KICS Christmas at Nakumatt!

The 5th-8th grade bands played at our local Nakumatt mall yesterday afternoon!  The group was parked right outside the main grocery store.  They drew quite a crowd (we've never seen anything like that here before!) and sounded amazing!

Setting up:

And playing!

 

They played for 40 minutes, from 5 till 5:40, and they drew quite a crowd!

 

 

And a few more...

 

 

And I forgot to put this at the end of my last post.  When Caleb's concert was done, we were driving home and said that this was a time when you miss having a Dairy Queen around to go get a treat before going home.  So, since that wasn't an option, we stopped at a convenience store and bought a bottle of pop and a can of Pringles!

Thoroughly enjoying our Coke & Pringles!!!

 

 

 

Mom has been busy today making Christmas cookies.  We were curious as to how they would turn out here...I'm pretty sure that the verdict is they turned out marvellously!!!  :-)

 

KICS Christmas Celebration!!

Last night's program was awesome!!!  Mr. Gaskill and all of the musicians did an amazing job!

Throughout the night, there were performances by the 5th Grade band, the 6th Grade band, the Junior Band (Grades 6-8), the Advanced Band (high school), the Jazz Band, the Teachers Choir, and a few ensembles, finished off with a sing-a-long!

All set and ready to go!

He played four songs: Jolly Old Saint Nicolas, Silent Night, Ding Dong Merrily on High, and Soaring above the Clouds.

This afternoon, the Junior Band in going to be playing at the local mall downtown.  We're praying that it'll be a way to reach out to people during this Christmas season!

Thursday Update

We had a great time having Patty Card here for a few days last week.  Our Hillside family sent us tons of notes that Patty brought with her, so we had a fun evening reading all of them!

As we're coming up to the end of our semester, Caleb & I have both been finishing up projects and studying for exams.  I have my last exam tomorrow and Caleb has exams, projects, and a speech next Mon-Wed.  Last week he worked on a poster advertising "A Raisin in the Sun" (it's a play based on Langston Hugh's poem "A Dream Deferred").

 

Working diligently away, even while Patty was visiting!



The final product!



The varsity football season just ended and tryouts took place for the JV team next semester.  After some confusion, we just found out that Caleb made the team!!!  Most of the time when Caleb comes home after practise, he is quite muddy:

However, it's not so often that he comes home with a perfect "ball print"!! :-)  It must have been quite the header!!!

The KICS Christmas concert is tonight, so we're having supper early...which means I need to run!  We're all looking forward to this evening--the night includes performances by the Advanced High School Band, the Junior Band [C!], the Jazz Band, different Ensembles, a Teachers Choir, and some with a variety of the bands combined!

To finish off...  This is what the view from our upstairs balcony normally looks like:

Some mornings, however, we wake up to the valley being filled with fog!  It looks amazing, and this morning I was able to take some pictures of it!

Here's some more:

 And then...

The sun came out!!!!

And the Tree Is Up!

Here's a smattering of pictures to give you a glimpse into our last few weeks!

A couple of weeks ago, we were able to spend some time
with the Kenny's while they visited Rwanda.  We're looking
forward to seeing them again in January--this time in Nairobi!!

Another interesting bug spotting!!

On November 17th, KICS held their Fall Festival (which was fun!), and it was Caleb's first public performance on the trombone!!

There have been quite a few short term mission teams come through over the past weeks.

We had a pretty busy American-Thanksgiving long-weekend.  One of the big events was hosting another Nerf war!  While our downstairs room is getting filled up with furniture, the upstairs room is still pretty much empty!


All set up and ready to go!

 

Another fun thing that we did was get together with the Gaskill's to play some games!  We had a blast!

Dutch Blitz!!

We have an annual Christmas tradition that sometime in November, we use old Christmas cards to make posters to put on our doors.  Mom & I both brought a little stack of cards, and Nanny B. sent some with us too, so we had plenty to use this year!!

The final products!

Through some connections we heard about an Italian grocery store, that also sells ice cream (we haven't found any other ice cream that is a treat!).  So, we had fun treat and each got a "single scoop."

Malcolm & Patty Card have been in Kenya, and while Malcolm teaches a course, Patty has come to Rwanda for a few days.  We went to church with her this morning, and then tried out a new restaurant for lunch.  It is a Mexican restaurant, has virtually no wait, good service, and good food!  We think we'll be visiting that place again!

 Finally, today we put up our Christmas tree!  We were able to buy one from a family that was leaving a couple months ago, and Dad designed a stand that we had made (from the same people who are making our furniture).  We each brought around 5 ornaments, we were able to buy 10 balls at the same sale we got the tree at, and we made some Lego ones to fill in the gaps!

Carrying out our traditional jobs -- Dad & Caleb bending down
and fluffing the branches, while I check out the lights for bad bulbs.

What was Mom doing during all of this??  Working on our
Christmas cards--going to be mailing them in the next couple
of days!

Putting on the lights...

 

Tinsel time!!

 

And ornament time!!!

The final product!!!

 Our Indonesian nativity scene is packed away on another continent, but we've added an African one!

Have a blessed Advent season!!!