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.
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