Here are some festive photos of our girls opening their Christmas gifts. It was our first time ever opening gifts in our own home with our own tree and ooooohhhhhh how wonderful it was.

We opened the gifts in the evening under the twinkle of lights. We had a fancy spread of special foods. And the girls danced and jumped and beamed with delight with every new gift.

Stockings..more like mittens, filled with undies!







Cinderella movie.

P.J's






Bird back-packs...for all those travels







Marion showing Davina how to use her new puppets.



Note...Davina's happy content face.

Jolly Postman Christmas book.

Singing Christmas songs with their new gear.

Perfect+Pink+Princess house=smile!



Davina's new undies....most kissable tummy ever.

Girls doing stretching on their new mats. Cute undies Davina.

With in five minutes the mats turned into Bible reading and somersaults mats.So much for exercise.

Davina opens package of candy....all by her self.

Davina getting what she can before I get involved!

Sense of accomplishment....I got it into my mouth before Mom caught me! True excitement!


Have a very Merry Christmas every one. We love you!!!!!!

I have been meaning to post some pictures of things we have been up to these last few months. With electricity being inconsistent I was unable to post some pics from before we left for our trip. So I will do that now along with some more recent happenings. As you know we have been having power issues here on the compound…. we now have a rickety old generator that looks like a dog with three legs ‘old and awkward’! I had formed a name out of ‘choice’ words for that beast…well Roger with his ‘good boy’ look would always give me a chiding at use of this name. So the generators new name is Brutis when he works and Brute when he does not, which is often! Anyway, along with power issues came boredom for me, as I said earlier not much to do here without electricity! So now it is all about create work ….keep busy…. make fun projects!!!!

This is when Brutis was brought to the compound. He had to be crane lifted over the wall, which was entertaining to watch! Then they had to bang and pop him back into shape before he would work. Because there was nothing else to do most of the compound residents (most being engineers) stood and watched the gong show!




(garden hose transporting diesel to generator)

It was while we had no electricity that Stephen Harper was re-elected as Prime Minister of Canada. This was our red and white patriotic celebration! In the dark…the light is from the flash on the camera. We then read stories, Daddy enthralled us all with his shadow puppets and we had a prayer time for Canada in the heat and dark of the night! (In light of what is going on now in Canada I think we will be needing some more of those prayer times!)









Here are some crafty fans I made out of wrapping paper for the girl’s bathroom. It was fun to make and created a lot of work for me…. it really brought colour into that drab bath!

Before


After




Here is a ribbon container I made to contain all of Marion’s hair ribbons.



This is Davina’s idea of after dinner fun! Fill the bathroom sink with water; add toothbrush, band-aids and anything else she can get her hands on, then get into the water, p.j’s and all!





Sister sleep over.



Monday afternoon....occupy the girls art while I make dinner.





Davina found this treasure on her own in our pantry and of course helped her self!



Roger and I's friday date night.....ear candling!




Upon our return from Italy we received a wonderful package from my little siblings. They have been compelled by some of the stories I have told them of the needs here in Africa. Wanting to do some things for the babies at the orphanage they set about forming a plan. All summer long as guest came to visit they hosted plays, dinners, circuses, cookie and bread bakes and many other ingenious ways of selling ‘tickets’.
Come this fall they drove the three hours to the nearest Wal-Mart and purchased toys and blankets. I was moved to tears at these young kids love and sacrifice! Thank you Katelynn, Caleb and Bethany, we are very excited to bring the gifts tomorrow to the babies! Of course my parents also sent a wonderful box of gifts, dress up cloths for the girls…with a real Cinderella wig for Marion, Victoria Magazine and organic dark chocolate for me, and corn nuts for Roger…thank-you , thank-you, thank-you! I also hear there are some more packages coming for the babies from my wonderful Milner family…. we eagerly await them in the mail!

Thank-you for your ever thoughtfulness to the needs of others!





My Dad always draws a picture on the packages they send so the girls know it is from him...here Marion is checking out my Dad's drawing of the leaning tower of Pisa.








Check out the card from my little siblings, it says "Jesus Loves The Little Children".








The mom’s of the compound put on a Christmas party for the kids. It was a wonderful time. The kids got to see Santa, all in their bathing suits…being from Canada that was funny to see. This was our girl’s first Santa experience! Marion watched, kind of puzzled, as the other kids got excited to see Santa, when she got closer to Santa she looks up at Roger and I and said “what is all the fuss, this is just Rebecca’s dad” with a I am not dumb look on her face! Davina would not get near Santa with a ten-foot poll…I guess we do not have Santa loving children. The party was so much fun. And a great hit with the kids.



















We also set-up the first Christmas tree of our married life! We bought a tree off of a neighbour and I found some decorations in Italy. I also found some fake poinsettia flowers at a shop here in Nigeria, they were awfully expensive. I was humming and hawing for quite some time over whether to buy the flowers at that price or not. Then an older ‘expatriate’ lady came up to me and said, “I have been living abroad for thirty years… just buy the flowers.” So I have very expensive poinsettia flowers on my tables which add some bright Christmas colour. I was able to rig up an advent of sorts by wrapping a wreath in ribbon and hanging darling little heart containers from the branches and every morning the girls run and find the treat in their Christmas heart. I am very pleased with how nice every thing turned out…for my first Christmas tree in my own home!

Even though we will be gone for Christmas it created work…kept me busy…and it was very fun. Our house is so cosy with the lights and Christmas music playing.

Advent wreath with darling little hearts from Holland.


My front door seasonal wreath


My little birds all dressed up for Christmas.






The girls advent calenders from Italy...they just do not make things cute like this in Canada.






I made these out of cardboard and wrapping paper. It nicely fills up the spot on top of the hutch.


This last week I made gingerbread houses BY HAND! A big job but again…create work…keep busy…make fun! We had some friends over and had a festive morning decorating the houses. These pics are from a friend because Roger took my camera to work!







To end this post I am going to write about my WONDERFUL twenty-fifth birthday! I am all about celebrations and Roger has taken this love of mine to heart… the perfection started with breakfast in bed and a ton of hand made cards from Marion and a long love letter from Roger! During the day I had calls from my dearest of family and friends. Roger brought me home a gift that had arrived that day in the mail, that’s planning I tell you! I then was given the best birthday gift ever!!! A new nephew! Connor Murray Duits 8 pounds 7 ounces born on my birthday! Son to my older brother Jason and his beautiful wife Shannon, (who I hear hardly made a noise throughout her delivery and her hair still looked perfect)! Thank you for giving me another wonderful nephew! Connor it is so thrilling to have you born on my birthday…. I will always treasure the memory of getting the call that you had arrived! You are incredibly loved! I am sure you are as handsome as your Daddy and as loving as your Mommy. I love you! Y'all wait till I have some photo's of this new baby and I will post them along with my other sweet new nephew Memphis! After I came down from cloud nine, Roger and I had a very nice dinner together (after we put the girls to bed). I had made my favourite meal; raw Vietnamese, and we watched a movie ‘til midnight (which I never do) but Roger promised me a sleep in morning where I could read my new book from him until any hour I wished! What a perfect day!

I must put out a Happy Birthday to me second newest brother…..Happy Birthday Andrew! Have a wonderful day. I am glad your birthday is in December…December babies are where its at! We love you and are glad you married our sis! Oh and by the way we LOVED the photo album Dad and Mom gave us of your wedding! You guy’s are hot and beautiful and the pictures are incredible!!!!