Merry Christmas!

We had a glorious Christmas Eve.  Our friend, Debbie joined us for dinner and for acting out the nativity story.

Debbie was our narrator, Brandan and Becky were Mary and Joseph; Helen was the angel and a wise man; Gibson was an innkeeper, a sheep and a wiseman; Abe was an innkeeper, a shepherd and a wiseman.  We sang lots of songs and read the story from Luke 2 and Matthew 2.

Skyping Sofi was the highlight of our celebration.  Christmas in Taiwan is just an ordinary day, but she and her companion made it extraordinary by talking to people about the gift that is Jesus Christ.  And by wearing reindeer antler headbands.

Abe frosted our Buche de Noel and made it look amazing.  

Helen put baby Jesus in the manger before we went to bed.

We opened presents on Christmas morning.  Abe hid his present and created a treasure hunt for us to find it.

The first clue led to a battery.

The battery connected to a homemade box Abe had made.  Another clue was the code to type into the keypad on the box.

Here is Gib trying out the code.

The screen on the box revealed the location of the gift.  Abe used his Arduino to program the secret code and the message.

Brandan's family used Facebook messenger to talk to each other at the same time.  Clockwise from the top right are Becky, Wade, Dan, Brandan, Drue, Jon and Nate.

We invited Sister D and Sister W over to use our computer to talk to their families.  They ate lunch with us and each sister played games with us while her companion talked with her family.  It felt great to share some Christmas with them.  We wish we could have called Sofi again after they left.

Here's a photo of Sister D taking a selfie with Helen.

Sofi sent us a package from Taiwan.  Helen got 2 presents-- one for Christmas and one for her birthday.

Helen painted each of us a painting.  From the left are paintings for Gibson, Becky, Brandan and Abe.

Gibson made Becky an hourglass from driftwood and spare parts.  We love that he found a scripture to go along with his gift.

Our Christmas countdown puzzle is complete!

Becky had one last surprise for Christmas dinner-- Christmas crackers!  We read about them in Harry Potter, but we had never tried one before.

We moved away from the table to pull the crackers in case they exploded.  In reality they barely snapped when pulled.  Inside each cracker was a crown, a toy and a sheet of very British jokes that we mostly understood.  What does a duck want for Christmas?  Christmas quack-ers.

It was a very merry Christmas.