A Christmas letter to Ann E. Body

Dear Ann,

Happy 2016!  How have you been?  Christmas and New Years have passed so quickly and we never got the chance to get together.  I know it is not the same as sitting down together over a cup of coffee, but I hope this letter will suffice in it’s place until time allows us to get together again.

Our family really did have a lovely Christmas and New Years.  I keep thinking I should sit down and write a blog post about them.  But each time I start to contemplate on how to write it, I have a desire to write to you instead. ;)  So I am procrastinating that post for now and instead just sitting down in the dark morning hours of my day, with the electric fan cooling my face, writing to you instead.

This was our family’s second Christmas here in the Philippines.  To tell the truth, I was a bit nervous to celebrate the Christmas season this year because I wasn’t sure how homesickness would hit me.  They (whoever “they” are) always say that the holiday season is hardest for loneliness and homesickness.  But true to His nature, God was more than gracious to our dear little family celebrating here away from family and friends.

If one has to spend Christmas away from family, the Philippines is definitely the place to be!  It is sooo festive here during this season!  The weather starts to change and you get a bit of a relief from the heat and humidity and rainy season.  Decorations go up early!  The unwritten rule is you can start celebrating Christmas in the –BER Months (the months ending with –ber).  But since they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, their last holiday before Christmas is All Saint’s and All Soul’s Day which correspond with Halloween. So it seems that the real festivities take off right after that.  All the malls are totally decked out with decorations and music.  Even the lamp posts lining the major streets have their own decorations.  And then the Christmas parties start, so many parties to attend with games, food, music, karaoke, coordinated outfits and group pictures!  Then the nine days leading up to Christmas you get carolers at your house, which is an odd mix of trick-or-treating and Christmas carols where kids sing and dance in hopes of receiving coins from the homeowners.  It can be cute and overwhelming at the same time. ;)

Jakob and Trevor each had their own dance performance with their preschool.  It really is an extraordinary event put on by the school.  Each class performs their own dance number with coordinated creative outfits to match.  It is performed in the town’s theatre, big and fancy and regal feeling, filled with parents and grandparents and phones to capture the cute moments.  The theme was Back to the 90’s, and each class danced and dressed to match a popular song from the 90’s.  It was creative and entertaining for the parents who strolled down memory lane with their little ones dancing on stage.  I found myself singing along and wondering how my high school years can now be considered “the oldies”.

We celebrated Christmas at home.  It was quiet and very sweet.  It reminded me a lot of Christmas from my childhood since we always celebrated mostly on Christmas morning growing up.  My mom and sister organized and shipped a box full of presents for the boys.  We kept them boxed up and brought them out Christmas morning.  What a very special treat to have gifts for my boys to open on Christmas morning.  I had plans of baking special treats, but we don’t have an oven yet.  So instead we had Mickey Mouse Pumpkin Chocolate Chip pancakes, and chocolate chips baked in my toaster oven!  Ha ha…. Oh and remember those carolers?  Well some of them returned on Christmas morning.  Only this time they are dressed in their new Christmas outfits (Allan was guessing on their way home from Mass) and they don’t sing but simple say in Tagalog, “we are Christmas-ing sir/mame”, which means they are asking for a Christmas gift of some sort.  We weren’t ready for this year, but we might try to plan something next year and incorporate it into our family tradition.  Then we had a lazy day playing with the kids enjoying their new toys.  For dinner we had slow cooked pulled pork adobo.  It really is a great recipe! Basically the Filipino adobo flavors in a Southern style pulled pork.  So tasty and simple and makes my husband happy.  (It is a slow cooker recipe from Skinnytaste blog if you are curious.)

I usually have extra help with some of my domestic chores of the house, laundry and dishes.  But with the holidays she had time off.  It might sound odd, but I really enjoyed doing my own dishes and laundry.  Ha ha… I had my try at doing our laundry completely by hand.  It is oddly enjoyable, sitting outside scrubbing, rinsing and ringing out our clothes listening to the sounds of our neighborhood.  And then line drying them around our front yard.  But oh so physically tiring as well!  My age is starting to show.  ;)  Laundry and dishes consumed my time and it was so refreshing!  Ha ha… no really I enjoyed it.  But I am thankful to have help again with my laundry as it really does take so much time doing it all by hand.

Then our family ended the holiday season by going to be beach.  A friend’s family owns a beach “resort” here in a nearby province and invited our family to come.  Think camping and traditional style huts/cabins rather than resort.  It is quite since it is away from the city of Manila, and is such a special treat for the boys.  The dirt, tents and rustic simplistic huts reminds me of camping with my family growing up.  Even the drive to get there was enjoyable for me, as you need to take the expressway which is a fast treat compared to the traffic of Manila (and freeways remind me of Southern California).  And I enjoyed seeing small provincial towns in contrast to the big city life of Manila I am familiar with. The resort planned dinner on the beach for new year’s eve.  I kept thinking of you as you would have loved it!   They even had fireworks, which we enjoyed during the interruption of our slumber in our beds.

But the holidays are over and it is back to the regular routine of life.  Our family was refreshed and rested and enjoyed creating new memories this past 2015 holiday season.  I miss you!  But when we are apart it is fun to be able to share with you these new things in our family’s life. I hope you had a good Christmas too!  I would love to hear all about it!  So make sure to sit down and write me back to tell me all about yours!

Love Sandi