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:)