Thanksgiving leftovers in our new oven! Yum!
Elizabeth lit the first candle on the Advent wreath. Anna Mei is wearing the extra purple tinsle. :)
Tree assembly. It was night--you can see Tony's motorbike parked behind him in our living room!
The train. Faith's "Little Guy" is in the brown car.
Anna Mei works with the ornaments.
Just finished!Hello, all--
Hollywood, move over. Danang has a definite shot at becoming a Christmas-time tinsel town! They love the stuff here. Traditional gold and silver tinsel garlands, but many other colors, too--red, green, blue, purple, even pink! All of it thick and shiny with little silver stars and package shapes throughout.We were able to get a tree--artificial, of course. I haven't seen a live evergreen tree here. But every store sells artificial trees of various sizes. One about 5 1/2 feet tall is around $20, but the big ones can go up to $100. Many ornaments look like those you would find packaged at WalMart--shiny, covered with glitter, etc. Thankfully, they are plastic--it would be disaster on all these tile floors.
Jillian and Tony worked together to assemble the tree. Elizabeth jumped in occasionally. Anna Mei was working on ornaments. They do not use hooks here. Each package of ornaments comes with gold or silver thread to tie on each ball. It is very time consuming. I let Anna Mei experience it for a few minutes before I brought out a package of paper clips--much easier to make our own hooks. There are many kinds of tree lights, but all white strands are not very popular. Multi-colored strands are plentiful. The are made to blink, so our tree pulsates with color from top to bottom! We will have to make an angel for the top. Star tree-toppers are common, but there was not an angel to be found anywhere (neither was there anything that directly portrayed the nativity).
Tony surprised us with a battery operated train set. It was a special joy to me. I have always wanted a train to encircle the tree--even when I was little, but we've never had one. Until now. The engine even puts out little puffs of smoke. I never tire of watching it round the track. The girls love it. A variety of tiny bears and other toys have even taken a ride.
While we were decorating, Tony had another surprise. Somewhere in Danang he had found a DVD of the Cedarmont Kids singing Christmas songs. (For those of you who don't know, Cedarmont is a church in Tennessee that has a children's choir that presents professionally done DVD's of songs with costumes, filmed in different locations.) After decorating, we watched a DVD that I ordered long ago and then hid away. It was a presentation by Ballet Magnificat entitled "A Christmas Dream." The ballet used the music from the Nutcracker, but had a story line directly related to salvation in Jesus. It is beautiful. We had hot tea and sweet crackers. It was a nice family evening.
I made an Advent Wreath, using some green and purple tinsle. The girls have enjoyed learning about the prophet's candle this week.
A funny thing today--we have been learning a couple verses of "Silent Night" in school. I have a song visual with the words printed with large pictures. Today Elizabeth was actually reading the words off the page, instead of just singing from memory. I heard her sing, "Round yon Virginian...mother and child...." So sweet and sincere. Too cute.
Jillian and Anna Mei can hardly stay away from the new oven. Yesterday, they mixed up a concoction of eggs, milk, flour and sugar and made their own version of cookies. Today, Tony and I had to go to the bank together and the girls were here with Bee. Their creation today focused on baked mayonnaise. We have had to make a "no cooking" rule when I am not home. Between the oven and the gas stove, too many mishaps can occur. I told them not to fret, though. As soon as I can purchase more flour, butter and sugar, we will make some Christmas cookies. We can't wait.
Speaking of our trip to the bank, a couple interesting things happened (at least to me, they were interesting). First, Tony signed his whole name on one document, instead of first, middle initial and last. The poor teller almost went into a panic. He had to sign with the middle initial 4 times to get our business done. Secondly, most banks here have high stools at the counters for customers to sit in while making transactions with the teller. Tony and I were standing, but I had my hand on the back of the stool. The woman behind us in line was curiously staring at us and she moved in and actually held my hand. I could tell she meant no harm, so I just let her hold it. Still, I chuckled inside myself thinking how uncomfortable this familiarity would seem in an American bank. Service at the bank is rendered according to number. You take a ticket when you enter. There are more than a dozen windows, so numbers being served are above each window, plus a lady announces over a PA system the number being called up. I was pleasantly surprised--I recognized her Vietnamese message with each announcement and knew when our number was called, even before it was posted on the sign. I think Tony was impressed. Ha!
I have the opportunity to lead worship singing at our church for the month of December. Our regular worship leader is going to her home in Australia for several weeks. I am blessed to take part in this avenue of ministry.
Just as I was finishing this message, I received word that the youngest son of my first college roommate was killed in a car accident over the weekend. He was 19. Please pray for this family. It is a terrible tragedy.
May we invest every day in God's kingdom, walking the path He lays before us, that we may have confidence of His presence, care and love in every circumstance.
Grace and peace.
