Las Fiestas!

The period between December 24 and January 2 is jam packed full of holidays including Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Mark's Birthday ("Marksmas"), New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and Mark and Anne's Anniversary.  There are probably also some other Argentine holidays thrown in there, too - I mean just playing the numbers, there has to be at least 1 Argentine holiday every week or ten days to get them all in during the calendar year....

Anyway, this year, Christmas was a little different than any Mark, Anne and the HBomb had experienced in the past.  For example, the trees.  The prep is pretty much the same: you untangle the lights and trim the tree.

We ran into some technical difficulties, however, when HBomb wondered how the lights would look in his room after we had already wrapped them around Christmas tree #2 (affectionately dubbed "Charlie Brown Tree" due to its diminutive nature).

But after further review, maybe "Charlie Brown Tree" isn't as bad off as we thought.  For example, check out this tree from Tigre.  It actually has big squares cut out of it and Santa Claus is climbing it like an obstacle from American Ninja Warrior.

But eventually, the trees were up.  Even so, Christmas Eve was very different this year in relation to years past.  For one, we spent it in Argentina.  In Argentina there is no fear of a white Christmas being as how it has snowed here twice since 1900, and both times were in July or August.  However, there was legitimate fear of heat stroke as the mercury skyrocketed.  HBomb found a way to beat the heat with his first annual Christmas Eve swim.

So although HBomb probably won't remember last Christmas with the cold temperatures spent in the Upper Midwest, he seemed to get the "gist" of the Christmas morning gift reveal.

Henry woke up Christmas morning at the crack of 10:30 and hustled out to check out what Santa had brought him.  Although he pretty much just takes what he wants everyday, receiving gifts first thing in the morning was still pretty awesome for the little guy.


The next major holiday was Markmas.  This year we celebrated with the donning of Star Wars gear.  HBomb led the way with this stellar R2-D2 bike helmet (to go with the new trainer Schwinn he scored from Santa).

As mentioned earlier, Mark assumed that Argentina had a holiday or two between Christmas and New Year's.  Turns out, they had a couple.  One was "dia de los inocentes" - which falls on Mark's birthday.  This unofficial holiday (los inocentes, not Mark's birthday) is treated kind of like April Fools' Day in the U.S. with people playing pranks on one another.  Mark did not know this was a tradition, but vows to participate in it with vigor next year.

The next big holiday, New Year's Eve, was a bust.  Anne was asleep by 9, Mark made it to nearly 10:30.  Luckily, the "war zone" style of fireworks display (so named because of the tremendous amount of noise generated as well the fact that no one really wins with this type of display) woke up Mark so he could listen to it for a little while, although not actually see any of it.

New Year's Day was even worse.... what can we say, we never promised you a bed of roses....

Before HBomb saw what Christian McCaffrey was going to do in Pasadena.

So finally, after a long week of celebrating, we finally reached the last day of Marksmas, el aniversario!

Anne and Mark decided to celebrate by taking a trip to Tigre, a little touristy area on the outskirts  of Buenos Aires.  From there, they decided to take a boat cruise around the delta... but which boat to choose?  There were a whole ton of options.

Option #1 is a rusted out pile of junk.  On the upside, it kind of looks like one of the boat that Forrest Gump was using for shrimping before Lt. Dan's storm crushed it.  On the downside.... everything else.

Option #2 was a kayak because..... you know, why not?  Apparently things were not working out well for this gentleman in the kajak next to us, so we passed on that as well....

Option #3 was the catamaran that gives you the guided tour and serves drinks.  This boat gives a guided tour of part of the Delta.  We saw dudes swimming (apparently brown water does not equal a health hazard in Tigre, go figure).  Spoiler alert, we went with Option #3.

And after a hard day's work (not that hard and we were home a bit before schedule, so it wasn't even that long of a day) why not relax with a fruit smoothy?  Or as the locals might say, disfruta la fruta!