MERRY CHRISTMAS!

(Picture below, a brief look into the Christmas we had this year. No major catastrophes, just fun stuff to remember...)















Merry (day after) Christmas!
So lots has been happening. I wish I had been blogging all those little things that happened this past week so I could write in great detail, but now I'll just take the time to write the highlights of the days leading up to our big Christmas spent here in the HolyLand.

20/12 - Matt, my brother in the US Army flies in from Germany at 4am.

21/12 - We had a wonderful goodbye dinner with a very special family here, the Schutz family. It's like my 3rd goodbye party, but this time it was shared with my friend Carolyn Awitty, from Kenya, who is returning home after being here for 5 years. We had a wonderful meal that night, thanks Leslie!

22/12 - This night (Thursday) is the night that my Young Adults group meets. Once a month we have a big worship night called The Deep End where tons of people come and worship with loud music and Scripture readings and stuff. This was a cool night.

BUT this was also the day that Matt and I picked up our REAL Christmas tree from the Old City. And of course, real not in the American sense of the word, but real according to Israel's standards - which means pretty tall, very skinny with lots of holes and like a Charlie Brown tree. But it's probably the biggest one in all of Jerusalem. It smells like a mixture of pine and peanut butter.
Sooo after realizing that we can't fit it in a cab, Matt and I decided to walk the tree home to Nicole's apt. So there we were, walking along a major road - Hebron Road - during rush-hour for 40 minutes...each with an end of the tree in one hand and shopping bags in the other...

We definitely looked hysterical, and I'd just say a cheery and slightly embarrassed 'Merry Christmas' to the stares that were coming from the cars. Yeah, especially in a country that doesn't really celebrate OR recognize this holiday - we looked funny. But then again, anything can happen in this country...

23/12 - This day we went shopping for last minute items as we were planning to replicate our awesome and historic Schiavi Christmas dinner that we have every year in the US...I'm telling you, it took like 4 or 5 shopping trips to get everything...now I know what some people go through to get stuff.

OH and that afternoon we put up our tree - which meant sticking it in a bucket with really large heavy rocks to hold it up - and we made homemade pasta too which is SO good that you almost can't go back to the boxed kind.

I think our baking also started that day - and just basically continued straight through the next 2 days!! Insane. One of the Christmas traditions for our family is playing Nat King Cole's album while decorating the tree, which just sets the ambiance nicely...

And just so you know, the tree did actually fall over twice that day AND once on Nicole on Christmas morning as you saw above...buckets don't really work.

More to come...