Happy New Year!

New Years Eve is fun in these here parts. First of all, hundreds of thousands of fireworks are shot off starting at about 7:00 pm. At around midnight, it is equivalent to every last firework shot off on July 4th combined into one city. Fireworks are cheap, so it seems as if all 28,617,577 (I just found out that there are more people in my city than in all of Australia!!!) people in Manila have purchased a firework or two. It's fun, but at 12:01 am I want to sleep in silence. However, the fireworks continue for another hour and a half or so.

The other reason New Years Eve is fun is that loads of Faithies come up to school to watch the fireworks (we're on a hill overlooking the city) and for the alumni vs. varsity volleyball, basketball, and soccer games. I love it because I get to see and play with a bunch of my former volleyball players. Also, it's fun to play against the basketball team that Josh coaches. Instead of a high five, he gets a "good game" kiss at the end of the game.

This is the volleyball group. I've played with or coached all but two of these girls!


And the basketball teams. It was so fun, except that every time I scored a basket, the annpincer would address me as Mrs. M----- instead of Valerie. I felt like I should be in mom jeans, passing out cupcakes on the bench, instead of playing! :)


We didn't get out of the gym until 11pm, and my kids were going until the very last minute! They had a blast. Josh and I are loving this phase in our family, because we can let the three older ones run around by themselves (at school) and Caleb is still happy to be held or in his car seat.


The kids watched the fireworks for a little while when we got home and then we put them to bed. Caleb was wide awake, so he, Teresa, and I sat on our porch and watched the fireworks until midnight.


Now it's bright and early 2012, and its quite obvious the party that went on around the city last night. The smoke is SO thick, we can't even see the skyscrapers that are 6 miles away!



I'm excited about the New Year! We got to ring it in with Tom and Teresa here. We're so excited that our besties, Dave, Michele and family return from furlough in a few weeks. However, then we turn around and go on our own furlough in the summer - super excited about that! Our Must-Do list for furlough is getting pretty long and I'm not sure how we'll cram it all in! 2011 will be hard to top, but we trust that God has some special things in mind for our 2012.