"For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given. And the government will be on his shoulders.  And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace"

 Isaiah 9:6

Merry Christmas! Or as I learned to say in Norwegian God Yul (it's easy to write but the pronunciation is rather difficult).  I will start with the events of Christmas eve and eventually get to to days festivities.  Yesterday i did not work but Julie and I spent the day decorating our fabulous gingership.  However, earlier in the day I helped decorate the dinning room for our big Christmas eve dinner.

We didnt have enough bead necklaces to decorate the tables so we went out to the gangway and took off some of the decorations out there and brought them into the dinning room.  Only problem was that the beads were REALLY dirty from being outside.  So we had to clean all of them with a wet rag.

showing off the beads i cleaned :)

Kim (a teacher at the Academy) looking lovely hanging up some tinsel.

  After decorating Julie and i went to work on our lovely ship.

adding railing to the bow.  As you can see we have teddy grahams in the bridge windows for the Captain and officers

The Lock Nes monster is slightly out of it's usually swimming grounds...but hey this is Africa! Pretty sure anything can happen!

It got very humid and hot in the galley so we had to very carefully move the ship (it's maiden voyage) to Ken's office where the AC was more controlled.   It was so humid that everything was starting to melt!

 Christmas eve on the ship was really special.  We had a really nice meal (everyone got all dressed up).  It was nice because everyone ate at the same time and i was able to drift between tables and talk to everyone.  After dinner there was a Christmas Eve service.  It was full of special music (just like home!).

After the service I got together with some of my friends and we all brought some of our gifts up to midships and opened them in a group.  It was a blast!!! we set the camera to take 10 pictures in a row and then we tore into our gifts.  I havent seen those pictures yet (but hopefully i will get them soon).  Someone sent one of the girls a 'make it yourself' snow kit.  Just add water! We made snow and then kept showing people that we had snow in Africa! It was fantastic! It sure didn't feel like snow but it looked like snow.  We hung out and talked and shared candy and talked about our different family traditions for a couple hours. A lovely Christmas Eve.
 OH! probably one of the coolest traditions on the ship (and one i plan on carrying with me when i have a family) is the christmas shoes.  You put your shoe outside your door on Christmas eve and in the morning it's filled with goodies and gifts from friends.  I ended up being a little elf last night helping put out little gifts.  I walked around the ship probably 5 or 6 times with different people.  It was so fun! I saw one person dressed in a costume tip toeing around with a bag of gifties.

This is what our hallway looked like.  

 Christmas day (today) was very eventful! We had a big brunch in the morning.  I got up so early (i only had four hours of sleep because of all my elfing).  It really felt like Christmas in the galley though.  We had so many people that it didn't feel like work.  It was just like hanging out and making brunch for a really big family.  Peter Koontz (my boss) let his kids come to work in the galley with us.  So Malachi was my little bread helper today.  Having the kids in the galley was probably one of the best parts of my day.  It just made it feel like home.

Olga and Mal shaping bread (yes i taught him how...so cute)

Danielle arranging the fruit and cheese display

Rachel and Danielle

Our wonderful Gingership!

We made Pepper Cheddar bread...it was so good!

The creative masterminds!

People absolutely loved the ship.  We hid a lot of little detail things that people (thankfully) found and thought were hilarious.  Like a flip flop floating in the water, and a pallet of Milch on deck 8.

Mal guarding the door to santa/Kens changing room (also known as the galley office)

They actually had this costume on the ship, it fit Ken so well! It was awesome! such a good morning

Breakfast buddies

After breakfast Jillian and I went down to my room and we finished opening our gifts.  Thank you to my family for sending me such wonderful gifts! I miss you all so much!

I feel like it's tradition to take a pictures of all the wrapping paper....my mom calls it the 'carnage'.  

on the 19th we had a door decorating contests and today they announced the winners.  This is our door.  It's hard to tell in the picture but it's a 3D fireplace (the logs were actually sticking out) with stockings and every one's name.  We got i believe the most creative award...i can't remember.   After the door judging awards we had hot apple cider and watched the veggie tales movie "a little drummer boy".  it was a really cute movie...however i'd only had 4 hours of sleep so i went and took a nap about half way through.

Carol and I waiting for the movie to start, drinking our hot apple cider.  

I was sort of worried what Christmas would be like away from family and on a ship in West Africa.  I had no idea what to expect.  It ended up being such a special Christmas.  I was so blessed by everyone on the ship.  Thank you to everyone who made Christmas so special this year.  A special thank you to everyone who worked today to help put together the festivities.  I will end tonight with a picture taken a couple of weeks ago at the Winter Wonderland Market

(Krissy and I didn't know they were taking four in a row...thus the reason our expressions are the same in all of them)

Have a very Merry Christmas and may God continue to bless you in the coming year