Perfect Presents

I've received a few early Christmas presents from my family. You never know how long the mail will take to get here, so they sent them in late November. My parents sent me a whole box of goodies, but here are a couple of my favorite items.

My mom and dad recently got back from a trip to the Holy Land, and they got me this nativity scene made of olive wood from Bethlehem. Pretty cool! It's especially nice to have because I couldn't bring the special nativity set my grandma made me over to Australia. They also got me a Jerusalem cross necklace and some pretty cashmere scarves. Hooray for souvenirs!

Among some of the other fun items, they sent, my mom got me two huge packages of real American BACON! I have no idea how this got through customs, but you put this stuff in the microwave or in a pan, and it turns out crispy and perfect. I know I've mentioned before how bacon here is not really bacon...it's just undercooked pieces of ham. I've been missing the real stuff so badly, and now I have 144 slices of it. We'll see how long that lasts me!





I got a really unique gift from Justin and Cindy (my brother and sister-in-law). They are the ones watching Molly while we're in Australia. They went through my Shutterfly albums and chose over 400 different pictures of Molly to send to this company that makes collage pictures. We hung the poster on our bedroom wall. From a distance, you can see just a regular picture of our dog in front of their fence in Michigan.

When you get up close, you can see that the whole picture is made up of individual pictures of Molly! There are some repeats, because the collage is made of about 1200 pictures, but it's so fun to sit and stare at this poster and smile at all of the fun memories of our dog. There are pictures of everything...puppy years, swimming, snow, at home, trips, camping, wrestling with Zack, playing with toys, etc. It's so fun! We can't wait to get back to the States to see her.

I sent off my gifts to them just a few days ago, so hopefully they like their Christmas presents as much as I like mine!