Merry Christmas!

It's a hot, sunny day (like most days here), the bougainvillea is blowing in the breeze, a ripe guava fell into our yard yesterday, I took a new family to the downtown market today to buy produce--and I'm listening to some Scottish bagpipe Christmas number on Grooveshark.  We have our tree and lights up, decorations the kids made at school, and we're lighting our candle and doing advent every night.  I think I've accepted the tropical Christmas as a real Christmas at this point.  It helps that my parents come to stay with us over the holiday break.

We made gingerbread houses again this year, though technically, I guess you'd call them sesame cracker houses.  Our gingerbread houses collapsed the day we made them last year because they couldn't take the humidity.  But I spent a good long time finding sturdy crackers, so this year's are holding up much better.  My kids are so into their g
ingerbread houses that starting around Halloween they start hoarding pretty candy that looks gingerbread-house worthy.

[On a side note, the neighbor's house alarm has been going off for four straight hours this afternoon with little tiny breaks where it went off before getting triggered again.  It is currently quiet, and I am choosing to hope that the neighbors are back and that this is not another pause in the insanity.  Oh dear.  It started up again before I even finished getting that written.]