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Christmas and New Years in Guam

I know it has been a long time since I last posted anything on here.  There has been a lot going on, and not going on here in Guam.  Honestly, I have just been lazy for a few weeks with blog posts.  But I am trying to get myself back into the groove now.

So Christmas in Guam was unlike any other Christmas I have ever experienced in my life.  While I am used to light displays, yards covered in plastic and inflatable ornaments, and cold weather, we didn't get much of that here.  There were only a couple houses that actually put out Christmas decorations and the temperature here was the same as always, a steady mid-to-upper 80 degrees during the day.  Needless to say it was a little difficult getting into the Christmas spirit.  But Christmas did come and go like it always does!

This year Matthew and I decided to take it easy on gift giving because we are planning a trip to China in the new year.  We got ourselves one big gift (a Keurig machine) and then a few smaller gifts for each other.  I got Matthew a new machete and he got me some new sunglasses.  We also sent out a good amount of money to the Philippines for relief after the super typhoon.  That was our gift money that we would have spent on family so we sent the donation under our families names.

Christmas Eve we were invited over to a friend's house for a dinner.  That was a fun time to spend with others and not be alone.  Plus the food was great.  They had all the traditional foods like a turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing and of course desserts.  We ate and played Apples to Apples after dinner.

Christmas Day was a relaxed day for Matthew and I.  It is tradition for us to stay in our pj's all day and watch Christmas movies and open presents.  That is exactly what we did and it was great!  We watched a lot of movies, played our recently addictive game of scrabble and drank hot cocoa from our new Keurig machine.

The day after Christmas here was actually Christmas day back home so we got to call and Skype with most of our family and wish them a Merry Christmas on their Christmas day.  It was great to be able to talk to everyone even though we couldn't be together physically this Christmas.  Hopefully next Christmas we will be able to come home for a while.

Since Christmas and New Year's fall in the middle of the week this year Matthew has had a strange work schedule.  He has been working on Monday and Friday for the past two weeks and has the rest of the week off.  It has been awesome because we have been able to spend a lot of time together on he time off.  I am so happy that he is part of the K9 unit because otherwise he would be working a lot more with any other rate.  I lucked out there! :)

So today is New Years Day and last night we went out to our church to ring in the new year with our church family.  We got there around 10pm, after I took a nap!  We watched a Christian comedian on the big screen and played some more scrabble.  We prayed in the New Year together and then we were able to walk right out the back door of the church and onto the beach to watch the fireworks shows.  There were 3 different fireworks shows going on in Tumon that we were able to see very well from the beach.  It was pretty awesome to be able to watch so many fireworks shows at once!  After that we were all pretty tired and it was time to head home and go to bed.  Funny thing though, when we got to the main gate at the base they were doing mandatory sobriety checks on everyone entering the base!  Crazy!  But a good idea.  That was the first time I have seen a sobriety test done where you blow into a tube.  Matthew had to do it though cause he was the one that was driving.  Needless to say we got away cleared, we weren't drinking! :)

So that is about it for now.  We are going to go out today up to a restaurant on base around 2pm so that we can try and watch the ball drop in NYC at 3pm our time!

Thanks for reading and I will try to keep more posts coming!

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