Christmas love

This Christmas season, I wrote 56 non-generic letters – by hand.  (24 of that, I posted/will post thru mail :D)  And the best part is, I know I wrote each one from the bottom of my heart. <3  Although I did this for these people to know how much I love and appreciate them, I myself felt good remembering the goodness of every person & the small and big things they did for me which deserve a second thank you.  And because I love receiving letters more than gifts (and I’ve kept every single letter I got since high school), I feel happier this year than the year I gave almost everyone a gift (not to mention that the next year was the year I welcomed with a clean wallet X_X).

We hosted Christmas Dinner in our house with almost all our relatives (around 61 people, some of which I first met that day).  At first, it seemed unimaginable how we’d be able to pull it off with just the six of us at home: Ate Lucy our househelper not knowing how to cook, my brother sneezing with severe pollen allergy and half-sedated with all the anti-histamines he’s taking, Inay supposedly too weak to cook, and my grandmother being a grandmother already! haha.  Thankfully, Ama was able to manage almost all the muscle work, and Gab was everyone’s runner haha, and Inay found strength to cook her signature callos and ginataan, and Ate Lucy was game in washing all the dishes and being my assistant!  Mommy Auring did the entertaining haha.  I did the marketing and the rest of the cooking.  It was heartwarming how we were able to manage because some of my titas and titos and cousins helped us out, even in the dishwashing! My mom, being the traditional host that she is, had to start everything with a program that was a long speech about Christmas, followed by a reading of The Night Before Christmas and a couple of other speeches.  Of course people are people, and I understand that everyone hungry and stressed from traffic would probably have just 5 minutes of attention span, but I hope they managed to get the essence of the monologue: that Christmas is about Jesus and love and family. :)  Thankfully, my dad’s idea of ending the program with everyone singing “Hark the Herald” and “What Child Is This” turned out well. AAAND for the first time, I miraculously didn’t commit an obvious mistake playing the piano with people singing. hahaha.  My hands get clammy when people sing while I’m playing.  So I guess everything turned out better than planned, thanks to everyone’s help especially from God who gave my mom enough strength to enjoy the party she’s been planning since last month.  It really is true that God provides, because we thought the food might not be enough, considering the healthy appetite of majority of our relatives, but food was more than enough because everyone brought something and excesses were not a problem because Ama gave them to people who needed some love that night.

A Merry Christmas to everyone! And a bright new year too! :)

foood

crammed inside the house

my grandmother made me wear this obnoxious pink floral top – and I couldn’t say no to Mommy Auring (T_T)

with our relatives we just met that day for the first time! :)

cousins :)

Asuncion side (no picture yet of the Tankeh/Bautista/Madarcos side)

I bought a ton of colored cartolina but I ended up making this flimsy pang Grade 2 poster because I got so engrossed with making the parol (but the rain unfortunately bleached the color of the japanese paper) and writing the letters. My dad noted that I forgot to capitalize “C”. sorryyy hehe

Christmas cards I made for Grandpa and Lolo – looks pathetic, but ohwell, that’s the best of whatever creativity (and patience…ang effort gupitin nung letters!) I have left haha

my brother made a miniature airplane out of my excess cartolinas. the other plane was more impressive, I forgot to take a picture of it though :(