Glimpse of Summer Christmas

This year, Christmas was made possible by my lovely and hardworking husband, since I had to take it easy. Well, he did ALL the shopping, made ALL the desserts for the dinners we went to, took care of taking the kids to their programs.....this guy is amazing.

On the 23rd, our church had their Christmas program. Since our sanctuary is on the 2nd floor and it was advised I not hike up stairs, Carl told me that I should stay home. "Don't worry, I'll video tape and take pictures". The kids gave me a pre-concert concert and did really well singing their song for the program.

On the 24th, I saved up all my energy so that I could accompany my family to the candlelight service at the English Church (there's no stairs!). I really enjoyed singing carols and hearing all the familiar special music. At 9:00 we came home, rested for an hour, and then headed out again.

We had been invited to our good friends, Ramiro and Yuneth's house for Christmas dinner at midnight. It's the tradition here and we were so excited to be able to join them and their extended family and friends. We arrived at 10:30 to a huge feast of food and then around 11:30, we started lighting off the fireworks and firecrackers. It's unbelievable if you stop and listen to a city of 1.6 million, all lighting off some type of firecracker. The sound is SO loud, and the sky looks like Kabul Afghanistan. Their poor dog just about went ballistic with the rockets being set off only feet from him, that he broke his chain, and attacked the rocket as it was just about to shoot off. Oops, uh, maybe we should have tied the dog somewhere else!

At midnight, everyone paused to give hugs, kisses, and blessings on Christmas Day. It was special to greet in the day right at 12:00.

We stayed until 1 a.m., until the toasts had been given at the table, to take our weary but very happy selves home.

Everyone slept in until 10:00 on Christmas morn, when we had a simple breakfast and got ready for our family Christmas. Joel read the Christmas story this year, we prayed, and then we opened up all the gifts (well, I guess I did one thing this year, I did wrap some of the presents at least). The kids were very happy with their simple gifts and played with them until 1 p.m.

Then we joined many other MCCers at Liz and Ramont's place for lunch. It was a potluck feast, featuring Carl's famous cream pies. We ate and visited and laughed together and by late afternoon, I was completely spent. We all went to bed early that night and did almost nothing on Boxing Day. There aren't any sales on Boxing Day here!

p.s. be patient for the pictures to load; there are about 15 of them!