A Saturday.

It's the first day of December!  I am SO excited about Christmas this year.  I think Christmas is always special, but it seems extra-special for some reason.  Maybe because it's the first year Natty has been in Bolivia at an age to really get into it.  Maybe it's because last year I was big and pregnant and couldn't really walk a lot to enjoy stuff and the year before that I had just lost Zion.  With Natty's exuberance about everything and our sweet, little happy Jubilee-baby and the thought of Scotty finally having a good chunk of family-time...I'm really in the Christmas spirit!  We are also loving the idea of doing advent with our church family this year, for the first time.  A lot of Christmas traditions that are "normal" for us North-American Christians are not looked highly upon  in the Bolivian church or are just starting to be accepted as the church grows in maturity.  We see the need to spend the month of December preparing our hearts to really celebrate the coming of our King and remember all that means to us as His adopted children.  Natty and I made an advent calender out of matchboxes and she already enjoyed opening the first one this morning (and will be even happier when I fill the rest with candy along with the scripture)- we want to set the stage for not only a fun time of baking, Christmas music, presents, ornaments, and friends, but of recognizing how much Jesus Christ deserves all our worship as a family as we remember His coming.

Today is my favorite type of Saturday.  Yesterday, it turned cold and rainy and dreary- a perfect winter day here in the middle of Summer! :)  After the rains stopped, the band of Andes mountains outside of La Paz were sparkling white and very dramatic.  I wish I had taken a picture!  We thought of driving out toward them to find snow and play in it, since Natty has no recollection of snow yet, but other duties were on our mind.  This is the first day in weeks that Scotty doesn't have anything major to do, so we made breakfast this morning, read books, ate, watched part of The Iron Giant and then got the girls ready to go out.  First stop- Ketal!  Our large supermarket has many interesting things inside, but we were on the hunt for lunch (in the form of small, stew-filled cornbready snacks) and garland to house our church advent candles.  Saturday is THE DAY to shop as a family, so the store was already humming with activity.  We paused at one girl handing out food samples and all tasted a kid's vitamin drink.  Sweet and milky and when we asked if it had sugar, she answered, "No- it's normal."  Normal?  And how is it so sweet, then?  Anyway, we found what we were looking for, picked up a Christollen and headed to destination #2: Awesome toy store!  I don't know what this store is called, but it's in the back of a store filled with men's dress fabric.  It's the only place I've seen such a great collection of fun stuff, educational stuff and didactic stuff- it really is fun to look around there and it's good I'm a Miser, cause otherwise I would buy way too much.  We found the toy we wanted for Jubilee, bought it and went to the second large grocery store in town that has a decent furniture store inside.  I had seen a nice, leather chair there that I thought Scotty might like for Christmas and wanted him to look at it before I bought it.  Upon further inspection, it seemed more of a dark purple than brown (which is how it was labeled and how I initially saw it) and was a bit rickety.  Now I'm back to the drawing board with him for Christmas gifts.  We took a quick spin through the grocery store for a few more things and at one point another free samples lady came by and handed Natty a fairly good-sized styrofoam bowl.  I was curious what could be in there and when I peaked in to check it out, I was surprised and a bit amused to find a Natty-lunch sized portion of some type of Ramen noodle soup.  She looked at us nervously while we giggled about that free sample, maybe worried that it was something she shouldn't eat.  This store was also packed, but we managed to make good time, leave the crowds behind us and return to our cozy home for naps and the rest of the afternoon left to playing and resting and left-overs.

The end.