Maria loves keeping up with all her siblings. She’s a little ham with her antics. Maria really enjoyed eating all the gingerbread decorations! Her silly smile, with chocolate still on her teeth, says it all. We have so much fun with our little girl!

We started out 12 Days of Christmas the Monday before Christmas. Day 1 – make wrapping paper and sleep next to the Christmas tree. Day 2 – Christmas Eve Celebrations. Day 3 – Christmas Day celebrations. Day 4 – baking giant ginger bread cookies and having the Kanes over for lunch. Day 5 – decorating our giant gingerbread cookies. Day 6 – Saom Kaning Christmas Evening Party. Day 7 – Saom Kaning Christmas Celebration. Day 8 – Christmas Movie. Day 9 – Christmas Cutout Cookies. Day 10 – Bonfire. Day 11 – Christmas Concert. Day 12 – Reading The Worst Christmas Pageant Ever with cookies and chai tea.

So far I really like doing the Advent?Christmas season this way. It made Advent more peaceful and now there’s lots of fun after Christmas.

We had a wonderful Christmas celebration Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Christmas Eve we had our traditional meal of tacos (adding chips this year), then we had cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate for dessert while Josh read from our Advent book and we sang a few songs. After clean up we watched The Muppets Christmas Carol.

Christmas morning we did our singing and Advent reading, and then the kids exchanged gifts. This is always a special time, since some kids give handmade gifts and all of them put a lot of thought into choosing special things. One of the things Micah gave to each sibling was a mango. The Sunday before Christmas we picked up our puppy from Saom Kaning village. Noel is about a month old. Everyone is doing a great job taking care of our new “baby.”

JD and Kim came late morning for our Christmas pageant and cinnamon rolls. Afterwards we had a time of singing. Then we enjoyed our lunch of buffalo roast, potatoes, salad, and rolls. Clara made another great apple pie for dessert!

After supper the kids gave out their homemade cards and we gave them their gifts. It was a lovely day for all.

We started Advent this year with our nightly candle lighting and singing – eight songs each night. We’re reading Jotham’s Journey (a gift from friends), and we’re really enjoying the nightly readings. We’re trying out something different this year. Instead of doing all our Christmas activities leading up to Christmas, we’re focusing more on Advent before Christmas, and then we’re going to have the 12 Days of Christmas once Christmas Day hits. Christmas will be the start of all our fun instead of the end of all our fun. I’ve been thinking about this for a few years, and so far it’s going well.

Even though we’re not “starting” Christmas yet, we did put up our tree. We had our decorating party last Sunday evening. Originally we were planning it for Friday evening, but the power was out for 12 hours and didn’t go back on until the kids were all in bed. We had a fun time Sunday evening combining Advent with tree decorating.

This past Sunday evening our church hosted a youth Christmas gathering for all the churches in our province. There were about 20 different villages represented from the Jarai, Tampuan, Khmer, Krung, and Kachok people groups. The evening started with a meal, after which there was a service. During the service, each church group got up and performed a special number for Christmas. Besides this there was general singing, a Christmas pageant, and a sermon (Josh was asked to preach this year). The program continued past 11PM. Our family only survived until a little after 10, when the announcer said the program was scheduled to stop but that the head of the committee requested that they go on another hour with singing.

Our youth wanted to perform the Christmas pageant we normally do at our church Christmas. We’ve been rehearsing with them since November 17th. The kids really had fun during our dress rehearsal with all the costumes. This year Becca was a magi and Isaiah was a sheep. Everyone did a great job this year. We plan to do the same play with the same cast for our church Christmas at the end of the month.

For 10 days in November our kids were all on even years (or months – Maria)! We’re thankful for the children God has given our family.

Thanksgiving Day we had an evening celebration. It took a while to cook everything in the oven, since I could only cook one item at a time, so we didn’t eat until close to 7. After our meal we had a time of singing, Scripture reading, and thanksgiving. Clara made an apple pie for dessert.

This past weekend, Micah worked on one of his birthday presents. He did a great job painting and is a great dinosaur!