The month started off with our Christmas tree decorating and house decorating to prepare for Christmas. This year, we had Cocoa though, so the kids may have been more distracted by her and looking through old Christmas cards than helping, . ;)
Amazingly, I was able to find Advent calendars, like the exact ones I bought in VA from Aldi grocery store! There was some vendor on WeChat!
We love our Cocoa!
We had a fun little Christmas party for a few hours before the Christmas holiday. The party was fun, but my favorite part was the Chinese character writing. It's not as easy as it looks! Linda in MED helped me write mine.
Then Nick helped me write "Michi," Micky in Mandarin.
Another highlight of the month was celebrating our 22nd wedding anniversary. We went to QMEX after work and took a nice long walk after. It's hard to believe 22 years have passed! The years and all the fun keep passing so quickly! It seems like we were just celebrating our 7th or 8th anniversary. We've celebrated our anniversaries in different parts of the world, on four different continents. It hasn't been without its challenges, but the love continues to grow as the memory making continues. We're grateful to have each other and to be able to go through this life with each other!
And we have three amazing kids that are finding their way through this life with us as their parents. Despite our varied personalities, needs, strengths and weaknesses, we feel so grateful to be a family!
A few other highlights of the month was getting to visit with our ministering brothers Glendon Plaira and Tim Stratford. Bro. Stratford gives us amazing lessons every time they visit, and Glendon always plays us a song on the guitar or ukulele while singing. He's so talented, and we feel so uplifted with both of them making time to visit us.
We also hosted some branch members for dinner for the district Christmas party. All over the district, groups of us got together and had dinner. The district ordered a catered dinner from LAD, Lily's American Diner. We had the Baileys, Stevens, Darin and Claudia Kingsley, and a few university students Afia and Kati. Afia also brought her Russian friend from the University. These girls are amazing. Mandarin is not their first language, but yet they've learned Mandarin, all of their classes are in Mandarin, and they have a full load of over 20 credits each semester! Incredible young brains. And the most amazing part is that their families are far away, during Covid. They've been restricted to staying on campus, except for special permission to leave campus, and they have to go from the University to the store or whatever and return right back. No freedom to go outside of the scheduled outing. The girls keep up their positivity and faith though! Great example for all of us!
We enjoyed being festive by wearing our holiday garb during the month of December. Here's Nick and his wife Suzanne in their matching Disney holiday clothes.
I found some cheap, cute headbands on Taobao. Some ones that looked like real deer ears too.
We also had the Embassy holiday party that I had to prepare for and work at. Bady did most of the work, but it was a long day of working. We had a bunch of side dishes with ham and turkey.
Attendance was good I think because families are stuck in Beijing because of the Omicron variant coming to China.
Nice to have my cute family attend as well and help in the craft rooms. Thomas apparently didn't get the memo that it was a Christmas party and he should wear holiday themed clothing. ;)
Rhea hanging out with Edie and Mayah, girls from school (CISB) and the Rowe family kids
Nick, my CLO colleague led the "Dipnotes" choir in some holiday music.
And here is Nick, perfectly illustrating how we all felt after working and cleaning up after the event!
Bady and Nick, CLO Colleagues
Charmhee came and brought me lunch so I could have a break from the cafeteria food and we could catch up on life. We had a great visit and her sweetness was a nice break in the stress of my day. Bless her!
Another December tradition has been to watch certain movies and to make gingerbread houses. Luckily Ikea carries the houses and then I can find a variety of candy at Jenny Lou's. Here we're watching Arthur's Christmas. But of course we have to work in The Muppet Christmas Carol, Polar Express, Elf, Christmas Oranges, and on Christmas Eve we watched It's a Wonderful Life. This year with the kids being older, we introduced them to Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, and Miracle on 34th Street. We also usually watch Holiday Inn close to New Year's Day, however with different social things going on, we forgot to fit it in this year!
Note Jerry in the background with his green boa and red ornaments. We had to decorate him too. He's still wearing sunglasses of course. ;)
And December was the month that dad was in charge of conducting the church Zoom meetings. I had to capture a picture of that. ;) And I love our collection of Nativities around him.
During the surgery, Rhea and I walked around. We enjoyed a nice walk passing by BCIS and stopping at a grocery store for some snacks. After a few hours, Cocoa came out wrapped in a fabric wrap that tied on her back. We bought her the "cone of shame" but we really didn't need it. The fabric kept her from licking or biting at the stitches. 
