Christmas at the Thebeaus

After a two hour flight from Toronto to Moncton that Béla did not overly appreciate, my siblings Marlène and Nicolas, who had flown in the day before, met us at the airport. They were waiting for us at the luggage carousel and trying to recapture Béla's arrival to Canada with the with the video camera my family got us for Christmas. The original take of this was to be when Béla actually first arrived in Canada in Toronto, but was foiled by some technical problems explained in previous post). Then we jumped in the car and headed for downtown St-Ignace (there is no downtown St-Ignace... there is no town of St-Ignace).

A big family supper was waiting for us when we arrived with pâté (meat pie, including deer meat) and a big Capon with fixings of course.

Here's Béla, tired after his long trip.

And here he is catching up with my dad.

And here he is being my hat (aka "chapeau Thébeau").


The next day we had a big open house at my parents so family and friends could drop by and meet Béla (if he was so inclined as to be awake). A ton of people stopped by. This made it a lot easier for us to see everybody. Thanks to everybody that could come.

Here are my aunts Diana and Emilia with most of my immediate family.

Here are my parents good friends Onil and Hugette playing with Béla.

My uncle Gene and Grace and Josh.

Later on there were mussels.



And here are Grammy and Béla opening some presents. A nice blue knit tuque and christmas bib ...

 

and a Bertrand/Clifford book from aunt Joan.

Here's what Grammy got for Béla. She commissioned a beautiful quilt for him! It's really nice. We're thinking of painting what will eventually be his room to match.



And this is what we gave Grammy: a fancy tea and saucer set from the Erzgebirge, a region known for there high end craftiness.

Here are my cousin David's wife, Jennifer, and kids, Zachary and William.

Aunt Helen with William and me with Béla.

A big hug from Zach.

Last year we got our fathers Feuerzangenbowle punch bowls. Feuerzangenbowle is basically a German wine-rum-punch made by lighting a high proof rum doused sugar 'hat' (solid cone of white sugar) above the bowl and letting it caramelize and fall in. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any high proof rum sold in New Brunswick or none that will burn properly. So this Christmas we got my dad high proof rum from Germany that's made just for this purpose.

Also, the bowl broke in transit last year, which is why we're using a pot. I'm not sure if it is lit in this picture (it went out a few times) but you can see that the sugar has started to melt and caramelize.

After second Christmas it was time for New Years (next post).