Week 12

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

We had a nice day, of course it wasn't the same, and it didn't feel Christmasy, but I think that is really ok. In the couple weeks before I had had times when I was feeling sad about missing family and all the traditions. But on the actual day I was so struck by how great it felt to really live the way we believe. Although all the hype around Christmas is fun (and often stressful), it always took my focus off of what we were really celebrating. And this year with nothing else in the way we could really focus on Jesus.

Sage was super excited to open gifts in the morning, when we got up she said 'I was excited for presents and I got out of my net then I saw it was dark out so I went back to sleep.' My mom and Grandma sent us gifts and Joel made Sage a barn for her animals :)  Around noon some friends of ours who live on a lagoon arrived by boat. They brought Sage 2 baby chicks as a gift which of course she loved.  We had a nice meal and they stayed until almost dark. It was a wonderful day, even if completely different :)

We had a nice relaxing week. Sage and I made a bunch of food for Christmas Day and made cookies for Christmas Eve.  Joel made a buoy out on the sandbar for Bill (and whoever else needs) to tie off the boat. He mowed the whole lawn and cleaned up the beach which was a mess after like 5 days of wind. The wind was actually amazing because we had that many days without bugs also!

Obviously I haven't been able to figure out how to put pictures from our tablet on to the computer, so I've just been uploading some to facebook.  We did have hope to get our stuff back last week but it's been another week and still nothing so we're starting to consider ordering a new computer and camera since it will take awhile to get here. It's hard to know how long to wait.

We did have an incident this week, Joel Sage and I went down the beach on the small boat and the dogs followed us. Joel had found this huge rope he wanted to get out of the sand.  On the way back 3 of the dogs took off after something in the woods. One came back right away, and the 2nd that night and we noticed the next morning he had big punctures in his head.  The 3rd finally came back the next night and he had punctures in his head as well. We're guessing they got in a fight with a wild boar. They looked kinda rough for a couple days but they look much better this morning and seem to be back to their normal selves. It was just a strange thing to happen!

This week we will be going to town one day and our next big project will be painting the lodge (!!!) We'll get paint this week and Joel will start the prep work.  He's also working on the shower upstairs that leaks really bad for when the team is here in February.

Hope you all have a great week!