Christmas in paradise

I had a hard time trying to amp up for Christmas time. Our friends Mitch and Ranae had moved back to the States and other friends here all were heading back to the States or Canada. And of course the warm weather is hard to get use to, especially when I grew up with cold Christmas'.

At the last minute we found some of our friends, one of the teachers at the school we help out at and her sisters, in town and wanted to know if they wanted to come over Christmas day or eve to hang out. The tradition here is to wait til 12 am christmas to really celebrate. they shoot fireworks have a big dinner and open gifts. the family that we invited over don't really have the resources to celebrate. they don't do presents or fireworks and they just have same dinner as they always have, beans and rice. it is so hard for me to see families that can't even go to the local $1 store to get a gift for their kids. we invited them over for christmas eve to celebrate with us, they were so excited.

it ended up being 13 plus us 4. everyone wanted to come. we had grandma, her 3 daughters, grandchildren and 2 neighbor kids came. i really didn't have much planned so we grilled hot dogs and bought fireworks. we all had a blast!! it was so great to see all the kids light some fireworks and the old faithful sparklers. it made it really special to just spend time with each other and not focus on who got how many gifts, or the best gifts. we didn't stay up til midnight but trust me the fireworks woke us up anyway...haha