Some December Highlights

 

We began the month of December attending a beautiful Christmas concert.  It was our second time to attend this concert and now that we live here in Antigua I am sure it will become a December tradition.  It is so beautiful!  The songs are done in a mixture of English and Spanish.  I just love it and it is a wonderful way to start the Christmas season.

 

The concert takes place in the ruins of one of the cathedrals.  At the end there is a big fireworks display shot over head.  That is probably the boys favorite part and the anticipation of it helps them endure the long service.

 afterwards we went out for late night tacos

We decorated our Christmas trees.  This is the boy's tree.  Every year they get to decorate their own tree with ornaments that they either made or were given.  They love this tradition and get so excited to show it to our guests who visit during December.

 a photo of them with their tree wearing their new soccer jerseys they bought with Christmas money from family

They also helped me decorate our living room tree.  That evening we celebrated by building a fire, drinking hot chocolate, and watching a few episodes of I Love Lucy.  We have a DVD collection and are working our way through them one episode at a time.  We rotate with Andy Griffith.  The boys love them just as much as we do.

In early December David attended the annual Indigenous Conference.  This year it took place in the Pokomchi area in Alta Verapaz.  Several different Mayan groups were represented.  It was a great conference and plans are already being made for the 2019 conference.  It will take place in Copan, Honduras.

One Saturday afternoon we made a drive up the hill to visit Santo Domingo del Cerro.  We have heard so much about it and I was so excited to finally get to go.  It did not disappoint.  It is a beautiful place!  We walked through all of the museums and explored all of the grounds.  We didn't get to eat at the restaurant yet but have plans to return soon and try it out.  This is currently one of my favorite places in town.  

There are so many fun art pieces like this one all around.  The museums are free.  The only cost is parking which was just a little over $1.00.  I'm certain we'll return if for nothing else to give the boys a place to roam and explore.  I love any place that allows them to burn off energy.  

 On the drive down we stopped for a photo at the lookout over Antigua. 

Mid-month we hosted our new leader for our role with Americas Connect.  We had a great visit with him and learned so much about our new job.  We are excited about the days ahead partnering with U.S. churches and helping them be on mission here in Guatemala.  I plan to share more about that in our January newsletter.

A few photos of the boys with our Christmas tree- 

There is a place just down the road from us (Cre8 Antigua) that we have spent a lot of time at recently.  It is the same facility that hosts the homeschool meet-ups.  They offer several workshops for kids to participate in.  We have done two so far.   The first one was to make Christmas slime.  The boys were so excited!

Cruz's Christmas slime

We attended three different churches so far in December and one Sunday did our annual Skype call with a church in Tennessee to promote the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.  On one of those Sundays we were back at the Baptist church in Jocotenango.  Here are David and the boys with the pastor.  He resigned that Sunday and will be leaving at the end of the month.  Pray for him as he seeks the Lord for his future and for the church as they begin to look for a replacement.

My Christmas present was delivered mid-month.  We had a table built with seating for 8.  I LOVE it!  Our house here has a separate dining room.  That is something we have never had here before.  We have our smaller table in our kitchen and now have a more formal area to host guests.  I look forward to many meals shared around this new table in the future.

We hosted our annual mission Christmas party this year.  We were so excited about having it at our home.  Here is our group photo.  

The ladies- Jo, me, Karen,  and Lily.

enjoying our lunch 

It was our first time to use our new table.  What a great way to break it in.

 Our school Christmas break started last Friday (hooray!!!)  We celebrated with an afternoon trip to a local coffee shop for frozen frappes.

This past Saturday the boys attended another Christmas workshop.  This time they made Christmas houses out of chocolate rice krispies.  They really loved this activity and had the best time decorating their houses.  

What they enjoyed more than making those houses was getting to eat them.  They did not last very long once we got them home.

When you throw in homeschool, a little Christmas shopping, and endless trips back and forth to the grocery store it makes for a full month.  We have had a fun December and are learning more and more about our new area.  It is not our first time to live in Antigua but so much has changed since we lived here last.  (We lived here for six months when we first arrived in Guatemala to study Spanish and then temporarily lived here again for several months in 2010 when Cruz was born).  It is our first time to live in our current house though and we are loving it more and more each day.  We loved getting to spend Christmas here and start a few new traditions.  I'll share about our Christmas celebration in my next posts.