if we could trust these crazy American people in their cars all in a hurry. When we finally crossed the road we wanted to buy color pens for our color books and we saw a store sign so we walked to it. But when we got to the sign there was no store at all? How?! Who makes a sign for a store but forgets to think it's smart to place a store there as wel...? We're still alive though and we had fun :)

On the 30th we celebrated Hannukah. I am still not sure what it is exactly, but it is a Jewish celebration. Some people from our family are Jewish so that is why everybody was at our house again :)
We ate Jewish food and it was so good. It was rasp fried potatoes or something and brisket with apple sauce and sour creme. They used to eat vegetables too but nobody would eat that, because all the other food what too good so they stopped that hahaha.
We did White Elephant presents that night. It's when everybody buys a (weird) present and puts it all on a big pile. Everybody picks a random number and we go in order of numbers to see who may open a present first. I actually ended up with something fun, a pattern to make your own panholder from rope :) Other presents where a really ugly purse, a Dora bath paint set, a kids backpack and more.

Mom, Jake, Stephanie and a little bit of everybodys help made our own fireplace in the backyard. Blood, swear and tears but it was done and on Hannukah night, we could chill outside at the campfire! (IN THE WINTER, AND IT WASN'T EVEN COLD) She also made a huge Jenga set from big wood pieces so we played that too in the backyard, a lot of fun!

That night also Saskia arrived. She is an exchange student from 3 years ago and she is from Germany. She also came with YFU and decided to visit the family again :)
She is really nice and we're having a lot of fun with each other. We can also talk to her about her experiences and stuff that's really nice.

When we woke up the next morning we were ready for the Giant Cookie Party! And when I say Giant, I mean Giant. We had boys and girls cookies and I think every cookie was like 40 centimeters long. Everybody got their own boy/girl and we had 10 or something different icing colors and candy to decorate it. I decided to make Mario, you know the one from Mario Bros and Mario Kart. Jake and Nate made Luigi and Wario so we matched all together :) I have to say I am actually really proud of it, it kind of looks like Mario haha. The pictures are on Facebook.

Because it was New Years Eve the whole house was full of people again ofcourse, but it were mainly friends this time. Mom made lasagna for dinner and there were other small side dishes. We had tiramisu for dessert :) After dinner Gaia came yes! She spent the night with us :) Everybody started to play a lot of games with each other to fill the night until it was New Year. I didn't feel good that night. I don't know if it was the cookies from that morning or the homesickness I just felt down. But all the happy people and Jake's sons actually made me happy. We have 'Tickle Time' with Jake's boys, what means that everybody tickles each other and it's a lot of screaming and laughing but it is really funny.

When it was New Years in New York we counted down to 0, I don't even know why because we still had to wait 1 hour but we just did it. We played one game with a controller. It was kind of like Taboo, you can't say the word on the screen so you have to describe it. We made two teams and everybody, including me, was very competitive gehehe.

Then finally it was time. Mathilde and I think Saskia and I jumped off the couch when it was New Years and everybody kissed and hugged each other and it was nice. But still it didn't feel like a New Year, it was so weird. Firework is also prohibited in and around Houston so we could barely see firework :( That was really sad because usually I have to protect my ears for all the firework everywhere. But we had our own 'sterretjes en knalerwten' so that was still fun! We also lit up some small firework on the ground :)
After an hour we went back inside and played our 'forbidden word' game again until 2:30 am or something. Gaia, Mathilde and I slept in the same room so it took a while before we finally fell asleep....

Ofcourse the next day was just a normal Sunday so we went to church and woke up at 8:30.. I've never been so tired but it was fine. At church we did the weird thing again with bread and wine. But I actually participated this time and figured out that it wasn't wine but grape juice. So we got a micro squared-piece of really flat bread, I almost dropped it because it was so small. And a cup with the grape juice, I think it was 5 milliliter or something, very little. So when the priest said: first let's eat together, everybody put the bread thing in their mouth and ate it. I thought we had to 'drink' the grape juice right after it so I almost drank it, but then Saskia stopped me when she said: not yet! Oops... Then he told us to finally drink that too and so I did. Then we went back home again. Also it was very funny, because Jake's boys went to the kids church and came back with bubbles. When Luke blew bubbles he wanted to ran after them to catch them but he forgot there was still fluid in his little cup. So while running, he emptied all his bubble thing.. It was so funny and sad at the same time hahaha. Back home everybody took a nap, some shorter than others, AKA me. I am a bad nap-taker so I was already downstairs after 1 hour and really tired in the evening.. I just can't sleep during the day.

Well this was my first American Christmas and New Years and it was really exciting but now everything is kind of getting back to normal!

We're going back to school and I will tell more about that in the next blog :)