Gingerbread Casa

Tonight, Michael, Isaac and Jonah had the privilige of travelling with the Boy Scouts to a local nursing home to deliver homemade cards and to do Christmas caroling. They were very excited to go and seem genuinely comfortable in that particular environment because they have been so exposed to it through my work at another nursing home nearby. They came back telling me all kinds of stories of the people they met and the songs they sung. I am so proud that they had such a great time sharing with others.

While they were gone, I had a couple of girlfriends (one who is fluently bilingual in Spanish/English and one who only speaks her native Spanish) over for Christmas cookies, fellowship and making a Gingerbread Casa. You see, my friends are not originally from this country and therefore are not completely familiar with the family traditions that often surround the advent Christmas season. It was great fun and we did alot of laughing at ourselves as we baked cookies, drunk diet Pepsi, and attempted our 1st Gingerbread Casa. Prior to attempting the Gingerbread Casa, I sat the girls down in the living room fllor and read the Christmas story to them out of the book of Luke in Spanish. I told them that although the story was a serious one and I took it very serious, that I wanted them to enjoy my attempt at reading it to them in Spanish. They girls chuckled at my reading from time to time - because I mispronounced many words...but they actually understood the whole thing and at the end told me that it meant so much to them that I would go to such an effort to reach out to them in their own language.

We then had a blast making the Gingerbread Casa. It was so much fun. It was a great way to involved our children and we didn't have to be able to speak the same language to complete it together. Enjoy the pics of a fun night...

B & S trying to figure out how to put icing on the roof.

"Oh, come on girls, just slather it on..."

Who needs to speak the same language on earth...Christ's love is a universal language!

Abigail had a blast making her 1st Gingerbread Casa with S & B.

Gracias, las amigas. Let's do it again, soon...Te amo.