Merry Christmas and A Monumental Moment

Merry Christmas from all of us. Today is Christmas Eve and we have just had a nice family day together. Erik took the day off from work so we could have a little longer Christmas celebration. Christmas Day we will have Yoko's brother and his two daughters over. We are glad we can spend Christmas with them. Maika keeps being a good sport for us as we try to capture her showing her Christmas spirit.

Erik was asked to tell the real Christmas story at work as part of the college's Christmas festival. This was an answered prayer as most of the students had no idea about the birth of Jesus. Erik and one of his students, who is a Christan, did a news report skit to tell the Biblical story. Yoko and Maika came to watch, and the next picture was taken by one of Erik's students at the festival.

In winter we have nice sunshine that comes in the apartment, and Maika found a comfy place to catch a few zzzs.

A monumental moment in our lives as parents happend the day before Maika turned 5 months when she rolled over on her own for the first time. She is doing it quite regularly now but has no idea what to do once she gets on her stomach. We think you might get a kick out of one of Maika's less graceful rollovers. Make sure your sound is up; there is a funny sound at the end.

Fall was Beautiful

Fall was beautiful. We didn't get out to enjoy it as much as we would have liked to as we had quite a few things keeping us busy. Maika is a bundle of joy; she laughed for the first time, and we both were there to hear it. She is becoming more verbally expressive with noises that might be found in the jungle.





We are excited as always for the coming of Christmas. We are so grateful for God reaching out to us through Jesus. It is one of our favorite times of year, and we see this year as an opportunity to share the "true" Christmas story. Most people here do not have any idea of Christmas being Jesus' birth. We pray that the Joyous Message of Jesus' birth will touch some hearts around us this year.

On Dec 5th Erik's school had Christmas parties for the kindergarten and elementary school kids. It was a long busy day but a lot of fun. Erik was Santa and had an unexpected visit from Maika.

Sarah visited us, and we asked her to take a family picture. This is the best she could do with the subject matter she had.