Christmas 2013 - New Traditions?

 

   Christmas Eve Mommy actually had 2 hospital appointments, but Daddy took the kids to the water park/playground where they had great fun, and Mommy brought a Subway picnic for a late supper.  It is a fantastic park, with lots of unique play/climbing frames...  Aiden wanted so badly to keep up with his sisters!  They were good big sisters, and did play on his level at times.

 Christmas morning we were up early for a way-too-sweet special pancake breakfast with all the saved up specials like marshmallows, maple syrup, chocolate chips...

Then the opening of one present to be worn to church...

 

Church took up the rest of the morning, as it was just like an ordinary Sunday with Sunday School, 2 services, and a in-house-prepared meal for lunch together.  We decided the traditional carols are much easier to sing in English, but the Chinese congregation know how to make every moment of the service celebration.

Interestingly, we saw our neighbour there, who came "to see how Christians celebrate Christmas" with a relative.  So now we have another connection to talk with her about it all.

After lunch we headed home and opened our other presents.  Aiden really liked his Duplo car set from NiNi - he played with it for over an hour while his sisters played at a friends house.

 

About supper time we went to the beach with all the trappings for making s'mores... and discovered that a beach picnic for Christmas dinner is a popular thing to do in Penang...

 

Grace and Jasmin amused our picnic neighbours by being loud happy monkeys in the tree, and thrilled Aiden by letting him play with them in their sand building.

 

It was rather windy so the fire was a bit wild at first.  Thankfully Aiden was content to watch from a healthy distance and had no desire to try catch the fascinating stuff of flames.

 

Flames died down, marshmallows were roasted, and we soon had three sticky, happy, full-on-sweetstuff kids.  Aiden went to sleep in the hammok, but the girls went back up the tree...

We had excellent picnic neigbours:  they had a generator for electric lights, and they were generous in sharing their satay with us.  In turn, we offered our s'more stuff - but Daddy had to teach them how to make them :o)

December Misc.

December is supposed to be Mommy's turn to recover by sleeping all day.... you can guess how much that happens!  Still, we are doing less than we all would like to be doing.

School has reduced to a simple copying and drawing exercise in our Advent journals... that even Aiden will beautifully get into some mornings!

 We also are doing a few Christmassy things courtesy of the Aunts' countdown calendar.  Of course, adapted to our Asian life.  Our Gingerbread houses are sugar crackers with homemade icing and chocolate sauce!  They only lasted one day, as they don't stay together outside of the fridge and fridge space is needed for more than a village of houses. Aiden thinks they should have been held together with peanut butter - he is absolutely crazy for it right now!

 

Last weekend Daddy had a work guest.  We got to tag along as they went to the Spice Gardens and the beach.  The Gardens were really well done, but the girls were more interested in the giant swing and the life-sized game of snakes and ladders than learning about spices... But the beach was well-enjoyed by all - except Mommy.  Unfortunately - and a huge surprize to us -Mommy's newly aggravated back was unable to handle walking on sand.  After reaching our shady spot on the sand, she spent the rest of the afternoon shifting around trying to relieve the pain :o( Still, it managed to be a great weekend.

Five Minute Friday

Reflect
Be careful how you think
Your life is shaped by how you think

Reflect
Thinking inward
Looking backward

Reflect
Reading deeper
Meditating, chewing
Swallowing 

Reflect
Shiny, bright and beautiful
By the light of another

Reflect
You can't do a good job of one without the other
Your life is shaped by how you think

Aiden Mischief

Aiden is both a delight and a headache.  He is much more destructive than either of the girls were at this age, and is also much more demanding.  Good days are great: he'll get absorbed in his play for long periods while we do school, and interact well with the girls when they play. Bad days... well, it's usually hard to hear anyone talk over his insistent wordless demands (screeches, crying, etc.), do anything much since I'm likely having to hold him to get any peace, and/or I must be constantly interrupting myself and others to save something from his destructive or just plain messy desires...

 

Like the day I found him on the kitchen counter with his hand in the peanut butter jar... He'd already eaten a few handfuls by then!

One (usually) sure-fire way of occupying him safely is to put PraiseBaby or Baby Einstein on my phone... thing is, a few too many times and he now thinks any time he sees my phone he can have it!