Hello friends! Merry Christmas!
I know this post is kind of late, but every day is Christmas, isn't it?
I was quite sure that my and my family's Christmas wouldn't be as merry as it usually is. Due to the pandemic, my mama's sisters and their family weren't able to spend Christmas with us. For the past years, three families gather together to celebrate the holidays. Aside from that, my bestie wasn't able to come home for Christmas.
Despite these, we decided to prepare some food for our family and also give some of them out to our neighbors. On the morning of 24th, I and my parents were busy preparing. I was in charge of the fruit salad while mama and papa were cooking some dishes. Suddenly, my guy best friend and his family knocked at the door bringing a huge box of cake! And guess what? It was my favorite carrot cake from Leona which I haven't had since the lockdown. haha Craving satisfied!
I really thought that it's going to be just me and my parents, but my best friend and his family celebrated with us in advance. <3
That's my best friend, me, my godson, best's wifey and my mama. <3
And since they bought us the carrot cake, we ate the cake we originally prepared for Christmas eve. haha It's ube cake and some fruit salad. We stayed outside and spent fun time together talking and eating. What a big family we have! ^^ Even Arashi celebrated with us. haha Later that night, they had to go to their relative's house, so it's just me, mama, papa and Arashi. However, the hype remained. We took several pictures together before we had our Christmas dinner.
Of course, we took pictures of the celebrant...
A couple hours later, we started preparing for Christmas dinner. Maybe it was already around 8:30 in the evening. We usually have early dinner at around six in the evening, but since we were very full it was later than usual. We didn't prepare a lot unlike the past Christmas, but we were able to share some food to our neighbors and also to my best friend's family and relatives. Sharing is caring... <3
Here's the Christmas-themed carrot cake my best friend's family gave us. It's really delicious and I am so glad to satisfy my craving before the year ends. It's as if my best friend was able to read my mind and gave me what I wanted. lol
We decided not to cook rice because our tummy were already super full. haha Despite everything that happened this year, we're glad and blessed to be able to spend Christmas together. As long as my family is complete and we're all healthy and safe, then there'll be no greater gift. Thank you and happy birthday Jesus!
Also, Christmas is about giving and sharing. It's about bringing joy and laughter to people. Since we weren't able to go out and buy stuff like the usual, we decided to give free ice cream to all the kids and not-so-young people in our neighborhood! They were very happy to get some free ice cream from our little store. <3
This is just a small gesture, but seeing the smiles and receiving "thank you" from them made us really happy. I don't know exactly, but there are really a lot of kids in our neighborhood. The teenagers you saw in the picture above were the first batch of kids we knew in this place. We've been living here for around 10 years now and this place never runs out of kids. haha
We gave out ice cream on the 22nd because the kids in our neighborhood had their Christmas party. So, we asked the organizer to let them line up after dinner to get some free dessert. They didn't know about it since it was a surprise. That's why they looked really glad. :) I don't go out that often but I'm kind of close to these kids especially the older ones. I remember one time, it was my birthday and when they knew about it, they bought some snacks from our store wrapped it in paper and gave it to me. I'll never forget that because they gave me a gift even if they didn't have a lot of money. <3
We're not rich, but whenever we can, we always try to help and give something. We consider ourselves lucky because we are also surrounded by people who are loving, caring, thoughtful and kind. It's nice to live in a world full of love and positivity. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Well, it's Christmas every day... so let's live, laugh and love.
See you next time and may you all have a fantastic day! (^_^)/