Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!

 

I don't have a fresh family photo, but this one from the Capernaum Christmas program on Saturday seems festive. "Mary and Joseph" handed out presents at the end and posed for photos with the kids and their parents.

We have enjoyed the run up to Christmas this year, although by yesterday I was so tired that I pretty much just sat around all day. Now I'm ready to go again.

Last week we had:

• Wednesday: big music school Christmas concert (Bogdan at 46 minutes) and Bible study at our house
• Thursday: Bogdan and friends (the older Sunday school class) shopped and packed presents for kids in Kherson region; birthday party for Young Life leader; prep for Capernaum Christmas program
• Friday: small concert at music school
• Saturday: Capernaum! (This should have its own blog post from me later on.)
• Sunday: visiting puppet team for the Sunday school (I put a lot into planning and organizing this); Christmas lunch for Young Life leaders; baby shower

Now the snow is falling hard, and it looks like we'll have a white Christmas. Most of the big events are done. We just need to cook and prepare a little more and then we'll celebrate. 

(Unfortunately Capernaum has lost access to their Instagram account, but hopefully that will be fixed or there will be a new one soon.)

Thanksgivings

We had two Thanksgiving Days this year. Back in September our church had one together. There was a special church service, with a focus on thanking God even in the midst of darkness. Also, we wanted to remember and thank the people who are defending us. So, after church we had lunch together, and then we sold deserts to raise money for something Den’s brigade needed.

I made a lot of pumpkin pie for that sale, but our kids said that we still needed turkey, so this year we actually celebrated American Thanksgiving in our family on the same day as people in America did. We woke up that morning to another big attack (hello air defense explosions!) and went from “just two hours without electricity, that’s not bad” to emergency outages and then three hours off and three hours on for the rest of the day and night. Still we pulled together all the special foods. We actually started off with pie for lunch, since Asya had an orthodontist appointment and Bogdan had art class, then we had turkey and everything else late in the evening when they came back. It was a lovely holiday, and we thoroughly enjoyed the good food and time together.

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving (or two).