Merry Christmas!

So I'm a little late. Oh well. We have been having some fun around here - despite the off and on raining that has been here for the past few days. (I think I keep talking about the weather.)


Christmas Eve eve (the 23rd) Kevin cut some bamboo from across the street and started to lash together the stand for the tire swing. (I think that's just cool - we have bamboo growing across the street... and that my husband knows how to lash.) He is going to make a jungle gym type thing for the kids to play on in the backyard. I took the kids on a walk and went to the store to get us out of the house and he had it up when we got back. It was awesome and will only get better as he continues to work on it and add things to it. Today (26th) the kids went out and played on it. They really enjoyed hanging upside down and bouncing on the bamboo. Way cool.







Christmas Eve started off with Marissa throwing up. Way to go! Luckily that was the only time it happened. I also decided to try my luck at Tina's grocery store in hopes that I could find whipping cream and eggs so that I might be able to make the fruit salad that I have had every year since I was a kid. I took Xiomara with me to the store and we sang a song as we went along, "Eggs, cream, powdered sugar, stuffing, maybe sour cream and butter." That was my wish list. We found whipping cream and as I looked over the boxes to get the one in the best condition, Miss Tina came up behind me and said, "I have eggs for you." I let out a sigh of relief and said, "You are a life saver!" She may never know how important those eggs were to me - the island is having an egg shortage because they don't have any feed for the chickens and they don't lay well if they don't have feed. When I checked out she said how she worries about me with all those kids and I ended up with 2 dozen eggs! It was a tender mercy from the Lord.




My mom makes Grammy Jammies for the kids and she didn't let us down this year. She made some wonderful nightgowns for the girls - light and beautiful. Marissa wants to wear hers to Church. Ben was so excited he said, "This is so awesome!" He had asked for a night cap as well so he was very excited when it was there. He actually wears it to bed. They were all excited to have something to wear to bed - "We don't have to be naked anymore!" It was so fun to watch them be so excited.



We woke up to rain Christmas morning - with the tin roof in the new house it gets loud when it rains hard. The kids got dressed and then we opened presents. We had what we call our "hand-me-down" Christmas. All the gifts that we gave the kids came from friends who left the island, never to return. There were some good toys but some came from our playgroup friend's kids so my kids had seen and played with those toys before. Not very exciting for the kids. Oh well. They have had a good time the past two days playing with the "new" toys. For breakfast we had chocolate chip pancakes with cherry pie filling on top. It's really yummy! I spent the better part of the rest of the day getting dinner put together. I cut up some chicken breast (I'm not big on turkey, although Tina did have some) and put it in a marinade. I made a new roll recipe and had stuffing and instant mashed potatoes too. I opened our last can of cranberry sauce that we got on sale because it was going out of date. Amazingly enough I had it all ready all at the same time. It was wonderful and I really enjoyed it! The kids had a hard time with some of it but they ate it anyway. After a little clean up we went for a walk up the hill and it was a really wonderful view of the Caribbean Sea. It was great!

In the basket of random toys that we gave the kids they found a stack of plastic combs. Ben came running to me all excited to have his own comb! I gave him a piece of wax paper and showed him how to make it into an instrument. They all ran to get their own comb and wanted wax paper too. It was fun.


One of the things some one passed on to us were some beads and elastic for making bracelets. Everyone wanted one so we had a little activity. They all loved their creations!


I picked up the Mexican Train Game - which is a variation of Dominos. We like playing the game but the kids like building with the dominos more. It's fun to watch them and see how high their creations can get.

Here's dinner! I was happy and Kevin said, "Why don't you take a picture?" So I did, but it was his idea.

After taking a few days off (and working really hard around the house - washing currtains, sewing weights in the mosquito netting, mopping) Kevin was back to studying today. He will be doing that every day until his mom shows up on New Years Eve. She will be here for over a week so we'll be doing some sight seeing around the island before the new semester starts up in January!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Before we did our nightly thing Christmas night I read a story about the symbols of Christmas and had objects to go with the story. It helped to bring the reason for the season back to the special day. The story has Santa teaching the story teller about the symbols - red, green, star, bell, candy cane, wreath, candle - and at the end of the story we talked about how Santa is a symbol too. He is happy and is always giving. It was a neat conversation to have with my little kids and I hope we can focus on that. We will be happy as we give. Focus less on ourselves and more on others and it will bring joy into our lives.