Mou Tham's first Christmas in PH

I've been waiting for this since we arrived here in the Philippines on April. I was away for 3 years, and this year I am glad I finally was able to celebrate Christmas with my family as well as with Garry and Keahi. Here's how the Mou Thams celebrated their simple yet very special first Christmas in the Philippines.

Started it out with the breath taking beauty of the Manila Temple at night with Christmas lights and decorations. It was such a wonderful visit. While waiting for the session to start I was staring at the name of the person I am doing the proxy for. The lady next to me suddenly grabbed my hand and with her teary eyes said, "That's one of the names I submitted. That's one of my ancestors. Thank you for doing this."

And then we attended our Ward Christmas Party which had a Filipino Kapistahan Theme. The primary kids decorated each family's picture with a frame, and they hang it on our Ward Christmas Tree. Here's ours.

Keahi and his friend during the ward Christmas Party.

And yes! I was able to get Garry to dress up in Filipino attire too.

The Sunday before Christmas my boys decided to go purple

And we arrived at Tarlac on the 24th. Here's my mom's Christmas tree. Of all those gifts I found 1 for me, 4 for Garry, and probably half of all of it for Keahi. haha. (Mom's been giving more gifts to Garry than to me since we got married, I don't understand)

Our little family Christmas eve celeb was simple. We had lots of games for the kids and some flashback moments like on these photo mom and grandma are going over the ancient photo albums of the family and showing them to Garry. It was fun until they started showing Garry my childhood pictures, not cool! :)

And of course, FOOD!

On the 25th we had a family reunion together with the whole family on my mom's mom's side.

We've been doing this every year for many years now. We dedicate the party to Lola Puti (my mom's grandma). I call her Lola Puti because she has white hair ever since I was a kid. She is 89 years old, she's the one wearing purple with, guess what? haha. white hair. This picture is of my family alone. There's four others of about the same size from my grandma's siblings.

Keahi enjoyed all his gifts. It was heaven seeing him that way. Every time they call out his name and say, "TO KEAHI." He would clap his hands and say "Wow!"