Christmas Eve and Christmas Morning Photos

Merry Christmas Beloved Friends and Family! We have had a wonderful two days of delicious food, wonderful presents, laughter and fun with friends, but not a ton of rest. The full reality of Christmas as parent has set it--fun, but not so restful! Oh, well, we are still very grateful! Here are a few photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.
Sarah, wearing her perfect Christmas dress! She had a great time playing with the dozen or so kids that were present at our Christmas Eve dinner. I had the most difficult time getting a picture of her because she was literally never still the entire evening!
Later that evening, David and I put all the presents under our tree:
And into the stockings:
The next morning, Sarah was amazed to see what wonders awaited her!

She had a great time pulling everything out of her stocking and opening all of her gifts.



This is the aftermath, though this picture was actually taken after David had already straightened the place up considerably!
Anyway, we have some great video on the way of Sarah opening gifts and playing with some of her new toys. I wanted to add it tonight, but the internet is waaaay to slow--the current 2 minute clip is taking 88 minutes to upload to YouTube--and that is after I sized the file down considerably! So hopefully those videos will be up tomorrow for the grandparents to see! For now I will wish you all a Merry Christmas and Good Night!

Park

The first week of December, my helper mentioned how beautiful the park in the middle of our city, Green Lake Park, was this time of year with the leaves turning golden and all the geese from the north stopping over on their southward migration. So we decided to be a little spontaneous that day and take Sarah on a field trip to the park!


It was indeed a gorgeous late fall morning, sunny and cool. My absolute favorite weather in the city where we live, which really has fantastic weather almost year round.

Sarah, of course, got a lot of attention as usual, which she thankfully enjoys.



The birds were plentiful, and Sarah enjoyed [attempting] to feed them pieces of stale bread. Mostly I fed them, and she loved watching them.



Here's a few more shots of how lovely the park really was that morning:




A perfect fall memory!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Less than a week till Christmas! This month--this fall, really--has just flown by! We have had a wonderful December thus far, including several really fun times with good friends here, some great opportunities to serve others, and just seeing a lot of the Lord's goodness and provision. So, we are getting into the spirit here, looking forward to more Christmas fun this week.

I took some Christmas-y photos last week, that I thought I'd share with you today, in honor of the season. :)
Beginning with our tree, of course! Oh, our tree! The cheapest fake tree David and his roommate could find back in their single days our first year in China. Somehow, you ended up with a bunch of stuff that no one else wanted and randomly ended up in our apartment when we came back here married in 2006. But I have grown to love you since then, even in all your sparse-branchy-fakeness. You've been our tree for four Christmases (six if you count David's single days), and I think I've learned a thing or two about how to make you look good!

Our stockings are the opposite story, actually. These are new to our family this year! I am so excited to finally have nice stockings with our names on them! David and I both grew up with knitted stockings--when you put gifts in them they stretch and bend with the fullness of gifts and take on the shape of whatever is inside! I am so excited to fill them with treats and goodies for my two beloveds this year!
I also love our ornaments! Our tree contains a lot of ornaments, like the one shown above, that David's grandmother or mom made for us by hand when we were engaged and gave us for our wedding. One of the best gifts ever!
I decorated the tree while Sarah was napping, so it was fun to see her reaction to it when she woke up!
I did the tree, meanwhile David set about filling our home with tasty treats. Above he is decorating a pan of chocolate covered toffee with Christmas sprinkles.

Above is ten pounds of homemade Italian sausage David made, waiting for him to take the meat to have it cased later on that day.

David also made his famous shortbread.

And chocolate walnut fudge--Sarah's favorite by far!

Since David was doing all this cooking, I took the easy way out Christmas-y option of ordering KFC delivery for dinner! Its crazy that seven years ago you saw almost no visible signs that people in this country knew Christmas was even happening, and now Christmas here is commercial out the wazoo! Still, the KFC bucket made me smile!

Football Girls

David and some other guys in the city went out and played football the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Sarah and I joined another mom and kids out on the field to cheer on our men/socialize.
Sarah and my friend Anita's daughter Callie really enjoyed playing with the footballs themselves!

Some lessons in sharing had to be learned, but that's just how it goes these days. These girls will be ready for powder-puff in no time!

Sarah Loves Strawberries

Its strawberry season here! I know where most of you live, strawberries are in season in the spring and summer, but here its December and January! I bought my first batch the other day, and David, Sarah and I snacked on a couple. Apparently Sarah really liked them! I was helping David just a few feet away with something in the office, when Sarah climbed up on the table and did this:
She took exactly one bite out of each strawberry left in the box, and left the rest strewn all over the table! She did all this silently and stealthily, and she was far from the scene of the crime when we came back and discovered it. Oh, that sweet, silly girl!

Thai Time

I want to start taking more pictures and doing more posts from our everyday life. I took these pics the last time we ate our favorite little Thai cafe. We eat there at least twice a month I'd say and its always a treat.

The food is delicious. Not quite Thailand delicious, but 90% as good, which is pretty great! David gets pad thai, I get green curry, and we order a fried noodle dish for Sarah that's not spicy.
We all have a great time!

Thanksgiving Pics

Whew! This busy season of year is just beginning and I am already tired. About to head to bed but I have a bunch of great pictures and things to blog about from the last week or so, I just haven't had any time to actually sit down and write a post. So I apologize for the brevity of this post, but bed is just calling my name right now. I am sure you have those days too, so you will understand.

So, these are our Thanksgiving pics. We had a great Thanksgiving day. Our big meal with friends wasn't until late in the afternoon, so David and I decided to start the day with a late breakfast at one of our favorite little cafes in the area. We basically never go out for breakfast, but it was a really fun, relaxing and delicious way to start the holiday.

I started my cooking after we got home and Sarah went down for her nap, conveniently. I made mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and David's family's corn casserole recipe called "Corn Corn." I have made exactly these three dishes for the last several years, so I've kind of got the timing down (with my tiny oven) and keeping everything warm and even transporting it to our friends' apartment via walking/taxi/more walking down to a science. Its nice when things just go smoothly. :)
Here is a photo of the whole spread. Everything was really, really delicious.



We celebrated with five other American families, so in total we had twelve adults and fourteen kids (ALL under the age of FIVE!!!) in our group! This photo is actually only of four of the six total families in attendance. I wish we could have gotten a group photo of everyone--that would have been a logistical feat!

So, yeah, that is what we DID on Thanksgiving day. I regret that I never really finished posting one thing I was thankful for each day in November and now it is already December. I would love to end this post on a more spiritual/personal note about all I am thankful for, but as I said earlier BED is calling my NAME big time. I will say, I feel especially this year that I have SO SO SO much to be thankful for. The Lord is teaching me so much, and I have really been experiencing his presence and provision. We are seeing some really cool stuff happening, especially with regards to our family's future even though there are still a lot of unknowns in that area. God is good and he has been very, very good to us. That is for certain. And now I am off to get some SLEEP. Love you all!