Season Greetings

Who says gifts can only be exchanged and unwrapped on December 24 (Germany) or 25 (USA, Philippines...)?

Seizing the opportunity to stuff a friend's bag traveling to Manila in December my sister Anja surprised us with early season greetings!

After contemplating for about 3 seconds whether or not to open our gifts already we decided plunge in!

Good thing we did! The mountain of freshly baked cookies might have gone bad had we waited another day or two, let alone until Dec 24/25! The early Glenn catches the ginger bread man! (Almost of all these cute little creatures found a crumbling end in Glenn's and my mouth though...)

The smell of home came quickly with original "Raeucherkerzchen", a cone shaped incense stick. The cones are placed inside a "Raeucherhaus" which releases the scented smoke through its chimney.

This is such a typical tradition in my part of Germany that during a home visit three years ago I unearthed my old "snowman" Raeuchermann and brought him to Manila. Since times immemorial this little guy puffed happily during the festive season. His nose broke off and got glued back on for I don't know how many times! (Of course, I also continued this tradition since he lost his wooden nose on the way to the Philippines.)

The greatest gifts, however, were two hand made calendars for 2011! My 4-year old niece Selina must have spent days and weeks carefully drawing a cool picture for each of the twelve months to come!
Anja is technically more advanced and compiled 12 great photos into a photo calendar.

Both are already decorating our house! Big hugs to Santa's little elves and human reindeer helping deliver all the gifts!