Although I just couldn’t really get into Christmas decorating this year (I really only get my mojo on about every other year), I was very, very excited for Christmas itself.

The first reason was because I decided to give Mister a new cat. Our old cat, Clover, was eaten by coyotes. Or so we surmise. He, as well as several other cats in the neighborhood, were disappearing all around the same time. Also around then, my neighbor saw a couple of coyotes roaming the neighborhood. So we put two and two together and sayonara Clover. It wasn’t as sad as we had expected due to the fact that Clover had been spending more time roaming and less time loving his family. Jerk.

I spent several weeks looking for kittens around Austin. The shelters were’t as full as they get in the summer during kitten season. But I finally found the perfect kitten (my criteria: female, grey and white, super cuddly, no ringworm) being fostered by a lady nearby. The foster mom agreed to keep her until Christmas morning and have her spayed and microchipped in the meantime. It ended up being a perfect surprise and Mister is already fond of her. When he gets a chance to hold her, that is; most of the kids fight over her nonstop.

Mister did claim his right to name her, though. Behold HoneyBee:

Also exciting about Christmas–even moreso than a kitten, if you can believe it–was being able to talk to our kids on a mission. We haven’t spoken to them since they left for Brazil at the beginning of September. We’ve been limited to emails once a week. While that’s better than nothing (or even snail mails), it’s just not the same.

We were able to Skype with York for a couple of hours (his mission rules did not specify a time limit) and the internet at the house he was calling from was really excellent. His call overlapped with India’s who had awful internet and we had to turn off the video eventually so we could talk without the call breaking up.

The funnest thing was listening to India and York speak to each other in Portuguese, which I’ve always though was a strange language. (It’s like a super odd version of Spanish.) Their babbling back and forth in a foreign language was both surreal and absolutely cool. Mister and I just sat and grinned at each other as we listened.

We finally turned India’s video back on to say goodbye and she was crying. Which made me upset because I do not like to see my children cry when I can’t be there to comfort them. I’ll get to email her tomorrow and hopefully she’ll be feeling cheerful and OK.

They’re both doing super well and learning to like a place where “everything is weird” , there is no air-conditioning (it’s Summertime there), and the people constantly invade their personal space. But, as India explained, there are carts that drive around selling fresh churros filled with dulce de leche so things could be a lot worse.

Hope your Christmas was amazing too!