Our First Christmas in Manila

 Our tree on Christmas morning-you have to get a little creative with where to hang the stockings when there is no fireplace.

 Santa's leftovers from his snacks

 They were just a little excited!

 This is a Philippine flag-the boys each got one for their room and we have a larger one that hangs on the playroom wall-now I need to get an American one and teach Ashley the pledge to it since I don't think they will teach her that in her preschool here.

 A cool lego building set from Aunt Ann in Colorado-Ryan has already had lots of fun with this!  Thank you!

 One of Scott's favorite gifts-we have been forced to (I mean enjoyed!) watch MANY magic shows since Christmas morning

 Here is Grammy being a good sport and letting Ashley do her hair on Christmas morning.  This was another gift from Aunt Ann-I had to explain to Ashley what a hair straightener was and she forgot what it was called and the next day called it a "hair chomper"

 2 angry birds-we didn't even know what these were when we came over here-but they are VERY popular here!

 Ashley reading a book with Grammy sporting her new butterfly wings

 The token picture of the usual photographer to prove that I really was there-I was opening my cool new books about dive sites in the Philippines that Bev and Greg surprised me with!  More trips to plan!

 What is behind Dad's back?

 What are they??????   The kids' first pets-2 teddy bear hamsters-both male we were told

 All 3 of the kids were allowed to choose their favorite pair of names from the list Greg and I made up.  Those 3 were put into a hat and the winner was . . .

Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader!

 
Here is Darth Vader enjoying some Christmas morning breakfast.


 One of Ashley's favorite gifts a bed for her new Cinderella baby doll!

 The hamsters got a car for Christmas-called the hamster dragster-they run in the yellow wheel and it makes the car "drive" around-we just have to be careful and not let them get near stairs and wreck their car.

 Give Ryan a truck and he is a happy boy!  We joke about he and his cousin Ian that if you put enough trucks and trains in a room for them each to have several, you could lock them in a room for a month and just slide food under the door every once in a while and they would be happy!

 My friend Katy, that I have known since I was in Kindergarten, started the tradition of birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas morning when her kids were small-what child doesn't think it is awesome to be allowed to eat cake for breakfast????  Thank you for an overwhelmingly popular idea to celebrate the BEST GIFT of Christmas!  and there was also breakfast casserole for my dear husband who only eats breakfast food for breakfast!

 I was too slow with the camera to catch Scott enjoying his!

 Ryan and his Daddy both having a ball!  It really is hard to tell who enjoys legos more-his whole plane was put together before noon on Christmas day!

 My mother, grandmother, and I agree that it is not really Christmas without a few new books!  Here we are enjoying one that I bought a new copy of here in Manila that was a childhood favorite of mine.  It is titled Pantaloon and is about a dog who wants to work at a bakery.

 Even though it was cloudy and thus the water chilly-we swam on Christmas day-just as a matter of principal-I can now say that I have done that!  We swam on New Year's Day too!

This was our Christmas dinner-that night sitting around the dining room furniture from my parents house!  It was fun-we, grown ups, had ham, broccoli casserole, and macaroni and cheese-not from a box!  Hope you and all your families enjoyed a very Merry Christmas!

Subic Bay-part 3

 Looking back at the beach as the boat drives away-I'm sure all of my kids are in the water there somewhere!

 The posts sticking up in the water are approach lights for the runway at Subic Bay's airport-Greg tells me that they have them like this at airports that are close to water-like Tokyo also.

 This is the port unloading cranes that unload ships and put containers on trucks-the boys thought these were really cool and we were able to get much closer pictures from the boat than you could see driving around.

 Some pretty cool ships in the port-Subic Bay is really deep and the waves are very gentle so a great place for ships-one of our dives we went down near the yellow/orange buoy on the right of this picture.

 My monkeys with the sign turned upside down by the real monkeys.  Sorry for the foggy lens-the a/c was on in our room and as usual it was hot and humid outside.  After people eat out in this area and put their food trash in the trash cans, the monkeys come back to visit, eat, and play.

 I've never vacationed with actual monkeys before!

 The kids outside the lobby on Friday-check out morning.

 These were the descriptions of the 3 dives that Greg and I went on-The El Capitan, the middle one is the USS New York and a landing ship transporter.  Particularly on the first 2 dives visibility was awful just 6 or 8 feet but it was still really neat to swim through the insides and look at the outsides (even seeing a still intact cannon) of these old WW2 wrecks.  The last one was our favorite-we were sad when our time was up and we had to surface-there were lots of fish-many different kinds and the most lionfish I had ever seen on any one dive.  Definitely the diving here will be one of the coolest things Greg and I get to do-he and his mom went secret Christmas shopping when we got home and bought me 2 books about great dive spots in the Philippines.

 I had to take this picture for Mom of the pretty hibiscus at the resort-these flowers were always her favorites in Cayman.

 The last hurrah before driving back to Manila was Zoobic Safari-where you get up close with tigers.

 Yes-this is a real white tiger in the picture and we were going to do this but when we got back to the main building after everything else, it was too close to feeding time and they weren't doing any more pictures with the lion.

 They have too many unusual animals to name or bore you with pictures of them all but here we are with a camel that seemed like he was going to try to eat my hair. 

 The kids had seen pictures of these vehicles on the computer and knew that we were going for a ride in one and they were all excited and no one was scared or upset-it was really neat to be that close to a real and very large and apparently very hungry tiger.  Though we did not have one ride on top of our jeepney, it was cool to look out our windows and see the tiger above go from one jeepney to another.

 By the way, the tigers were eating raw chicken-ewwww!

 We also got to walk through a building where the tigers are housed when it is not their "turn" to be out roaming-they have beautiful eyes and gigantic paws

 We rode an open air train through the area with ostriches, pigs, and goats-the children all loved the little baby pigs and Ryan was worried about one that he thought had wandered too far away from the large group

 a remaining WW2 bunker that became part of the animal park-we saw another near our hotel that had been made into a restaurant called Bunker Bob's

 A little girl who has had nearly all the fun she can stand!

 A man made "tree stump" obstacle course that Scott and Ryan loved and did twice-I told Greg we needed one of these for the backyard.

 not a very good picture-I know-but the best that I got of the baby tiger we saw

 A shot of the white tiger too hungry to have our picture made with

We squeezed an awful lot of fun into 3 days.  I spent the ride home in the back with the boys reading them the book A Dolphin's Tale about a little boy who helps a dolphin who loses its tail-very neat book!  We missed the movie here but I'm hoping to show it to the kids while we are home over the summer.   We were tired and sandy when we got back but had a great time!