Christmas

Harrison bundled up because it is always cold in our apartment. He is giving the peace sign, because that is just what you do for photos in Taiwan.
Wearing my scarf and posing, Taiwanese style, for the camera.
Our tree with all our presents underneath.
Now- with our presents plus all the presents Kenny brought from our family back in the US.
Christmas eve, he arranged his trains at the top of his pillow and went to sleep.

We have had such a fun and eventful Christmas break, and it isn't even new years yet. As soon as exams were over we took Tiffany to the Adventist hospital to have her teeth cleaned. That weekend we sent her to Japan for a day to renew her visa.

On Tuesday Kenny delivered the presents he had brought from our family back in TN, and took us to the glass museum. Wednesday's excitement was a doctors appointment for me where we found out we are expecting another BOY! - Marshall.

Of course Thursday was Christmas eve. We went downtown, bought a few more presents, had dinner at a Japanese place where they cook in front of you, saw lots of pretty lights and some very large Christmas trees. Then headed home to unwrap presents with a very excited toddler. Harrison barely got his shoes off before running to the tree and yelling "otent prepents" translation: open presents. Harrison handed out all the presents before he sat down to unwrap his. When we finished opening presents, I told Harrison it was time to get ready for bed. He immediately jumped up, grabbed all his trains, went to his room and called us in to have prayer with him.

Christmas morning Harrison actually didn't wake us up like usual (standing beside our bed loudly saying EAT), instead he quietly came to the living room to play with his new train set. Then when the rest of us joined him we opened our stockings and then headed to Alice and Harry Bennett's for Christmas dinner with them and Tamara Karr, all TAPA coworkers. Saturday was pretty uneventful, but we did rent Polar Express for Harrison, boy did he love it.

Yesterday Tiffany and I went to a fabric market with Alice and Tamara, I had no idea of it's existence before. I bought some fabric to make a few things for the baby. Ryan got me the book Simple Sewing for Baby for Christmas. It was a book I saw at Barnes and Noble this summer and told Ryan I wanted it if we ever had another baby. I was very surprised that he remembered.

And now we are at today. We planned to go to the Martyr's Shrine but after waiting at the bus stop for more than 45 minutes in the cold and when it started to rain, we gave up and headed home. We will try again sometime this week, hopefully on a day that rain isn't in the forecast.

Tittot Glass Museum

Kenny Lee and Tiffany picking out glass for their projects.
Kenny working on his pac-man tray.
The finished project, complete with ghosts.
Tiffany working on the mold for her project.
Tiffany's project after decorating with glass fragments.
Angel made a beautiful and very artsy clock.
Here she is at the beginning stages.
Harrison's beautiful project, not accomplished without the shedding of a few tears.
Very glad Harrison insisted on bringing his backpack he packed with toys, since he was done with his glass art project within about 5 minutes while the rest took around 2 hours.
Ryan designing his map on a glass, before it was etched on.

Last Tuesday Angel and Kenny took us to a glass museum. We had a wonderful guided tour, Kenny translated, and then finished up with each of us doing our own glass project in their workshop. The museum pieces were beautiful although some were a bit confusing. The first floor of the museum was a showroom of pieces that were all made there, by the Tittot artisans. While the second floor had local and international pieces and a brief history/time-line of glass making.

Ryan got to bring his home that day but Tiffany and I have to wait two weeks for ours to be finished. Can't wait!

Getting into the holiday spirit

This year, we decided to go ahead and splurge on Christmas decorations. We bought a small fake tree and went with very traditional colors- red, green and gold. We put everything up during our Thanksgiving break; and since then Harrison has had many opportunities to reorganize the placement of all the ornaments within his reach, or to simply take them off and play with them. The snowman ornament I bought especially for him and told him it was his and he could take it off any time he wanted, guess in his mind that meant "all ornaments are Harry's to do with as I please." And yes he speaks about himself in third person, so I assume he thinks about himself that way to.

The stockings we had last year. The red ones were a gift from Ryan's parents, with our names on them. The blue and white one says "boy" on the front, I bought it here for Harrison last year, and we used it for Tiffany, hehe.

The pictures in front of the tree are ones we took to send out in our Christmas cards this year.