Christmas Day!

Our celebration of Christmas was full of yummy treats, fun presents, one visit to a friend's house that we hadn't gotten to the day before, and putting the last ornament up on the Jesse tree.  Happy Birthday Jesus!

Pre Christmas

One street over from us had a light display for the month of December.  They had bamboo poles arched across the road with lights attached.  The kids loved it!

 This is a Pondok Natal or 'Christmas Hut'.  People build them all over the city and they usually have a manger scene (in this case a large star of David), a Christmas tree, maybe a Santa... and then they play very loud Christmas music from them.  This one was built by our neighbor just this Christmas.  He worked very hard on it (sometimes until 1 in the morning) and we were so glad when he was finished because the blaring music was a welcome change from the pounding hammers:)

 Dylan and Roman enjoying the Christmas Eve service at our church.

 On Christmas morning we took a quick trip to the beach for some pictures.

 We didn't celebrate our family Christmas until the next day.  On the 25th we visited homes of people from our church.

Everyone had lots of food, cookies, snacks and drinks to offer and loved playing with the kids.

In the afternoon we went home and opened our gate so that kids could come and get a can of coke. Raquel was very excited to hand out the soda:)  There were tons of kids roaming the neighbor hoods.  Some had backpacks full of cans of soda.  It reminded me of Halloween in the States.

That night we moved our mattresses to the living room and slept by the Christmas tree.  Well, Dylan, Raquel and I did.  We let the boys sleep in their beds:)

Roman's First Birthday!

December 19, 2011- little Roman Emmanuel joined us.  His middle name is a reminder that God is with us!   

He has been a very sweet addition to our family and we are so thankful for our happy little guy.

Since his birthday is so close to Christmas, I slacked on a party for him.  We just did cake and ice cream for him that night.  Someday when he's old enough to care we'll do something really fun:)

  

He was very tired and hungry, but I wanted to take a picture with this bib on since Gideon had worn it on his first birthday the year before:)

He was very serious about his cake.

It took him a little bit to get started...

but then he started to realized it was pretty good...

Then there was no stopping him:)

He was pretty irritated that we took the cake away to make him open presents.

Raquel and Gideon were happy to help

Ah yes, an extremely loud and obnoxious phone that will wake me up in the middle of the night if I so much as touch it with my little toe.  Good choice mom!

He's starting to walk but it's not his preferred mode of transportation yet

Saying goodnight to his big brother... so sweet

 Happy Birthday to our big little boy Roman!  We love you!