More Christmas Fun!

So, even though the tree’s down, the lights are packed away, and the decorations have been put up, I though someone (like my dad) might still enjoy seeing the play-by-play version of our Christmas.

After spending the Christmas Eve morning at the kids' school, we came home to some yummy hot chocolate and let the kids open a couple of gifts.  Then, while they played, Brad and I both hit the kitchen!  My only responsibility for our yummy Christmas meal was dessert, and asking Leigh to make the bread.  Brad handled the main course by making some rockin’ alfredo sauce that we poured over angel hair pasta!  It was lovely!  This is one of his “specialities” but since it requires quite a bit of heavy whipping cream, we only allow him to make it once a year!  For dessert I made some vanilla malt ice cream. Special thanks to the awesome ice cream maker my dad gave us last year for Christmas, and the malt milk powder some friends from the States gave us.  It’s definitely Brad’s favorite ice cream these days.  And, we made a chocolate crown birthday cake for Jesus.  For birthdays, I’m usually the one that handles all the decorating of the cakes and it takes several hours.  At Christmas, my kids join in the fun!  It goes way faster and although the final outcome may not be as “professional” looking, I’m sure Jesus is pleased with the joint effort! 

This year everyone had their own point on the crown.  (Savannah helped with a few other parts as well.)  Peter’s point is on the left; Alex's is on the right.  Then, Savannah's was left of the middle and mine was right of the middle, leaving Brad's point in the  middle.  (Brad’s goal was to be simple; my goal was to use up the icing in left in the bag. Both goals were accomplished!)    

After eating our yummy dinner, we moved to the living room for our family candle light service.  We enjoyed reading, praying and praising the Lord for the precious gift of the Christ born to bring us life, over 2000 years ago! Then, I divided the gifts and let the kids take turns opening.  One of Savannah's favorite gifts this year was a real microscope!  She has had so much fun looking at hairs, flower pedals, grains of salt and sugar, and several other small things.  

Unfortunately, being the slacker mom that I am, I didn’t take any pics of Savannah with other gifts.  She did get quite a few books, a quilt making kit, a science kit, a few radio dramas, and several other things.

Peter and Alex also had fun opening gifts!  One of my favorite things they received from my parents were these cute PJs..

Dad, do you like how I labeled these packages from you?  

Oh, those are some cute little men!  


On Christmas morning, after dumping our our stocking and eating breakfast, we all worked together to prepare 60 baggies of Christmas cookies.  We bundled up, as it was super chilly outside and went to pass out cookies and booklets to our neighbors and those that work near our home.  We have done this every year since we've been here and it's one of my favorite Christmas traditions.   Then, we came home in time to do a video call with Sue!  She enjoyed seeing the kids open her gifts.  She gave Savannah a set of 10 books, some Polly Pockets, and several crafty things.  She gave both boys a special set of legos.  They were in Heaven!    

Here Peter is helping Alex put together his new Toy Story Train Lego set.  

Woody, I mean Peter, is so proud he put together his Airport!  

Christmas evening, we went with several friends to a special Christmas Service.  It was great!  And, I was excited because Brad and I were able to understand so much more this year than last!  That's always encouraging!  And, as usual, they asked us to sing a song for everyone.  (The service had a bit of a talent show feel to it, so some white people singing in English wasn't anymore strange than the grandmas singing and dancing with ribbons.)  We had two other American friends with us, so they were good sports and joined in the fun!  We sang Hark the Herold Angels Sing.  I'm sure it sounded awful, but oh well!  

Notice Peter's hair! We left the house right after he got out of the shower, so he put his hat on over wet hair.  By the time we got there, it was dry, but CRAZY!  All of our friends commented on it!  Oh well!  

The funniest part was when Brad asked each of our kids to say something in the local language.  After introducing us, he passed the mic to Alex first, and he said, "Merry Christmas, Jesus love you!"  Everyone thought it was so great to hear this cute kid speaking their language, so they politely clapped a bit.  Then, Alex said, "Oh, no need to thank me, you're welcome," in asianese of course, and that cracked everyone up....including me!  That kid is such a ham!  


So, all that to say, we had a wonderful Christmas 2010 and are so looking forward to spending Christmas 2011 with our family in the States, Lord willing!    

Alex the Hutt

From Brad.

