Merry Christmas! A few Christmas Carols for you!

Dear all!  Merry Christmas to you!

We hope you will enjoy this Christmas gift to you!

(Edit on January 24:  The video is fixed!  I have worked on this off and on for a month now...a long story you will not be interested in....but you will be interested in the video.  The boys don't perform in a Christmas program at school or church, so this is their program!)

Lastly, we want to share this Youtube video with you, which we have found surprizingly and thoroughly delightful this Season.  I do remember back in the day (1990s) when Fireplace video VHS tapes were on sale and I thought they were a pathetic idea.  Now that we live in the tropics for Christmas, a fireplace video with some traditional Christmas music helps a lot to bring that Christmas feeling to our home!

(I am going to go ahead and publish this post, because I want it up for Christmas morning in America (we are just finishing it up here on this side of the world).  However in the next 8 hours I hope to edit it with added videos, which are now slowly uploading!  Merry Christmas to all of you!  Celebrate the Birth of Christ and may Emmanuel find a welcome dwelling place in your hearts!)

Christmas Preparations!

It's the tropics, but we're still getting ready for Christmas!  Here's a few scenes from our preparations this year.....  Like our Santa Hats?  I bought them locally.  Our host country celebrates all of the major holidays for all of the major religions and cultures .....Idul Fitri, Christmas, Chinese New Year!  The local department stores are happy to provide merchandise and make a profit off of them all, too!

Our first Christmas photo for 2013 ....taken on the night of the school Christmas concert.  What I think is interesting about this photo is ....note how the mother's spine and hips are knocked out of alignment by holding the large toddler on one side!  She has to lean sideways just to stay upright!

Dave helped the boys get the tree ready.  The stand broke, so they filled this bucket with sand and rocks to anchor it upright.  Gotta love sand and rocks!

The last 2 years I have put our tree up on a table, far from little hands.  This year I decided to have a tactile tree and let the boys have full access to it.  It was a good decision.  They enjoyed decorating the tree.  Our  more special ornaments are at the top.  Joshua has really enjoyed deconstructing many of our cheap felt ornaments on the lower branches, picking off the glitter and beads and tinsel and making treasures of them.  

Our new garage sale angel tree topper.  Jonathan asked "Is this Bethany?"  We had a small discussion about our theology of angels and showed him the other ornaments we have in memory of Bethany.

Little boy ornament placement 

The finishing touch!

Josh is crazy about balls.  We started out with about 10 of these glittery balls on the our tree...but all of the bottom ones were gone and lost or broken after the 2nd day of the Christmas tree.  It's okay.  My main rule for the tree is they may not climb up on the table (actually our ottoman without the cushion!) that the tree is sitting on.   They've been keeping that rule so I'm content.

Heading to the school Christmas concert

 Baking Christmas cookies with our traditional family recipe!  Joshua's favorite tool is the egg beater.  He calls it "my Tool" and looks for it every day lately.

 The boys got their first Christmas presents (special crayons and drawing paper) of the season from our friends the Gearys.  Look how creatively she wrapped the packages!

 Now we are trying to make candy-cane ornaments out of beads.  

+I think this is one of those activities that might work better with girls?  The boys fizzled out on this project shortly after these photos were taken.....but we'll give it another go in a day or so!  My goal is to have at least one complete by each boy so in the future I can at least say "Jonathan/Joshua, you made this ornament when you were four/not yet two."  

So that's a bit of our Christmas cheer.  Hmmm, this will be our 4th Christmas away from our homes and families....but it doesn't feel so far away to us.  We have Skype so our families can join us for a few moments on Christmas morning (their Christmas Eve).  We can send Christmas cards home with a few people in our community who are going home for Christmas.  We can even order presents for our loved ones on the internet and have them sent to their homes!  The wrapping paper is not as nice, of course.   I can share a few of our moments with all of you reading our little blog.  I just realized all of these things I just mentioned are "cultural" things and have little to do with the real reason we celebrate....the birth of Christ.  We do celebrate Christ's birth and proclaim the truth of it, but all of these "trimmings" of the holiday do make us feel more at home and happy this time of year.  

As seen in our home lately -- Random shots

The boys are getting big enough now to have wresting matches with dad!

"Band-aid!"

Oh, we got this care package from Grandma Coral and one of the treats inside was a box of Lego candy. It tastes like Sweet Tarts.  We keep it in the freezer and I make last as long as I can.  Jonathan will ask for it and if he's earned it he can build something (although Mommy built this robot in the picture.)  He can't eat the whole thing at once though, just a piece or two. 

So Jonathan has started to learn how to dress himself.  We've been working on it for a while now.  Of course Joshua doesn't want to miss out on the fun.  He'll grab any old thing out of the cupboard and put it on somehow (pictured here with an upside-down tank top worn as a skirt!) and walk around the house for a good long time! 

Joshua wants to be like his big brother in every way, so the underwear are starting to be VERY interesting!  (This photo was the only presentable one of about a dozen, as he was playing roll away everytime I snapped the shutter)

 

Here is the first day Jonathan dressed himself with NO HELP, including choosing his outfit from the cupboard!

 

 Joshua, lately, has been loving to take naps in his swing!  He'll sleep there for an hour sometimes. He'll even ask for it sometimes -- "Go sleep swing, Mommy!"

 

He also is the one in our family who LOVES to help with chores.  Here he is using a yard broom to sweep leaves.  Yep, everyone here uses a broom (not a rake) to clean up the yard.

The baby doll was out this day, and I suggested to Joshua that he share his snack with the baby.....

....and here is baby with his mouth full of raisins and peanuts!

The times are changing.  I used to have to spend 30 minutes or more many days of the week building train tracks.  Now Jonathan can build train tracks by himself!  Here is the first long train track he did alone!

Ah, this photo is to highlight our new draperies, which I love!  Thank you Jesus!  I was so ready to move on from the old burgundy ones which just didn't seem to let in any light even if they were sheer and pulled all the way open!

Swinging

 

So this is another box from our pile we got from the new school fitness equipment.  (One became Joanthan's birthday firetruck, which is now in storage).  I'm not sure what was in it originally, but today it found new life as a ferry!

The box pictured above came with this large cardboard insert, which we also put to use as a city of tunnels and rooms for train tracks!

 

Joshua learning to use a screw driver on our take apart dump truck.

Well Jonathan's bicycle hasn't been getting much use lately, mostly because if we take it out Joshua just can't stop from climbing on to the back fender while the bike is in motion.   It's too much conflict for me, so the bike has been having a season in storage.  Still, at least a couple of times a week, I find Joshua quiet on the bike in the storage area pretending he's peddling and steering and going somewhere exciting. (If you wonder what he's wearing here, it's a Crayola paint smock that we use when washing the dishes.)

Then yesterday I even found him in the other storeroom up on the big bike!  He just goes in as quiet as can be, climbs his conquests and stays there happy with himself until I go looking for him!  "I ride daddy bike" is what he had to say about it!