Tag: christmas-tree

51/52: Christmas Gifts

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Photographs of our twin daughters, once a week, every week, this 2014.

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It’s true what Jodi once said, something about this project feeling like a countdown of sorts. Here we are at Week 51 of this 52 Week Project, and I still can’t believe how fast the year has gone by. Here are some photographs from the night before Christmas, which, by the way, also went as fast as it came.

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It wasn’t exactly an easy Christmas season for us, having to move to a new apartment at the start of the month, with all the packing, and cleaning, and transitioning. Our yaya went away for a holiday break too; which means my husband and I had to divide the house chores among ourselves on top of everything.

Just the same, we have learned to embrace these occasional opportunities to spend quality time as a family, just the four of us, especially during this time of the year.

It’s been a tough month, but just one smile, one song, one hug from these little humans and everything becomes a lot easier to bear. We wrapped them some presents and placed them under the tree, but the truth is, they are our real Christmas gifts.

“Children are a gift from the Lord,
they are a reward from Him.” ~Psalm 127:3

This Psalm has never been more real to me than now. More specifically when the children are throwing a fit, or being unruly, and there’s a pile of dishes and chores and tasks waiting to be dealt with. I keep going back to this verse to remind myself that these children are gifts from the Lord. They are a reward from Him! And indeed they are. No amount of chaos in the house can take away the sense of wonder and amazement that God has “gifted” us these two happy, curious, energetic children that we so love.

And then again there was this beautiful Child, who was sacrificed as a ransom for our sins, and it blows my mind all the time, especially now that I’m a parent, to realize how huge of a sacrifice that was for our Father in Heaven. Surely, nothing can top that priceless gift we have in Jesus Christ, if only we would open our hearts to receive Him.

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Merry Christmas!

Behold, the photograph that became this year’s Christmas e-card. Smile, Dawn! :)

I hope you had a meaningful Christmas yourself, one that’s filled with happy children, meaningful conversations, quality time, lots of hugs and kisses, God moments, unspeakable joy, love. 

51 sets of photographs down, one more to go. This is it. See you soon, 2015.

More about Project 52 here. View all posts in this blog series here.

Photographs on our Christmas Tree

Rhiza2 Comments

After deliberating if we should buy a new Christmas tree and waiting around for Christmas trees to go on sale (for real!), we finally put up our tree sometime mid-December. We bought a bigger tree replaced the small one I had for years. And because the girls in the house outnumber the only boy (hello, Daddy!), I took the liberty of replacing last year’s red poinsettias with pink ornaments this year.

No complaints from the husband! Promise.

Our little Christmas tree

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Two years ago, I pinned polaroids on my Christmas tree just for trips. Last year, on our first Christmas as a married couple, my husband and I thought we should make it a tradition, putting up photos on the tree like a timeline, representing milestones and beautiful memories of the year that was.

And so, for tradition’s sake, here are the photographs that made it to this year’s Christmas tree. Expectedly, these photos are mostly of the twins.. our year’s greatest milestone.

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Christmas Tree 2013

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And yes, they’re all from the ‘gram. Oh how convenient it is to just print out our best photos from Instagram throughout the year. Thank you, IG.

I can imagine how much fun it will be when the twins are older—they’ll choose the photos themselves for the tree. Ahh. Christmas is making me soooo happy, you know? I think I’ve crossed over.

On Christmas Traditions, Typhoon Victims, and Being Still

Rhiza4 Comments

Exactly a month ago, we put together our little Christmas tree at home, and I think I may have said I was “excited” to post more photos. So much for my excitement. The month has been packed with so many things, and uploading these photographs was the first to be pushed down my list! Anyway, here they are, for traditions’ sake.

It’s our first Christmas as husband and wife, and I love that we get to start our own Christmas traditions. Last year, I had some instax photographs up on my Christmas tree, and this year, we decided to do the same. We picked some of our favorite photographs from the wedding and the honeymoon and printed them out with our Polaroid Pogo. It’s a cute little project, something we hope we can keep on doing for years to come.

On another note, I know it has been a challenge for our country to celebrate Christmas this year when Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City are still under the state of calamity. We don’t have a television at home and, quite honestly, my husband and I have only seen and heard so much. I know we’ll never really have a clear picture of what’s happening out there but our family feels somehow involved. My eldest brother is there since last week; as part of his job, he’s with the ABS-CBN Engineering Crew which covers the relief operations there. It’s our first Christmas Day without him, probably even New Year too. And so we had to let go of certain Christmas traditions this year so my brother can be where he’s needed more.

I look at Ate Imy (my sister-in-law) and Isaac and I imagine how difficult it must be for them to celebrate Christmas without Kuya. But then I think about the thousands of families in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan who lost their loved ones and friends over the flash flood, and how devastating Christmas and New Year must be like for them. As I stare at our Christmas tree here at home, my heart goes out to the victims of Sendong who lost their homes and didn’t get the chance to put up their trees this year. At the time of this writing, the death toll has reached about 1,500. This is even more tragic than Ondoy.

Suddenly, no personal issues or problems are too big.

It’s easy to question the goodness of God at a time like this, but words from the Bible pop up like bright stars in the dark sky: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9) God sees everything in a bigger perspective, and as far as His grand scheme of things is concerned, everything happens for a reason and for our own good. His ways are higher, we only have to be still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10)—and believe that with all our hearts.

For the rest of us who are not in the center of this tragedy and are watching this from a distance, it’s our chance to help and make a difference. I’m not directly connected with any relief efforts for Sendong, but I think the surest way for our donations to reach Cagayan de Oro and Iligan is through Red Cross. We have 2 more days left before 2011 ends, let’s make it count.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Rhiza3 Comments

It’s December in 2 days and I bet you’re wondering too where on earth November went! Time flies fast, no?

Last night, we put up the Christmas tree at home. We started putting up Christmas lights at the veranda, too, last week, getting the place ready for some Christmas parties and get-togethers. It’s our first ever Christmas together since we met 12 years ago, and I’m kinda giddy about celebrating it with him! I used to think that Christmas is the saddest of all holidays (I had my share of depressing blog posts, IKR), but this year is bound to be so much different from all the other Christmasses we’ve had apart. Sweeter, and happier, for sure.

So I had my brother deliver to me the old tree I’ve had since 2009. We deliberated on buying a bigger tree this year, but we thought we’d save the money for a much-needed, much-awaited Christmas present we want to give ourselves instead. Besides, this little Christmas tree is perfect for our little home, for now. The idea of using Instax photographs as ornaments came about last year, and we thought we’d do it again this year.

This could be the start of our very own Christmas tree tradition or something, putting up photos on the tree like a timeline, representing milestones and beautiful memories of the year that was. I’m all for traditions these days, especially now that I’m starting new ones with Bud.

I’m excited to post more photos, for some reason. I think Christmas looks really pretty in photographs because of the Christmas lights. (:

Too early for Christmas?

Rhiza11 Comments

I had this on my list of things to do before the trip. I didn’t plan on doing it this morning though, until I found myself unable to go on with work stuff because my brain’s too drained out after an all-nighter, and I thought I needed to do something that didn’t require too much brain power.

True enough, the twinkling lights, fake poinsettias, and instax photographs made a whole lot of difference to my mood. I took the old Christmas tree from out of its box, and put up the embellishments in less than an hour. Instant pick-me-upper! :)

Notice the difference from last year’s Christmas tree? :) Here’s something you can do with your instax this Christmas!

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The sight of the twinkling lights, and my loved ones, is sooo making me tear up! *sigh*