Sunday, December 18, 2011

Christmas is on Sunday! Today I'm planning to start on Christmas baking. I had planned to bake some fun things to give to our friends in town, but at this point I'm wondering if we'll even have many Christmas cookies. I guess we'll see how far we get!

When we started talking about Christmas cookies, there was no discussion about needing to make sugar cookies in order to decorate them-- a first in our home. First it was Kevin, then Kaleb. And now I guess they've just grown out of the fun of decorating cookies. So we'll have our traditional favorites, but I don't think I'll be decorating any sugar cookies this year.

While Garry was in Palawan he spent an evening at the pier, where this huge Christmas tree is. I believe's it's the tallest Christmas tree is Asia-- an incredible amount of work, but a source of pride and fun for those who live in Palawan!

On another note, the typhoon that ripped through Mindanao last week has left over 700 dead and a lot of devastation. All the water from a large area flows down a relatively small number of rivers to the bay, through Cagayan de Oro and Illigan. 10 inches of rain over many, many square miles of land is a lot of water to rush through cities, and it has caused a lot of damage. One of our friends lost her son and 4 others from her household as well as the house and everything in it. We are on high ground here and haven't been affected beyond having heavy rain last week.

3 comments:

us5 said...

hi Cynthia...let me introduce myself after about a year of reading your blog. :) i am Barbara, the mom of twins on OYAN - Amy & Elise, and we live in Davao. i checked in specifically to see if you guys were okay after the flooding - so happy to hear all is well. and i thought it was about time to introduce ourselves. we also blog - at http://us5earthenvessels.blogspot.com/ if you'd like to 'visit' us sometime. :) it's somehow friendly to hear another western voice on the island... :) because some of our 'friends' work in sensitive areas, our blog is just cultural/family news - we only talk about our work in newsletters...Merry Christmas!

Garry and Cynthia Barkman said...

thanks! I remember your daughters from the OYAN forum. I haven't been on there for ages-- did they finish their books? Thanks for checking on us. Nice to meet you!

and wishing you a very Merry Christmas!

us5 said...

hi! one finished her book...the other came SO close and got stuck. but she's now working on editing the whole thing with the plan to wrap up that last chapter! how about you? are you still writing?