Catching Up On The Holidays 1

We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, wherever in the world you are! It has been a little while since we last posted, and we don't want to blog too much at one time - contrary to what you may have seen in the past :) - so we're going to do a couple of installments.

On Christmas Eve we all attended and participated in the EKV Christmas Eve Service. Jeremy and Kaylie played Mary and Joseph in the kids' musical, and Jeremy got to try to speak a few lines of Dutch in front of the natives. And Keiric got to walk with the other little ones holding a lighted star while Heather helped to guide the miniature herd (That's Keiric on the right in case you can't recognize him with his hair cut).


On Christmas morning we woke up, unsure if Santa (the "Kerstman") had visited because Sinterklaas had already brought presents earlier in the month. He had! and the kids were excited to see that he had eaten the speculaas and drunk the milk that they had put out. They were also excited to wear their 1st Christmas gift. One of Heather's favorite Christmas traditions passed down from the Jacks family is getting new PJs and slippers to open on Christmas Eve. We let the kids have their slippers several weeks ago when it got really cold since our tile floors are freezing at night - but they did get to open their Pjs. Kaylie got Snoopy, and Keiric got Spiderman.

Then they got to open the few presents that Santa had left, as well as the box of gifts they had received from grandparents and great grandparents.



That evening, while the kids took a nap, Heather made an amazing dinner for all of us, with steak, corn on the cob, and sweet potato fries. (Again, we were substituting for the turkey, which we weren't even going to try to find) It wasn't exactly a 'traditional' Christmas dinner, but it was festive! The kids were most excited about their fancy wine glasses - filled with punch, of course (we're not quite that European yet).


After dinner was eaten and the dishes were cleared, the kids decorated the Christmas Tree cake that they had made for Jesus' birthday. Then we read the story of Christ's birth and talked about why we celebrate Christmas. (See quotable quotes from previous post)


We hope you enjoyed your Christmas as much as we did. Know that we were thinking of, praying for, and missing you all!