Our Weekend

Saturday was a full but exciting day for our family! :-)

In the morning, the Herter family came over and the girls helped us make our annual gingerbread house. It is a special tradition that our family has done every year, and this year we were so happy to share the tradition with our friends. Although snow and tropics do not really go together, we decided to add palm trees into the yard for a little “touch” of the Philippines. Just for fun!

That afternoon, the Wades, the Lu family, and the Clifton family came over for food and fellowship. It had been almost 8 months since we had seen the whole Clifton family (they live in Subic, which is about an hour away), and the kiddos have grown so much since then! :-) It was so good to see everyone.

We decided to make snowmen with the kids—of course not real snowmen….only paper ones.:-) We loved seeing the kids’ adorable little snowmen, as they expressed their creativity on paper. :-)

Our live background music.:-)

Making candy cane sleighs 

"Smile!" (Meagan and Wiebke)

The Ladies catching up on their visiting

Two peas in a pod... or maybe it's two sweet kids in a chair.:-) (Eli and Reagan)

After our early dinner and time of fellowship, we all headed to San Fernando, which is 25 minutes away. Every year at Christmas time, the city of San Fernando hosts a lantern festival. It features a competition of 20 feet high lanterns (made from real capiz shells and 3,000- 5,000 colored lightbulbs that synchronize to make beautiful patterns. We thought it would be a great experience to watch and take pictures. Well, it most definitely was an experience to remember…

The place was extremely crowed—literally standing shoulder to shoulder with throngs of people. We stood there for a while as waiting for the competition to start. We decided to ask around in the crowd what time they would begin and discovered that it would be several hours later.:-( So we decided to go ahead and return home, since it was getting late and many of us were either feeling claustrophobic or warm and stuffy after standing in the very crowded condition.

Weaving our way back out of the crowd was quite the experience, especially with the anxiety of having lost one of the younger girls in the mass of people. We all panicked at how we were going to find her in the sea of Filipinos, because she blended in with the crowd—she was short with dark hair. But we were so relieved to find her a few minutes later, when she ran into Sarah, who walked back into the crowd to look for her. Good thing Sarah was tall and was easy to spot in the sea of people! :-)

It sure was an eventful day! Although we were disappointed that we could not see the entire lantern festival, we were very grateful to spend time with dear friends, who feel so much like family.:-)

We will hopefully write more later on this week. But until then…. May the rest of your Christmas holiday celebrations be filled with the joy of our Savior, Jesus Christ!

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The might God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6