New Year’s Greetings and More

Happy New Year, everyone!

Whew! I sure had a few days of worrying since the 27th of December. I thought I was not gonna be able to post this New Year’s greetings for all of you. There was a temporary technical glitch because my account expired with GoDaddy but everything is fine now. I learned a valuable lesson – never to trust an automatic renewal setting. Always check and recheck.

Anyway, the following post was supposed to be for last Sunday so I am posting it here now:

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Last year was our first Christmas here in England. We were pretty excited because we missed being together at Christmastime the year before that. Besides, everything was so new to me and the kids – the weather, the people, the food, the friends with whom to share the celebrations, etc. There was so much to take in and everything was wonderfully new. Needless to say, we enjoyed 2007 Christmas.

So far this 2008, Christmas is still unfolding rather very nicely again (the excitement continues until the New Year for me). We are just bonding together as a family. The hubby and I are getting along really well. I can feel how happy and contended he is being with us. I asked him once which Christmas was the best for him yet and he said the one we had last year. I am sure, this year is outdoing that.

So far, nothing spectacularly special has actually happened yet this Christmas – only the usual. It’s just that we are together and somehow, we are all having a sense of how it is to spend Christmas together as a family, so that God forbid that we are apart on this wonderful time of the year sometime in the future, we will all know what we are missing. For me, that is what Christmas traditions and memories are all about. A scent, a certain song, the sight and smell of a familiar dish can at once trigger a memory that will carry us to beautiful Christmasses like this one. And then, even if only in our mind, we can relive such happy memories.

Aside from family, we are also raising our kids with the view that Christmas is about Who’s birthday it is. They know for a fact that this is the time of the year to be thankful for the Lord to have come to earth. Last Christmas eve, they read the Christmas story from their Bibles. They do this every year. Last year, it was me who read it to them.

We were also able to attend church on Christmas day as we have found a home church near our place and have been going there quite regularly this year. The people are warm and the fellowship uplifting. It was a joy worshipping and singing hymns with all of them.

Our Christmas electronic card was also well-received by our friends. This was our Christmas family picture last year. I used this in our 2007 electronic Christmas card.

I used this one for 2008:

As ever, presents form a huge part of our kids’ recollections of Christmas celebrations. Last year, this was how they looked like when they were playing with their Nintendo DS (it was the Papa who was playing it, if you noticed):

This was them this year. The older boy got a Nintendo DS game and a cellphone (this one is more for me to be able to monitor him but the built-in MP3 is a real treat to him so everybody happy). The little one got his educational laptop at last.

Never mind the expenses this season entails. It was worth every penny we spent for the food, the gifts and the days out. It’s Christmas and spending (though not extravagantly) was all part of the collective Christmas memories we are building together for our family.

I hope you also were able to acquire more wonderful Christmas memories this year and every year hence.

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