Christmas and the Crackers

 Merry Christmas everyone!  We had a completely happy one here in South Africa, at our house.  One South African/British tradition we have adopted is making Christmas Crackers for each person to open on Christmas Day.  I have had a few Americans ask me how to make them, so I took pictures as I made them this year. 

 You save toilet paper rolls for a while before Christmas.  Only the best will do. 

 I cut out 10 pieces of wrapping paper, big enough to roll them in.  That skinny brown thing is the cracker part.  When you pull the two ends, it makes a nice, satisfying "BANG".  I don't know where to find them in America.  Here I find them at a store that sells packaging stuff.  You lay that next to your TP Rolls.

 Stuff in a gift of a chocolate...

 and a tiger or whatever you like.  Then you forget to take any more pictures!  Oops.  But you just roll them up in the paper, and tape the paper closed.  You tie a ribbon tightly in between each of the TP Rolls, and then you can remove the end rolls, so just the middle one stays. 

 They go right on your Christmas table where they make a happy, noisy moment at the beginning of the meal.  We had them on our adult table...

 to cheer up little people who got stuck with the adults...

and on our kid table where they quickly got destroyed and devoured.  : - )    I imagine there is a much better tutorial on Pinterest and You Tube.

We wish you all a joyous Jesus' birthday!  and  I wish I could give you all a plate of chocolate covered cherries!

I could blog a whole story about my 3 attempts to make such a simple thing, and my 3 different failures.  The last failure was my failure to deliver some of them to the people they were intended for, but I had no complaints at our house about that one.

Cousin Capers

 For a long time I've wanted to take the 2 biggest little cousins camping, imagining they would be thrilled to sleep in a tent. 

 Our tent hadn't been used since the Zambia trip in 2013, but the boys remembered how to set it up.  One thing to note here, we went camping at the camping area on the end of our street.  Taking a 3 year old means I'm not going to outer Mongolia.  We were about 2 blocks from her house, and 3 blocks from our house which, I know, is a little weird, but it worked! 

 Josh was SUCH a big help.  Notice the solar snowman he's holding to give that Christmas ambiance we needed.  I think Daniel kind of got conked with it, hence the agonized face.

But we did it!  We cooked sausages and marshmallows over the fire Josh made, we played lots of games of Concentration/The Memory Game in the tent, and we went to the playground.  We read 6 new picture books--Daniel liked the one about inventions the best--and we even slept a little!  My air mattress went pancake flat, so I crawled onto Connie's foam mattress.  Daniel started on a mattress and ended up on the ground.  I loved the way Connie woke in the morning--with a huge smile, delighted to still be in the tent.

Another thing on the to-do list was cousin pictures and we did it!  Gloria had the 3 Yarmouth Youngs dressed in orange, so our 3 big kids got into some shade of orange too and ...

 we did it! 

 Nathanael slept through last year's picture so this is his first time to appear in the cousin collection.
He's next to Josh, Connie, Evangel, Daniel, and the inTIMidating Tim. 

 Notice the fancy footwork on 5 out of 6 coordinated Youngs. 

Children are a blessing from the Lord!  and the fruit of the womb is His reward!  We are so thankful for these guys, and so happy to share them with my thousands of readers  :-)  especially the 3 grandmothers and aunts of these guys.  Merry Christmas! 

It's Christmas Time, in the City

 Time to go sledding~!  Josh rides a mattress down our steps. 

Of course there are Christmas trees for sale

 in the parking lot. 

 These long needled pines are maybe not what Americans are used to for Christmas trees, and the sellers don't sit in the parking lot in shorts where I come from. 

Josh poses next to a fine specimen of a Christmas tree.  We have a fake one in our house, and it isn't quite this big, but it is an evergreen.   

 It was so fun to have our great-nephew and niece, Daniel and Connie around for the holidays. Here Connie models her innovative use of a scarf for a nappie (diaper). Desperate times call for desperate measures!

Here Connie demonstrates that true happiness is not sharing your new pram with your brother!  She wanted exclusive rights, and was a bit miffed to discover it's a family pram. 

Another little things that may gave me a little culture shocks included hearing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" sung as the special song in Sunday morning church.  :-)   I wish I could think of more to share, but I'm afraid I don't notice them all any more. 

A white Christmas Sunday

 See all that white to the left of the church?  It's fine white sand.   Today Paul preached in a  church in Vrygrond (Free ground) which is pretty close to our house. 

The last time we visited this church, there was quite a large parking area beside the church, but the pastor told us the story of what happened.  He came to the building one day, and in the night, some drunks had stolen the fence and sold it for scrap metal so they could buy more drink.  The southeasterly wind that blows fiercely around here sent enough sand so that parking lot looked 2 feet deep in some spots, and anyone who parked there would probably need a 4 wheel drive to get out again.

But they were rejoicing.  A Canadian church is donating money for them to get a wall around the building, and the local  city council said they would send equipment to dig out the sand. 

So Paul preached, and the church had Communion and the rest of their program, and handed out food packets as this is in quite a poor neighborhood.  Josh and I split a plastic shot glass of grape juice for the Communion.  I think kids don't generally partake there.  Earlier in life, I'd have asked Josh to forgo for the day, but now I feel strongly that the saved, whether children or adults, begin to participate in Communion when they are saved.  They're not on probation until they are 18;  they are just young believers. 

I notice Paul is getting bolder as he gets older.  He's starting to hit modesty a lot harder then he used to.  It's appalling the amount of skin we see in church some times, some of it shaking and jiggling in the leaders of "worship" in the front of the church.  It's time to remind/teach ladies of what they do to men.  We're finding men are sometimes scorned for their "weakness" toward lust in immodestly dressed women, but that is how the Lord God made them.  I guess there's sin enough on both sexes, but...I was talking about Christmas.  May we all be decent even in the heat of summer!

Merry Christmas!