Christmas

I love Christmas, it's by far my favorite time of the year. I not only love decorating the house, but I love the coziness of having the lights on at night, and the comfort of hearing familiar Christmas songs on the radio. Yes, we get radio stations from home! We pipe in KTIS (Christian radio out of Minneapolis) to our kitchen and listen to it all day long. It's so fun to hear the weather & traffic reports and feel like we've got a little bit of home in Peru.

We typically take a family picture in front of our tree--this year we realized again how short our tree looks!! It's always a challenge to get the boys to cooperate and smile in a "normal" way--not with weirdo smiles or faces.

I like the way our picture turned out this year, and I especially have enjoyed this Christmas as it's our last one with only a family of 5! Next year we'll have a new little peanut running around, we'll have to hang the ornaments higher up, and I won't be able to put the presents out quite as early for fear that he/she will be wanting to open them up.

Of course Christmas for us in Peru also means the end of the school year. There are parties galore and the boys are studying for end of the year exams. Brandon had an entire week of exams and we are proud to say that he got all A's for the year!! We are proud of how well he does in school--not to mention the fact that it's all in SPANISH!!! We also attended an end of the year party for Jonathon & Nathan's class--complete with a clown who later showed up as "Papa Noel" (Santa Clause) and handed out presents. It was fun to see the kids with their presents, and also fun to see our boys interacting so well with their classmates.