Fruit From Her Labor...

We've gone back and forth about how to handle the whole "Santa" thing with Morgan, especially since she already has such a big imagination, we don't want to "shatter her world" when she realizes the truth (a few years from now)....

Since she's only 3.5 y/o now, we decided to go ahead and play it out this year... it was actually really fun to watch her anticipation and seriousness about leaving goodies for Santa and his reindeers. (And we think she was scared that if she didn't go to sleep Santa would not come, so guess what? She slept the entire night! Yeah for us!)

Here's Morgan, setting out the milk and cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeers... we laughed because we thought she would want to set out more cookies for the "animals" but apparently she thinks they needed carrots. It was cute!

If you look closely at the picture Morgan (and Liz) drew for santa, she wrote out a few of the Arabic letters because she thinks Santa needs to know Arabic too.

In the morning, Morgan awoke to crumbs, a half eaten carrot and an almost empty glass of milk and she was so surprised that Santa and his reindeers ate most everything!

And here she is in her new princess chair that Santa left for her! (we think still shocked that there was "fruit from her labor", meaning she set out cookies/milk and a picture for Santa and in return got a few toys and a full stocking!)

Here's Micah, loving his widgets and building away!

And what would Christmas be without a room full of polly pockets and princess things??? + 2 Happy Children, Full of Sugar!

We hope each of you had a blessed Christmas as well!

Merry Christmas!

This is our Christmas card for this year... we sent it out via email (to view or print out) but if you didn't get one and want one, let us know.

We join you in celebrating the birth of our Savior!

Merry Christmas!

Love,

Randall, Liz, Morgan and Micah

Belated Video...

Just thought we'd share a fun video of the kids, swimming in November! Its just now starting to cool off in the mornings and evening... somewhere in the 60's... we love it! Although the people here seem to describe the weather as "freezing" but we know freezing; we lived in Illinois for 3 1/2 years! We are quite confident that when we come home to visit, we'll be the ones freezing since we're used to temperatures over 110 degrees 70% of the year. Enjoy the kids!

Goodbyes are so hard...

Our visit with Liz's family was so refreshing for us. We enjoyed our time with them, loved watching them love on Morgan and Micah and celebrated Thanksgiving with them as well. In between all of our visiting, we showed them around the Big City for a few days and explored new areas of the city we had never seen before.

The guys doing their "guy thing"... Randall had to introduce Liz's Dad and Brother to how the men wear their "hats"on this side of the world...(actually they were gearing up to go hiking with the hopes to keep the flies out of their faces/ears) but still makes for a good picture!

Liz's sister Meghan, brother Chris and Mom enjoying the beautiful view in the midst of the mountains

MiMi loving on the kids! And the kids enjoying their MiMi (hadn't seen each other in almost 1 and a half years)

On the way to the beach... of course we had to take them to the beach in November...surprise! Swimsuits in the Winter! (thanks to Joyce, sporting the Illini hat!) :)

Uncle Chris bonding with Micah and teaching him to play in the sand, not eat it!

And here we all are... on the shuttle, on the way to the airport...

And this about sums it up, their face says it all! Grrr... Goodbyes are so hard these days, but we are so thankful for having time with our loved ones and consider ourselves so blessed to have such a supportive family. Thank you for visiting us and loving on us! We love you Paw Paw, MiMi, Chris and Meghan and miss you already!