The beauty of digital cameras is that you can instantly identify bad pictures and delete away. However, sometimes we forget to do this. When Alex was born, he was 6 lbs 13 oz. This is compared to his brother Peter who came out a mere 6 lbs even. I always had Alex pegged as a power slugging first-baseman who struck out too much, but also led his team in RBIs (a good baseball website will help you ladies make sense of that last sentence). As just a 2-month old baby, he was a chunk. A healthy chunk. So much so, when I took this picture below...

It was named the “Alex the Hutt” picture.  Why you ask? Let’s switch from baseball to Star Wars. In Star Wars episode 6, we are introduced to a spacelike slug creature named Jabba the Hutt.

Can you see the resemblance? I guess Jabba isn't wearing any diapers, that's an obvious difference.

But how times have changed. Alex loves to run, laugh, play baseball, ride his bike and anything else that's active. He does love to eat but you wouldn't know it from this picture...

He's a skinny one. We often get criticized, admonished, encouraged (let's assume the best with our local friends here) to feed him more. "he's too skinny! Let him eat more!"  Well, he's a Morello, we're not too worried about him. :)

Christmas at School

by Amy

The last few years at Christmas time I've gone to my kids' preschool to teach the Christmas story.  But, this year, I don't have any preschoolers!  So, I asked the teachers at the elementary school if Brad and I could come to our kids' classes to share about why our family celebrates Christmas.  They seemed to think it was a bit of a strange request, but they were willing to oblige.  So, on Christmas Eve morning, we packed up 140 cookies and 140 coloring books, bundled up, and walked to school.  The kids seemed really excited to see us!

We went to Peter and Alex's class first, then up to Savannah's.  We spent about 30 minutes in each class.

This is Peter and Alex's class.  Can you imagine the classroom management challenges that come with having over 60 kids in one class?!?!

Since Brad had just done Christmas parties with his students at our English school the week before, (and because he's awesome) he was willing to take the lead in teaching!  First we went over new vocab with the kids.  Since this story is unfamiliar here, he was not only introducing the kids to new English words, but also new words in their local language.  So, that led to the kids repeating both the English and Asianese words after Brad.  It was pretty cute.  Then, we gave each child a coloring book and read a simple version of the Christmas story with them.  (Brad read English and their teacher read it in the local language.)

This is Savannah's class.  I think it's sweet to seem them focusing so intently on the story.  

Next we taught the kids how to sing Go Tell It On The Mountain, complete with hand motions and all!  Finally, we wrapped up the class with giving each kid a Christmas cookie. The following week Savannah came home saying that all of her friends kept on asking if her mom would bake more cookies, so I guess they liked them.

What a sweet privilege we had getting to share this story with over 180* kids and teachers, many of whom thought Christmas was only about Santa Claus!

Where's Waldo, I mean Savannah?  Can you find her in this pic?

* I said 180 people, because we also had the opportunity to step into another first grade class and teach them the same story and song while we were waiting for Savannah's class to finish their lessons.  Too bad we didn't have enough coloring books and cookies to give to them as well.      

Party Logistics

by Amy

Ok, so this post is written more for my benefit than yours.  Since I'll be in the States next Christmas, I won't be hosting parties like this until December of 2012.  And, I'm sad to admit this, but my memory is fading.  I don't trust that I'll remember what I did this year, but if I write about it here, there's a good chance I'll come back and read it.  So, feel free to skip over this post!  I won't be offended!

Although we had over 75 locals in our home over a period of 5 days, I made a few intentional decisions that helped it go smoothly.  First of all, when it came to food, I baked early, I baked simply, and I baked small!  Christmas cookies freeze beautifully, so I didn't feel like baking early compromised the taste.  And, I decided this year I was going to only bake two kinds of Christmas cookies: Sugar cookies and mint chocolate cookies. And, I made them SMALL!  So small, in fact, that for the chocolate cookies we used my cookie dough scoop and broke each scoop into two small balls of dough and could place 24 on my cookie sheet.  Locals aren't crazy about sweets, but they'll usually try whatever I put out, so small is great.  My sugar cookie dough, I made into slice & bake logs, and froze them for easy slicing.  Each batch produced well over 100 cookies.  So, when my helpers got hungry, they could swipe a cookie or two without making a dent in our productivity.  Also, I was more concerned about my kids having fun in helping me than I was about the final product.  Clashing icing colors and sprinkles isn't a big deal -- if they liked it, I was fine with it!

