December Daily {:24:} Dinner, Carols, Skype

I don't know if I'm allergic to J-twon or if I caught a little winter cold, but I've been slightly under the weather for a few days. So after our long day yesterday and how I'm all sniffly, I didn't feel like going into the city twice today. Thus, I opted for easy vacation day for Christmas Eve instead of full tourist day.

I helped around in the kitchen in the preparations for Christmas dinner and learned how to make challah bread.  Really, Bound made the dough (and then sent me the recipe), and showed me how to knead and roll out the dough.  Then, I got to braid it.  You braid 2/3 of the dough to make a fatter bottom half of the bread...

And then you braid the other 1/3 of the dough on top of the base.  

On Friday, when she had made the challah the first time, she'd told me, "Sesame seeds cover a multitude of mistakes when it comes to challah."  Well, let's just say there were lots of sesame seeds on my bread, to cover up the not-so-prettiness of my first attempt.  The bottom's not as big as it should be, the top's too big, and the whole thing is crooked.  Oh well.  It still tasted good (it should have, since Bound made the dough!).  Hopefully I'll get better with practice!

We ate Christmas Dinner, which is something I've never done on Christmas Eve before...but I rather enjoyed it!  It made Christmas Day so easy and quiet and calm!  Then we headed into town to go to Christ Church for a Christmas carol concert. It lasted several hours and was just awesome.  We sang Christmas carols for hours, and several of them were in Hebrew, which was neat and fun.  (Below is the screen for one of those.  It has the words written phonetically in English script, then in Hebrew script, then the English translation.)  

I enjoyed the time getting to sing (mostly) in English, worshipping the Lord corporately (which I don't get to do in English often), and just spending some time in prayer talking with Him.  All of this in a beautiful setting.

Came home and skyped my family-grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins, parents, Master Yoda and Princess Leah! All in one room! That was awesome. 

Merry Christmas!