Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas! It was really fun watching the kids open their new presents. Zeb received several trains which he loved! Kayleigh received a pink dress for her doll which she also loves. She claims that the baby doll will be a part of my sister's wedding in the spring. We will see if Holly goes for that! We had everyone over for brunch and then opening gifts. We did secret Santa. John and I both agreed that this was one of the best Christmas seasons we have had since we have been here. I think having so many kids around made it a lot of fun for us. Plus our Hong Kong trip was icing on the cake!

Kayleigh received a princess themed gift from her friend Brennan which included the Cinderella movie. She was really excited!

Zeb received this awesome truck to ride around on outside from his friends Bright and Zion.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was really fun. We basically did a repeat dinner of all the amazing food we had for Thanksgiving but we switched up the desserts a little bit. I was assigned to making a pumpkin pie. I wasn't really nervous about making the inside part but I was extremely nervous about making the pie crust. I couldn't just run to my local grocery store and pick up a frozen pie crust. I had to make one from scratch. It turned out just fine. I was pretty excited. We had a great time of eating, fellowship ,and singing some Christmas carols. Then everyone left to put kids to bed and to rest up for Christmas day.



It didn't come out perfect but close of enough for me to feel like it was a success.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was amazing! We had such a wonderful time while we were there. I think my favorite part of all was that most everywhere we went was decorated for Christmas. Since we live in a country that doesn't really celebrate Christmas and we haven't been in the States for Christmas in 6 years I was just in awe of all the beautiful decorations. We went non-stop for two days to try and see as much as possible. We rode up the peak tram to one of the highest peaks in Hong Kong to overlook the amazing city. We even rode an old Chinese ship ( a Junk) on a cruise around Victoria Harbour at night. It was beautiful. We definitely want to go back sometime and explore more of the city. All in all it was an amazing weekend.

One of the hotels that was decorated for Christmas.

Victoria Harbour at night.

The ship we took the cruise in around the harbour.

At the top of the peak.

The most interesting streets of Hong Kong.

Victoria Harbour during the day.

Once in a lifetime...

Today was the start of a trip Alisa surprised me with for my birthday.
We are going to Hong Kong!!! We were all ready for our 7:45am flight
and when we arrived at the airport, we found out our flight has been
delayed until 1pm! We were a little sad.

We went to the airline desk an asked if we could change our flight to
an earlier one and they did. We did not know we would be put on another
flight in first class! What a blessing and a huge surprise.

We are both very thankful for this opportunity. We'll let you know
more soon.

Treasured items

The two outfits below that Zeb has on may seem pretty normal to you but they are very special to us. John's mom made those outfits when John was a baby. It is hard to believe that John wore them when he was Zeb's age. I think that it is so special that his family saved them for us. I never got to meet John's mom but to be able to hold something that she made warms my heart. I plan to save them for Zeb in case his has a son some day.

Sunday Icecream

Today we tried out the new TCBY after church with all of our friends.
It was a disappointment to Alisa but I thought it was not bad. The
atmosphere was really cool and it had an outside option for seating.
Thank you God for blessing us with another western option!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas....

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Greene home. I spent most of the afternoon on Saturday trying to get the Christmas tree up and the lights on the tree. Having two little ones it takes longer than you think to put up a Christmas tree. So by Saturday night all I had accomplished was putting up the tree and putting on the lights. The next day I decided to wait until Zeb went to bed and decorate the tree with Kayleigh. I attempted to decorate while Zeb was awake but he thought the ornaments in the shape of a ball where toys that he could throw across the room! Needless to say I didn't get much decorating done during his waking hours. So after Zeb man was fast asleep Kayleigh and I finished decorating the tree. We have been listening to Christmas music everyday here. Kayleigh's favorite song is "Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel". She calls it "Rejoice". She actually knows a lot of the words!

Alisa and Kay

Alisa and Kayleigh looking at past pictures of the family on the
computer. Both Zeb and Kayleigh love to look at past pictures of
anything. After dinner tonight we all had a chance to reminisce about
this past summer with the Grandparents.

A Die Hard Sports Fan

Below is a picture of Zeb watching an NFL game at John's computer. Every time John watches sports on his computer Zeb yells "games"! He loves to watch sports with his dad. I am pretty sure he will become a huge sports fan just like his daddy. John and I hope of course that he will become a big fan of the Tarheels. One of the biggest die hard Carolina fans I have ever met was my great uncle. My family used to own a pig farm and when we had power outages they had to run generators for the pigs. One time during a power outage a Carolina game was on. My uncle packed up his t.v. and went down to the farm to watch the Carolina game with the pigs! Now that is some true dedication. If I remember correctly he even won tickets to a Carolina game when there was a contest on the radio for naming the strangest place you had ever watched a game. I'm pretty sure that ranks pretty high up there. Well, little Zeb I know your daddy's heart is so proud that you already love "games" and will probably sit and watch them with him in the future.