Christmas Eve with Erika and her Family

For those of you who know Erika (from the church) she is so sweet and thoughtful. Well her and her family invited us to come over and celebrate Christmas with them. The main celebration for most Mexicans is Christmas eve. We told Erika we would love to come and we asked her what time should we come over. She answered....9:00pm!!! That was when they were starting the party!! Here are some pictures from our Christmas Eve celebration with Erika and her family.
This is her nephew Sebastian
The kids had a piñata of course!! The youngest goes first.... Sebastian. The guy helping Sebastian is Erika's brother Hector and the man in black is Erika's brother Ivan....he is the dad of Sebastian.
This is Santiago. Another nephew of Erika. This is Yuir's son.
These are Erika's parents....Rogelio and Patricia with their grandkids. Santiago is crying because the "Cars" piñata is now broken!!!
We had a delicious meal after the piñata and then sat around and talked and then we had a dance competition for the kids. I think Sebastian won hands down. It was so cute and very fun!

Here is the whole family minus the brother Hector and Santiago....he fell asleep.
Rogelio, Patricia, Erika, Sebastian, Marta(Sebastian's mom) Ivan and Yuri.
This is such a precious family and we are so thankful we were able to celebrate with them. We really feel the Lord working in this family and we hope you will continue to pray for this family and for the Lord to work in mighty ways!

Another side note: We didn't get home that evening until 2:00am!!! The Mexican way of life.

I am officially a Malesky

So the Malesky family has a tradition at Christmas to make "Yeast Twists" It has always been such a sacred thing to me and I have always been afraid to make them for myself. Preston fits right in the family and he loves to eat them so he begged me again this year to make them. So I did the dreaded.....I called my mom and asked for the recipe again!!! I thought for sure there is no way I am going to be able to do these but I will try for Preston. My mom has taught me a few times but I wasn't ready to jump from the tree and fly.
The morning of Christmas came and the dough had set in the fridge all night. I started getting knots in my stomach as I thought of the challenge before me. Preston got out the camera....no pressure! But all this drama lead to success. I am officially a Malesky. Honestly I think it is just in our blood!! So here are the pictures from that life event. I know it will make both my Mom and Dad proud!!! Even though I didn't get to meet my Grandma I thought about her the whole time I was making them and I know she would be proud too!





Here is the final product.....a happy husband enjoying yeast twists~


Side note: my Aunt Andrea was making them for the first time this year as well. I hope they turned out Andrea...I am sure they were great!

Christmas Food

Well I will get posting about our Christmas! We have lots of pictures for everyone to see so I am going to break the blogs up in categories. So I thought I would start with the thing we poured the most time into. I think both Preston and I spent the majority of the holidays in the kitchen. We had fun though and we loved eating all the food!!! Here are some pictures!
Our Christmas meal....Chicken Cordon Blue , baked potatoes, green bean bundles, rolls and deviled eggs.
Christmas cookies!! I don't have any Christmas cookie cutters so I used a heart!
Preston making the cheese ball.....yum!
Almond cookies
Preston also made his first pie. Preston made a pecan pie and I made a pumpkin pie. Preston did a great job!!!

Look how cute the chef is!!! You did such a great job PG. Thanks for all your help in the kitchen. I had fun making everything with you!

So that was our Christmas food!!! More to come!

Merry
Christmas
We love you all!!!!
Love
Preston and Courtney

Decorating the house!

Last year we didn't even decorate for Christmas because being in the tropical climate at times can be hard to motivate yourself that it is actually winter and Christmas is just around the corner. This year Preston and I decided we really needed to get into Christmas and decorate the house and get a tree.

Tree selection
Both sides please don't take offense of what I am about to say. Preston and I have really been struggling with what kind of tree we wanted to buy. I have always grown up with a real tree. Fake trees to me are a little boring. I love the smell of a fresh pine tree, and I couldn't imagine having a tree sitting in my living room but it not being alive! But on the other hand I have fallen more in more in love with our environment. I try to think of ways to protect mother nature and be a good steward of God's green earth. So recently I have been convicted of my love for real trees at Christmas. The poor tree gets chopped down to only be decorated for a few weeks and then thrown in the trash! So the tree hugger in me didn't want to get a real tree.
So our conclusion...... we bought a real tree but he is going to last for our whole life!! He is a baby tree that we will keep all year round planted in a pot and therefore we have the best of both worlds: a real tree and we planted a tree instead of cutting down a tree!!!
So our tree's name is Arbol which means tree. He is really little right now but really cute!! Hopefully he will continue to grow bigger each year after I feed him lots of Miracle grow!!

First you have to get everything out of totes! Penguins everywhere!!!
We set up first the reason we celebrate: The Manger
Christmas at the Goings!!
Introducing Arbol! Putting on the lights

Preston hanging the first ornament
Me hanging an ornament
Instead of a star we put a cross
Our little Arbol
Entertainment center again
Mom you don't have to worry about us not having anything to open on Christmas!!
Thanks in advance family and friends for all the gifts! We are so blessed.
My favorite part...turning off the lights and enjoying our tree.

Remember like I said above. I was not trying to bash your decision making in what kind of tree you have for Christmas. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes. I am not criticizing, only sharing from my heart and my thought process.
Yeah for decorating for Christmas! I love sitting in front of our little tree and the billion penguins!
Merry Christmas from the Goings!!

3 year old project

So when Preston and I got married we didn't have stockings. The stockings we did have were left at our parent's houses. So I went to Joanne fabric and promised Preston I would make us some stockings of our very own. This year we started decorating for Christmas and set out our stocking holders on the entertainment center soon to realized after 3 years I had still not made any stockings for those holders!!

So I got out my awesome sewing machine and created us some stockings. I finished one and then called it a day. We laughed and said "we hope the second one doesn't take 3 years as well!" But I had the enthusiasm to get up the next day and make the other one.

Here they are:
Here is each stocking on it's holder


Here is our entertainment center. This will be a start to seeing our Christmas decor. We will reveal our little "Arbol" (tree) . That is what we decided to name him!!! More to come!

Merry Christmas everyone.

P.S I normally don't take that long on a project...rare circumstance!!!

New Camera

We got an early Christmas gift. I promise we were told we could open it early!!
We got a wonderful surprise and blessing of an awesome digital camera. For those of you who know us well know our camera was slowly dying. It was not taking the greatest pictures and we think it was about to retire. But to our surprise the Hess/Tate Sunday school class bought us a new camera for Christmas.

We would like to send out a special thanks to this class and for the humongous blessing that was to us. We are already taking pictures with it and we love it. Thank you for giving to us. You will never know how much it means to us. I was telling Nancy, it is neat how the Lord always provides for our every needs. Even something as simple as a new camera to keep our family and church family updated. Thank you for all your love and support.

Yeah! For better pictures on the blog!!! Thank you Hess/Tate Sunday School Class!!!!