Here's my big guy at 3 months! Also his 1st Christmas!
So here's the juicy details of our Christmas month. It's been the most encouraging month by far. It started out with 4 separate Christmas parties hosted by our family and visiting friends. While crazy, it was wonderful! It has had much relational fruit. Selah got to go over to her friends house for dinner, Brad now plays basketball every Sat. night with some men (this is wonderful, because the men here are hard to meet because they are ALWAYS at work) and we got invited to a party by a Korean friend. All of these friends, and hopefully more, were made through these parties. We also got to have a local store worker over for a little bit-also a hard task because they work 7 am-10 pm and sleep in the same store.
Then, last Sunday, we had another small Christmas party with some local friends. We've also gotten to know some friends better this month and done lots of dinner hosting. Here's us at Christmas dinner with a friend who's family is out of town right now. We even got to introduce him to real American apple pie!
Christmas morning we had a friend and his wife over for cinnamon rolls. They wanted to come over and give the kids gifts before they had to leave for work, so 6:30 am and we're hosting. He's been incredibly busy, so it was nice to see them both. They stayed and had coffee with us while we opened our stockings. After that, we talked with some family in Texas and then it was off to open more gifts. We rested in the afternoon and did a little of our Christmas story reading of "One Wintry Night" by Ruth Bell Graham-fantastic book about the entire story of Christmas from Creation to Easter. The pictures and story are beautiful That night, we had a friend over for dinner (see picture above) and then crash into bed. It was a wonderful holiday.
This month was our anniversary also. We decided to go to a hotel and eat some Indian/International food. It was wonderful! The back drop to dinner was a choir of Santa dressed young people. The best was when I was about to sit down, what did mine ears hear? Nothing other than "Feliz Navidad" sang by the aforementioned Chinese choir. It was actually a "Feliz Navidad"/"Rudolph" medley. You just can't pay enough for that type of entertainment.
Here's a family Christmas picture. We are no longer worried about if everyone is smiling, but rather if everyone is sitting down in the same place.
We are also getting more and more encouraged at our language skills. Are we there yet...hardly. But we are getting more comfortable in speaking and actually having more in depth conversations. Life here is getting to seem more like life rather than this frantic, confused existence.
Sorry for the random pictures with few captions, but I figured the pictures weren't hard to figure out, so I just did them randomly. We have spent much time rejoicing this month. For answered requests, fun care packages, new friends, more mad language skills, wonderful and healthy family, the season itself.
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!
