Oren and Caitlyn working on gingerbread houses at Joy Johnson's Annual Gingerbread Extravaganza
We are now deep into the rituals of Christmas. The third Advent candle was lit in our little
makeshift wreath on our coffee table yesterday, and we had participated in a
number of family style Christmas events in the past week.
Working backwards, Oren and David’s English reading group
had a big cookie decorating Christmas party today (Monday). We are blessed to have Debbie, an 'embassy' mom who supplied many goodies from the US to decorate cookies with and turned
the airconditioning down in her house to give a feel of winter. The kids ate cookies, watched Christmas
movies on a big screen TV and drank hot chocolate!
Sunday, we had a modified children’s Christmas pageant at
our church. Rebecca was very involved
in this and was actually leading worship.
She had worked on a number of Christmas songs for the Anglophone kids,
(with the help of several other moms).
The chairs were arranged in the sanctuary with a big space in the middle
for the kids to sit in. The presentation
was very cute and surprisingly well rehearsed, even with musicians arriving
less than 5 minutes before Church started on the day of the show.
Oren and David had been practicing their songs at home
during the week, especially “The Friendly Beasts”. David has a beautiful voice and could sing
the part about the donkey and the camel expertly. He, however, was not much of a performer and
didn’t seem to notice when his group was actually singing for the real thing. It was still very cute though.
Oren played Joseph being visited by ‘Zack Guillbaud’ the
arch angel, telling him to take Mary as his wife. (Mary was an Ethiopian girl about a foot
taller than him.)
The kids said their lines audibly and well, most of them
memorized.
There were songs from the Kirundiphone kids and even a guest
children’s choir from a town upcountry.
It was a successful production that showed a lot of effort on behalf of
the many mother’s who are involved in the Sunday School, and appreciated by all
of us there.
Afterwards, I took Rebecca and the kids out to Ubuntu
restaurant to get pizza. She definitely
looked too exhausted to go home and prepare lunch.
The Saturday before that was also a big, mulit-event
day. It began with yoga, as usual, but
afterwards we went out to Pinnacle 19 on the beach to spend some time with Tim,
Jeanette and Isabel. (Our South African
friends.) The occasion was an official good-bye get together for them with many friends
from the ex-pat community who have come to know them. The Ivaska’s, Millers, Guillbaud’s, as well
as others who dropped in. Many of these
were folks we saw at Thanksgiving and other gatherings this month. It was a pleasant afternoon, with kids
playing cricket on the beach and swimming in the lake.
That same afternoon, as if that day was not complicated
enough, the Ecole Belge’s Marché de Noel was scheduled. This is a great place to pick up Christmas
gifts for Friends and family as many merchants set up booths at the school to sell souvenirs and other handicrafts.
Mothers provide cookies and other sweets to sell, all of this to
fundraise for the school. It was like
‘deja-vu all over again’ as far as seeing everyone we had just left at the
beach. It has become an attraction for
almost every expat. in the country in my opinion, and I think I saw just about
everyone I know there.
The kids enjoyed Christmas shopping for each other, Rebecca
took David and I took Oren and we walked around and shopped. Sadly, for the second year in a row, the
weather was particularly disagreeable for an outdoor fête with overcast skies
and rain on and off. One highlight was
Oren winning a raffle prize worth about $50 at a local restaurant. He is excited to take us all out to dinner in
the next week.
Friday was family movie night and we did our best to watch A
Christmas Story by streaming it without much success. So much for Spidernet being a great internet
provider all of the time. Oren managed
to stay up and watch it all the way through with many interruptions, but
Rebecca, David and I fell asleep.
What made it fun though is that the kids have been on a serious
‘screen time’ fast, so this was a real treat. Rebecca and I have
been fasting from food during the day over the season, but the kids are giving
up screen time except one evening per week during this month. I will say that I have seen a marked
improvement in their behavior—far fewer fights.
I am one of the parents that is becoming convinced that the paradoxical
inertness of watching combined with the high brain activity of the content
watched (shows or games) does cause the kids to be very aggressive and agitated,
especially with each other. I think
this means we will probably not be getting a Playstation anytime soon in our
move back to the States.
Earlier in the week, the biggest highlight was a gingerbread
house making party hosted by Joy Johnson. This is the second year in what will
probably continue to be a tradition here.
Although I did not attend, Rebecca described it as epic! Joy had made several dozen undecorated
gingerbread houses, and all the other mothers who came supplied candies to
decorate the houses with. It was a huge
even with at least 25 participating kids.
The results were impressive and Oren and David brought theirs home and
promptly began eating it. At this
writing there is less than half of it left.
I still have not made our own gingerbread creation but have
designed a kind of Gothic Church that Oren and I will work on this week. We will be able to display it at our own
Annual Christmas Folkdance and Offering of the Arts this coming Saturday. We will be doing some carol singing as well
for this event, so there is a lot to prepare.
We do expect most of our MCC team to be down for the weekend
as well, so it should be busy. Rebecca’s
parents also arrive this Sunday so we will be doubling down on hosting for at
least the next two weeks. Its all good
though!
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