Oma's Pages #28

Oma’s Pages #28

Christmas Day....

I have never celebrated a Christmas Day without family. This was my first. We slept in until about 10:00am. We both needed to do that and so that was probably our best present. I had shipped a lot of boxes to myself which we were using as our Christmas tree. We decided to open them as our Christmas presents since many of them were sent two months ago and I could not remember what was in them anymore. It was all the stuff that I knew I wanted from home and either could not buy or did not want to buy over here.

I gave Opa a soft white blanket from IKEA. It was the only surprise I could muster since we spend every minute of every day together. I bought it one day when we were at IKEA and he went to do something and I said I would wait for him at the check out stand.

Mary Kay sent me pictures of my family. So that was my surprise.

I had my all time favorite Dutch dessert “Apple Bol” I think I could live on Apple Bol and never get tired of it. It is an apple baked inside of a crust. That’s it. Every bakery puts something different in the middle of the apple where the seeds were. I have never tasted an apple bol that I did not like. 

We went for a short walk around our neighborhood and took some pictures because it was Christmas. There is a large courtyard where the apartment is. In this courtyard are some play equipment for children and in the middle of it was droopy sad looking Christmas tree. Somebody had tied it up with wires and heavy string just to keep it from falling over.

Later in the day we went to Brother and Sister Kees (pronounced Case) and Ina (prounounced Eena) De Jonge’s house. Bro and Sister De Jonge are the matriarch and the patriarch of the De Jonge dynasty here in Holland. It isn’t really a dynasty, but it is a family with 10 children who are all adults who are active and holding leadership positions in the Church all over the country. They are an incredible family. We worked with Thies de Jonge in both the JoVo’s and in the 150 year anniversary arrangements and he is putting up the money to print the 150 year anniversary book. Sister de Jonge had us stop and see the skater's on the Paterwoldsemeer hoping to get ready for the elfstaden.

Bro and Sister de Jonge made dinner for the JoVo’s who did not have anyplace to go and also for the missionaries. We were there for several hours.

We came home and called all of the family and talked until about 2:00am. It was a great Christmas.We were exhausted when we got home... we were still suffering from jet lag and trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing here.