Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas from our town!

Christmas and New Years have obviously come and gone. We're currently in the capital welcoming some new teammates...hooray! They arrived New Years Eve and are doing well. They're such good sports about letting us...well, mostly Matt...drag them all around the city to show them some of the places we tend to frequent when we're in town.

Christmas day it was absolutely great to be back in our town. Hooray for a place to call home and for being able to be there! We didn't have much planned this year, though I'm sure we'll develop more traditions as Mikey gets older (and yes, we do still call him Mikey, though we've also started calling him Michael...and a teammate is calling him Alexander...poor kid's gonna have to get used to answering to a long list of names it seems like).

We do traditionally have creamed eggs for breakfast. Well, as of last Christmas this is part of our tradition. Matt thinks it's great because it's the one day each year that he knows he doesn't have to fix breakfast...I think "epic" may have been the word he used to describe it. We picked up this tradition from my days in Zambia with the Davis and Scott families. Good times carried around the world!

If you can't tell, those are bell and Christmas tree-shaped biscuits.

We read the Christmas story, both from the Bible and from a children's book called The Jesus Storybook (highly recommended!). We opened a few gifts, then spent the afternoon delivering cookies! I made star and angel sugar cookies to give away to friends, along with a handwritten explanation of the importance of those 2 signs in the Christmas story. It's fun sharing the reason to celebrate with others! And as a plus, it gave me some good language practice since I haven't been focusing on that much the past few months. And it also was a test to see if people could read my Cyrillic cursive handwriting. They could...score!

This lady was soooo excited when she found out we were expecting. She was worried about me as I developed, and about him already. She also sweetly asked about his grandparents saying they must miss him (which they definitely do). What a sensitive lady to be blessed with in our lives.

Pardon the burp cloth under his head. This kid has decided that spitting up and drooling can occur at any time, so this is our best line of defense.

Our neighbor and friend had a son in late August, so these 2 fellas are just a few months apart. Can't wait to see them grow up together! Oh, and his mom is the one in the picture above.

First Christmas with Michael! Add in a couple college sweatshirts and we're having a cozy Christmas day!