Merry Christmas

My mom arrived four days ago to Cambodia and has already jumped into the excitement of the city! We have taken her to the markets, to our favorite shops (where she is already having shoes made at one), out to get Indian food, to the tourist spots around town, and even to a Christmas church service of all the international churches. She has ridden the moto and volunteered at Chris' school. We still have many things planned for her time here, so the rest of her trip should be just as exciting!

Today we also received 2 great gifts. We wanted to say thank you for the wonderful Christmas package that was sent our way. Your generosity and thought brought tears to our eyes tonight as we opened those gifts. We continue to be blown away by the emails, Skype conversations, letters, and packages that so many of you generously give us. We miss all our friends and family dearly and it hits home a little harder this time of year, but the love we feel is unprecedented. We debated waiting until Christmas to open the gifts but quickly changed our minds because we couldn't wait! Thank goodness because those Oreo's are going to be eaten for dessert tomorrow, and Chris has already made some of the coffee!

We also had the chance to call both of our grandmothers tonight to wish them a Merry Christmas and it was nothing shy of "great." We miss all our family from grandparents, to siblings, to cousins, and we hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. To our friends in Boulder gathering sometime this week, we miss you a lot and hope to get a funny email full of stories from your night. To our other wonderful friends we think and pray for you often and miss you this holiday season.

On Wednesday we will celebrate Christmas with a traditional meal shared with 10 people, 5 Americans and 5 Cambodians. We are pretty sure the Cambodians won't like most of the food but we are still excited to spend the evening together. We will then continue by watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and then opening gifts on Thursday morning. As we have mentioned before we have tried hard to make it feel like Christmas here, and truly it does, and we couldn't of asked for anything better...family, friends, traditions, the whole works. Then on the 23rd we are off to Vietnam for 2 weeks for a vacation.

We hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a fun-filled New Years!