Christmas is coming!

We decorated for Christmas on Friday. Raquel was so excited. We bought a tree in town and she couldn't wait to put it up that night, and did a wonderful job of helping:).

Window clings from Grandpa and Grandma (Dylan helped her space these and her ornaments out a bit more after this:). Unfortunately the snowman only survived until the next morning when Raquel woke up before us (as usual) and loved him to death. There were pieces of him all over the floor. It was kind of like it snowed:)

Jesse Tree - finally!

I started making this before last Christmas, but never finished it. Now it's done except for the ornaments, so I've been making one every day as we go along. (It's only been three days, we'll see if I keep up:)

Each day we read a different Bible story, starting with Creation and ending with the birth of Jesus, with all the stories in between highlighting how the Old Testament is all about preparing for Jesus. In each pocket is an ornament to hang on the tree, a piece of candy and a card telling us what to read.

The first three ornaments have been a globe (I did the Asia-Pacific side of the world for now:) for Creation, an apple and snake (that ended up looking more like a worm) for the first sin, and a rainbow for the story of Noah.

We drove up Mt. Telemoyo on Sat. with our friends the Pries. We are going to miss them as they are going back to Germany in a couple weeks for four months and then on to Kalimantan.

When we got to the top we couldn't see anything as the clouds had started moving in. This picture was taken about halfway down. Thankfully we made it off the mountain before it started pouring, but we still had about a 20 min. drive back home in a downpour. We hadn't brought ponchos, but Raquel slept through it anyway.

Raquel acting like Mr. Bean when he was taking measurements to put a window in his wall.

Pretty Christmas dress from Oupa and Ouma

Bouncing while waiting for a dental check at her school. It was the first time she had ever been to a dentist, and she did a wonderful job. The other kids in front of her were crying, but she just marched in, sat down and opened her mouth as wide as she could. They actually had to tell her to close her mouth a couple times after they were done:)