Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. I looked at the blog today and realize how long it has been since I posted. I have to admit I have gotten addicted to Facebook. It is much easier and faster to post pictures so I generally go there "first" and never make it to the blog. So my apologies, but it is what it is. So all of you non- facebookers out there, it would make my life easier ('cause I know that is your goal in life, not :) ) if you became facebookers. If not, I will do my best to get to the blog when I can and give you a sampling of the pictures (You just can't do the quantity that can be done there due to time constraints).

So we had a wonderful Christmas and New Years. We have been blessed with such good friends who have become our family away from home. On Christmas Eve, two families (the Kanyangas and Morales') joined us for Christmas Eve Dinner. Following dinner, we had a small worship time including a couple of other families. We read the Christmas story together and in between verses, sang Christmas carols. The older children participated in the reading and all joined in the singing. It was a sweet and special time that helped us put our minds on the gift of Jesus in this environment where it is hard to keep the focus, not because of all the materialism we fight back home, but because it's 100 degrees and feels like the middle of summer.

To close the evening, we had a 'gift exchange' with the Kanyangas and Morales'. Each family brought 2 low cost adult gifts and as many children's gifts as they had children (kind of like Dirty Santa, only without the stealing and fighting which we thought went against the whole spirit of Christmas). We then 'spun the bottle' for gifts. The gifts were put in a circle with a glass coke bottle in the middle. Then each person spun for a gift. Then we all opened them together. It was really fun and the children got soooooo excited over these little(<$2.00), thoughtful gifts.

It was a sweet close to a sweet night and it was late enough that the kids were tired enough not to fight sleep, but not so late as to be worn out.

Olivia opening the gift she 'spun' for.

Christmas Day was a nice day. We had our morning of gift giving, including a traditional 'Herndon' Christmas breakfast. We then loaded up and headed over to our Bible Study Pastor's house where they have a potluck Mexican Christmas lunch each year. That was a nice afternoon and we came back to our house where the kids watched movies while the adults napped followed by Hot Dogs (goal was easy clean up) and left overs with the Kanyangas. So overall, it met our hopes which were that we would not only celebrate the real meaning of Christmas, but that it would FEEL like Christmas (always a challenge here).
One of Olivia's favorite gifts which were bath toys. She LOVES baths and is ready for one at any time of the day. So here we are, in the middle of Christmas morning (at her request), playing with her new bath toys.
One of the gifts the girls received from their grandparents. It has patterns, cloth, ribbons, beads, gems,etc that they can design, cut out and make riding clothes and saddles for these cardboard riders and horses. They spent a while in the school room working on their outfits.
Kaitlyn, picking out a pattern for swags to decorate the jump.

Well, following Christmas, we took off another week (unplanned, but I just couldn't start back to school so soon). We rested up, rode horses a lot and tried to get back to normal. We had 4 couples over for pizza, snacks and games on New Year's Eve and played Mexican Dominoes and Pictionary until Midnight. Then everyone was ready for bed and dispersed pretty quickly. We resumed school last week with the core subjects and will return to all of it this week. We just received news that my parents have bought tickets to come see us in March so our new year is off to a good start. Unfortunately for them, Brad just found a special on South African Airlines where it's 2 tickets for the price of one--round trip--to Africa for Jan, Feb, March. Wish they could have gotten that deal!

So any of you that want to take advantage of that deal, come on over. We have a place to put you. :) Well, I'm going to sign out for now. Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We wish you many blessings in the upcoming year!

Zookeeper