Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Cold Front

So, this week we had a cold front come through. Really. We did. It got into the 30's at night and was cold in during the day, too...maybe 40's. Homes here have no heat because it is typically very warm. I did not want to buy space heaters, but we ended up doing that for the bedrooms because it did get cold inside. I came home from studying to find Lauren all bundled up..INSIDE the house. She even took her nap like this :) I'm not sure if we will get to use them again or not. Our cold front only lasted 3 days. Now we are back to our normal 70's and people telling us that the children are cold because they do not have 4 layers of clothes on. :)

I took Katherine out do help me do some Christmas shopping. Of coarse she wanted to eat some icecream. I thought it was too cute with the gloves on. She had a lot of fun and hopefully Daddy will be surprised!

It was also our 9th anniversary. The kids were in school and Jonathan and I took the day off from our studies to celebrate. We found a bowling alley for the first time (cost was great! about 4 US dollars for 2 games and shoes!) Then we splurged and went to Starbucks. Yep. They have one here, but it's a little pricy. And no, I have not started drinking coffee. I wanted a good hot chocolate to drink. Oh...in case you are wondering...Jonathan won both games of bowling.


Regan and Benjamin had their school Christmas musical. They did a great job.

We hosted our very first Christmas party! It was a huge success. We had 16 people that came over. We had lots of traditional American Christmas food, read a story, and our family sand 3 Christmas carols. It was really interesting to see what the local people like of the food (above). We stayed up late all week workign on the food. We had candy cane cookies, painted sugar cookies, plain sugar cookies with icing and sprinkle to decorate with, cheese cubes and sliced cheese, pretzels, honey ham, turkey, pepperoni, apples, little BBQ sausages, crackers, thumbprint cookies, roly polies, nuts, fudge, and real candy canes. It was lots of work, but well worth it!

Her's a quick snapshot of some of the people checking out the food.

On Saturday, I took Regan out for her bday (a little early). She asked to have her nails done for her present. So, we had a mommy/daughter day.

She has so much fun. She chose pink sparkle nail polish and then they painted little white flowers on each nail and put a blue jewel on each nail as well. It really does look cute on her.

After she got her nails done, we went to a mall to try and find her a new jacket. Outside they were selling "ornaments" for the Christmas tree and the money was going to a charity. You were supposed to right a wish on the ornament and hang it on the tree for it to come true. Regan did not want to make a wish, but wanted to decorate her ornament. She did a very good job if you ask me :)


She wanted to make sure it was low enough to where other people could see hers.

Her last birthday request? She wanted to eat at Olina's. She is getting pretty good at using chopsticks! She couldn't decide between the "soy saucey noodles" and the green beans, pork, and rice. So, we got both and split it. We have had a very full week and expect to have one more busy one before we get to take a break for a few days.