We had a wonderful Christmas season this year. We hosted 5 parties at the house, spent Christmas Eve out with friends, and then had a great Christmas day. Here are some snapshots of our time.
Some of our friends from church wanted to come over to decorate the Christmas tree. So, the week after Christmas, we put up the tree.
For the three Saturdays in December leading up to Christmas, we invited our young adults from church over for a "Christmas Saturday."
For the first Saturday, we played Christmas trivia games and exchanged Christmas presents.
The next week we decorated Christmas cookies. Finding the cookies to decorate proved a bit
difficult. I know, I could have made
enough sugar cookies to decorate, but I decided to pass on that. Last year, we found some delicious cinnamon
and ginger cookies and decorated with homemade icing. I started looking for those same cookies in
September, but never found them.
Thankfully, we have a version of Amazon here and ordered 25 boxes of
cookies. The day before we were to
decorate them, they still hadn’t arrived.
We called the seller who promised to have them delivered by 8:00 the
following night, six hours after our party was to start. So, we went out and bought another 20 boxes of
a less delicious cookie. However, at
10:00 the next morning, the 25 boxes of cookies arrived! Needless to say, we had plenty of cookies!
The third "Christmas Saturday" was for making pine cone wreaths and watching a Christmas movie or two.
On the twenty-third we hosted a party for our neighbors and
friends. We ordered dinner from a warung, small restaurant out of a
house/garage, down the street. It was
traditional food from the area, not your typical Christmas fare. We also brought out the electric keyboard and
sang Christmas carols while our kids read the Christmas story. It is possibly the first time some of these
friends heard the story of Christ’s birth or sang songs harolding his entrance
into our world.
Christmas Eve was very different this year. We handy a fancy dinner at our favorite hotel with two other families.
We have a friend who wanted to spend Christmas with us. She came in from Jakarta and has been with us for 5 days.
We also got a few good family pictures.
Christmas morning was full of presents and fun. We spent the morning opening presents, we to our Christmas lunch restaurant, and then invited our young adult "orphans" over for an afternoon of games and fun.
I'll leave you with some Christmas pictures of our kids. Pick your favorite.
