It is ALMOST here!

WOW! It is almost Christmas! Actually, it is closer for me than you, but still…it is almost here!!!!!! Does that make you excited or stressed? I hope it makes you somewhat excited. The dorm kids are all gone. They went to be with their families for the holidays, so we have a quiet house. I was ready for this change of pace. I have a list of projects and things I want to do with the kids while we have all this time. There really aren’t that many options when it comes to going out to do stuff so we have to be creative with what we have right here. A lot of people are gone on the hill so we are really having a quiet time. One of the projects was converting an old play area into a club or fort for the girls. Actually, it is a play area with two pondoks on top so one is for the girls and one for the boys. The girl one is done and the boys want to do theirs on their own, so we will see when that gets done. There is another family that runs the second hostel and they have some kids our kids age and so they all worked on the project together. It was great fun!
We have also been working on Christmas cookies and fudge and peppermint bark (Thanks to my family for sending us some candy canes!!) and gingerbread men. The kids made a great nativity set out of toilet paper rolls. I am amazed at how well it looks.
We just found out that the family we were going to celebrate Christmas with is sick, so it looks like that won’t work out. I have never had a Christmas with just us…it will be interesting. I am trying to make new traditions here that will still feel special. Tonight before bed we all sat in the girls room and sang Christmas carols. Sophie’s versions of the songs are hilarious. Her words are close but not quite right-they usually rhyme with the right word though.
If you were here this week you would have heard the crazy pondok Natal’s blasting music at all hours of the day along with lots of fireworks going off day and night, you could have watched White Christmas with us (the Indonesian copy) where the movie stopped with only 15 minutes left, or you could have heard Sophie’s thunderous gas during Elf when we invited company over to watch with us or you could have fished a whole deck of cards out of the toilet after Cale peed and threw them in, and laughed at our Indonesian Christmas lights that stopped working the minute we got them up, or helped me find Cale’s gum that he accidentally spit out in our bed and then couldn’t find…should I go on??
Ha Ha, what can you do but laugh? Life is full of bumps, isn’t it? What can you do? You don’t want to stay in the bump, you want to get over it and keep going. So that is what we do.
I am going to leave you with a joyful holiday picture of the kids in front of our tree. Please know that we are thinking of you and missing you tonz!