Christmas 2021. I have a thing for Christmas. As a (Filipino) pastor's kid, I grew up in an environment where Christmas is celebrated in a huge way. Christmas hymns blasted from our car stereo as soon as the "ber" months began; my Mom would wrap a bazillion presents for every ...
Behind the Scenes of a Christmas Photograph
Christmas 2020. Behind the one family photo that makes the proverbial Christmas postcard are a dozen outtakes and stories. This was us last year, Christmas 2020, at the height of the pandemic. We had been under lockdown for almost a year—and in the Philippines no less, the ...
How I Want to Remember this Christmas
Christmas 2019. "Best Christmas ever!", says my daughter mid-jump, eyes twinkling bright like the northern star. I may have said something like "woohoo!" but deep inside I tried to recall past Christmasses and, taking my daughter's declaration too seriously, secretly ...
The Christmas Animated Movie You Won’t Mind Watching All Year-Round
Heads up: It's on Netflix. It's always been on Netflix, somewhere, underneath piles of shows trying to capture your attention this Christmas season. I highly recommend you look up The Star. The Star Animated Film, 2017 In case you don't know, "The Star" is an ...
Never too late for “Merry Christmas!”
I'm pretty sure your Christmas trees are still up and we're all still enjoying what's left of the Christmas season (and the leftover sugar cookies). So I'll just go ahead and finish this Christmas greeting I started drafting the day before Christmas, just before everything went ...
51/52: Christmas Gifts
Photographs of our twin daughters, once a week, every week, this 2014. 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 ...
December Dawn
I woke up this morning to the sound of the rain. Stuck in a tangle of tiny arms and legs, I breathed in the familiar silence that comes with the beginning of each day—the calm before the storm, moms would say. It was the morning before Christmas and I wanted to bottle it all up: ...
Merry Christmas from Our Little Family to Yours
How crazy is it to have little ones running/crawling and making a ruckus around the house on Christmas day? I can't even begin to describe the joy! It's the kind of joy that makes you soar above the holiday stress, the busy-ness, and the chaos that often come with this most ...
Meanwhile I’m Putting Up More Twinkly Lights
I like quoting from movies, even if no one gets it. And sometimes I like explaining them too, when no one gets it. :p In You've Got Mail, when Kathleen Kelly's book shop was starting to lose sales after Fox Books opened within the block, she confidently shrugged off the ...
