The big day is over

Today is December 26! As my husband says, "Big John's dead and the big day is over!" But let me backtrack a minute.

December 24 Rick and had a great day out and around the city. We enjoyed the Christmas decorations all over town and ended up on Orchard Road about 6pm. If I told you there were a million people walking on the sidewalks with us, I'm sure I would not be exaggerating! It was an incredible crowd. The funny thing is that no one was pushing or shoving. Everyone was just moving along slowly. We were trying to get to where we knew people were supposed to be caroling. We could see a choir standing on down the sidewalk on the other side of the road but couldn't get to them. We couldn't hear them from where we were. By the way, in Singapore "caroling" is someone singing TO you, not everyone singing Christmas caroling. What we could hear, was not even in English! Ha! So we walked up a couple of escalators and got up where we could see a little better.

A Christmas parade came by with about seven or eight floats. All of them were lit up to perfection and each depicted a character of Christ: bread of life, living water, etc. And each float had the name JESUS prominently displayed. I was so excited. Now what we believe to be true about how the "true meaning" of Christmas has been emphasized this year is to "educate" the people of Singapore about the religions within her culture. They believe that if we can all understand each other's cultures, we will get along better. Whatever the strategy - the TRUTH will shine above the rest so I was glad that Singapore was showing the true meaning whatever their reasoning!

The kids all called on Christmas Eve (it was morning for them) and that helped with how much we were missing them. It also helped to know that sooner or later they would all be together.

Christmas morning - we opened our presents and the kids called again. We lazed around (like you are supposed to do on Christmas morning) until about 11am. Then we went to some friends' house for Christmas lunch. We had ham and turkey and green bean casserole, etc. (Rick and I have decided to cook our Christmas dinner on this coming Saturday). We visited with these friends until about 5 and then headed to the home of one of our Singaporean friends who had invited us for an authentic Chinese dinner. Don't think I am going to try and tell you what we had to eat - no way. Some of it was great and other parts were a little too spicy for me. But the company was good. We left there about 10pm.

This morning our kids woke us up as they were opening their presents. Our son eventually joined them after lunch and I know they have had a ball together. Meanwhile - Rick and I were going "down" by the moment. We finally just took a long nap. It is now after 8pm and we are watching a short Shrek Christmas movie on television.

Looking forward to tomorrow. It will be better. We are headed toward and exciting new year. Thanks for your prayers.