I also decided to use a box of cake mix to make mini-chocolate cupcakes.  I don't usually like to use imported goods when I serve locals for two reasons: 1. Imported goods are expensive and/or hard to find.  My local friends don't know what chocolate cake is supposed to taste like, so they're just as happy with a homemade version (that isn't as tasty) as they are with the cake mix doctored version.  2. My local friends can't reproduce it.  I love to feed them things that they like and could make with local ingredients.  If they want me to, I'll teach them how to make it!  But, for this Christmas season, I set my reasons aside.  Cake mix freezes beautifully, and is good, reliable, predictable and FAST!  (And I had several boxes Brad found our our local eBay for less than $1.50.)  So, mini-cupcakes (un-iced) made all my parties this year.

The other reason my parties went smoothly was that I had a plan that I could use each time....  I picked portions of the story to read, found songs to sing in between the readings (in both the local language and English), I asked someone to share a testimony, and had two games that helped reinforce the story.  This party could be tailored to any audience - adults or college students, English speakers or non-English speakers.  Furthermore, my kids were included in not only the prep but also in the party itself.  They were time keepers, judges, artists, and even soloist throughout the event!  Our guest loved having them around; they enjoyed it, and it helped me a ton!  (Just think what they'll be able to do in two years when we're doing this again!)

So, apart from the Lord's sweet grace, I think this is why our parties went well, were relatively low stress, and  all around enjoyable.

 

More Christmas Parties

by Amy

Everyday when I go pick my kids up from school, I stand in an alley with about 6-8 other stay-at-home moms, waiting for the kids to be dismissed.  I guess it's like a chaotic carpool line, minus the cars....  Anyway....  these moms are always curious about my American ways, namely: why my kids and I shower so often and wear so few layers in the winter; what kind of food I can bake and why my kids obey when I tell them to do something.  Needless to say, we've had quite a few interesting conversations!  So, this Christmas I invited "my ladies" to my home for a party while our kids were at school.  I decided to make this a kid-free party thinking that we would all be more relaxed if we weren't worrying about the kids running all over my house.  Plus, if the moms were focused on their kid, then they couldn't focus on what I wanted to share: why I celebrate Christmas.

So, the morning of the party, I set out all sorts of baked goodies and made some hot apple cider and pot of coffee.  One woman arrived 10 minutes early, the rest (5 more) came together fashionable 10 minutes late.  So, after taking a tour of my home and marveling over the fact that I allow my 6 and 8 year olds to sleep on top-bunks, all alone, the party officially began!  Thankfully, Leigh (who also chats with these ladies when she picks my kids up from school) was by my side the whole time!  I was able to share why we celebrate Christmas, and Leigh shared how this Baby born 2000 years ago has changed her life.  What a precious story!  Then, I had them each read a section of the Christmas story from The Book and taught them a couple of Christmas songs.

After that, I had them divide into two teams and play a version of pictionary where they had to draw pictures of words that came right out of the story, ie- manger, angel, Mary, Son, Joseph, shepherd, flock of sheep, etc.  They were a little timid to begin with, but soon, the room was filled with laughter and hollering! Finally, I gave each team a set of 6 pictures from a coloring book that my kids had colored, representing the Christmas story .  I asked them to put them in the correct order and retell the story.  It took each team over five minutes to put them in order!  (My kids are so familiar with this story they could do it in 20 seconds.)  Although they forgot some names here and there, it was great to hear them tell their version of this most important story.

Overall, I'd say this was the party I was most nervous about hosting, but, by the Lord's grace, it went really well!

We had another party here the next night.  Brad was home for this one, so my responsibilities were much less than the previous two.  I only had to handle food and help with the gift swap game.  No problem!  Actually, we told our friend Joe we'd host a party for him and his fellowship group, so he handled most of the details and planning, not Brad.  That week we had some American friends from Mississippi in town, so as they met people on college campuses, we encouraged them to invite them to our house for this party, as well.

I thought my home felt crowded the previous Saturday when we had 33 locals here.  That was NOTHING compared to this one!  We had 43 people, all in my living room!  It was absolutely INSANE - or Hot and Loud, (renao) as our local friends would put it.  But, it was great! I was so encouraged to see Joe and the people from his group take responsibly sharing the Christmas story, getting to know new people, and doing the things Brad and I try to do when new people come to our home!  What a blessing having them pursue people as well,.  There's no way Brad and I and the four gals from Mississippi could have made personal contact with everyone on our own!  And, I had enough food!  I had baked enough cookies expecting to have one more party, but it was cancelled.  So, I put it all out for this crew, and I'm glad I did!

Christmas is a great time to meet people and share our culture and beliefs!  What a sweet blessing to have the opportunity to share with so many this Christmas season!  I pray it bears fruit for years to come!