Impromptu Beach Evening

"We have to go for a walk in the evening." she mentioned with feeling. I nodded, thinking of all the extra off-diet goodies we've been eating for the last week or so. Coupled with the many late nights and lack of schedule, none of us have been looking after our health much.

That casual remark led to far more than either of us were thinking. 

Since it was such a nice day, we decided to walk to the beach for sunset, rather than walk up and down the hill behind our place. 

Since lunch happened at 3pm, and sunset is about 7, no one was interested in making or eating supper before we went. 

Since it was Tuesday  the night market was happening.

Since the market is on the way to be beach we decided to go there to get some food to take to the beach.

An hour later we got to the beach. Not in time for sunset really, but in time to watch a gorgeous full moon rise.

Crocodile eye moon

Candle light moon

We ate, fooled around with taking photos of the moon, read aloud till my voice gave in, and walked home. Sandy, full, content - and not quite late for bed again.

trying to take photos of the moon through a straw

 

blowing moon bubbles

 

Time to go home when it's this dark...

Christmas Break!

    After an intense slog to get enough household and school things cleared off our plate for an extended Christmas break, the first bit of break was simply filled with sleep and puttering about - Except for Aiden, who quickly scooped up the opportunity to spend longer times with his friend! 

 

   

    Still, we kept Advent with a look at verses from John, and this wall of Christmas carol phrases about Christ's second coming. As it took a lot of tedious tracing and cutting of foil sticker paper, this will likely stick around much longer than Christmas! As it is quite appropriate to be remembering and longing for His coming, why not?

    What kind of things did we get into our break so far? How did we celebrate Christmas? Well....

We took night time cool walks in our neighbourhood - and found this odd attempt at Christmas decor... A santa hat on a wooden pterodactyl mobile. Ok....

 

 

We did our own attempts at decorating: folded sun catchers and a 1/2 curtain of crochet snowflakes...

Despite having spent a lot of computer
time to finish school, free time for Grace and Jasmin meant time to work on their own stories....

... and songs - their latest one can be seen here.   ...and finishing up art projects. There was also a family transnational family concert, and a few other calls and greetings that kept us up much later than usual so mornings were pretty quiet here!

And then, we celebrated Christmas in a two day stint: first on this side of the world with a morning church service which was made extra special with Grace and Jasmin being on stage for worship leading and Aiden being allowed to come for the first time since March! Unfortunately, we didn't get there in time to sit on the main floor, but at least we were on the balcony and not in the overflow room.

      Then, in the afternoon, we headed to the beach for our Penang-style Christmas feast. Despite rather wet wood we managed to have a decent fire and cook all our yummies of dough sticks, special hot dogs, s'mores, roast veggies, roast apples, etc. We went to a different beach than usual, so that we could swim as well. Grace and Mom got to see surfacing fish almost with arm's reach, but Aiden unfortunately got stung on his heel by some unknown critter. The bus home took a lot time in coming so it ended up being another rather late night - but a fantastic day.

    Boxing Day we celebrated Christmas on the other side of the world through Zoom calls with both sides of the family and open gifts. Aiden got two lego kits - a castle and a car model, so he was soon lost to the rest of us!

The double Christmas was just too much for Aiden - an after supper family devotion didn't reach him as he was all too soon fast asleep! We didn't want to wake him, so just pulled the beanbag into his bedroom. He was so asleep he didn't wake even with us squeezing him through the doorway!

   Since then, we have slowed down so much yesterday's lunch was at 3, good mornings are said oftener after 10 than before, and all the outings we thought of doing remain on the list and our main pastime seems to be reading (other than Aiden who spends his days with friends in Lego, soccer, rubix cubes, and sword fights as usual!).