Happy happy merry merry

So aside from making and eating food, we did do some other things to celebrate Christmas and Hannukah this year in this tropical place..  like sleeping off the food we ate and catching up on rest after very late nights with friends...

... and decorating the Christmas tree made of teak pieces.  It was either that or a plastic one or a tropical plant.  Zeric chose this one, it's a bit funky but it works.  Nevermind that it's about 100 pounds heavy! 

... and playing with all of the great toys we got!

We lit the menorah each night, and remembered our barucha..

"Happy Monica!!!" as our friend Indie says!

The kids put on a great holiday performance at school.. it was really impressive, and all the kids from the maternelle (3s, 4s and kindergarten) had a great time doing it!

Of course, it's important to cool off with a Bintang (beer) in the pool after some heavy duty Christmas stocking action..

And finally, time at the mall (a must in Jakarta) with friends enjoying the [um a bit surreal] Christmas scenes.. I wasn't there for this one, but according to our friend Pammi (photo credit here), Santa even had a Thai mail order bride cum elf at his side. 

Hope yours was happy, merry and fun!  Big hugs from all of us waaaay over here.