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Ahh, the Christmas season..... where life just seems to get a little bit more expensive and a little bit more chaotic.  Every year I always ask "why"? Why do we need to spend so much money and why do we need to stress so much.  Don't get me wrong I love a lot of the traditions. I love my families and the time I get to spend with them and I do enjoy receiving gifts. I am not going to lie though we were looking forward to the idea of one low key Christmas where we didn't need to buy a bunch of presents or decorate. Now, here comes the humor :)  This will probably be the busiest Christmas we have ever had (haha).  It started off with me wanting to buy a Christmas gift for our sponsor girl Maria.  I am in the store looking at the toys and clothes I know she would love. I picked one toy for her and we bought her the game of Uno (which we play with her all the time). I know she is going to love them but I have this feeling I need to buy more. Why do we get that feeling? Since then I have bought her a pair of earrings (she pointed them out to me for someone else). I am hoping I can show restraint and not buy anymore.  Now this might make Chris and I sound like bad parents but we decided not to buy Abriel any Christmas presents ( I am sure some jaws just dropped). She has toys (a lot of toys) and she doesn't need anything else so why spend money just for the sake of it. We, (okay I), have since bought her one toy that was $9 because, really, I want to have a picture of her opening something on her first Christmas.  Chris and I also said we were not going to buy each other gifts because we are truly blessed people who don't need anything.  I say with a guilty voice we have since bought each other a couple items adding up to $20 each.  We thought we were going to escape that needing to give a gift mentality but we weren't strong enough.

Our church back home wanted to be a part of the school Christmas party here. They decided to make Christmas bags with toys, hygiene products and school supplies for all the children in the school. Then a local Catholic school decided they wanted to be a part of the giving as well. So they filled 100 bags!!!!!  Our good friend, Robyn Asplen, was the lucky girl that got to fly down and drop off the bags.  What a blessing it was to have her here.  Then the real fun began when we got to hand out all the bags with the help of Santa himself.  The kids were so excited and it felt rewarding to see others give (across the world) and the children receive. I hope we can be a part of this type of project in the future.

Now the real craziness of Christmas starts today as a team of 5 arrives from LIFT church.  It will be cool to be blessing others this Christmas in the Dominican.  We will keep you posted on what the team is up to.

On a family note, Abriel didn't like Santa so much.... she cried.... lol.  Also, Abriel has started to walk.  Just a couple steps here and there but we haven't been able to catch it on video.  Unfortunately, we left our camera charger in Canada so we don't have our own camera but we will be borrowing Phil and Donna's as much as possible.  Hopefully, we can capture those steps soon. We are looking forward to Christmas and having a morning together with our daughter just to hang out.


There are so many pictures and they are taking way too long to upload so follow this link to see the pics on Facebook (even if you don't have Facebook)!


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