Happy Kings Day!

In the Dominican Republic, families give each other gifts on Kings day instead of Christmas. While Christmas is a day of celebration here, Kings day is the day gifts are exchanged, in rememberance of the gifts the kings brought to Jesus (although I'm sure there are some who give gifts on Christmas as well, since many have lived in the U.S., or have family there). This year we decided to celebrate Kings day, in a way. We didn't do anything big, but it's been nice to leave the Christmas decorations up, continue listening to Christmas music, and extend the Christmas season longer than we usually do. It's been a good reminder to me that Christmas is the celebration of a beginning, and a reason for continued celebration!
We also decided to give Jeremiah his main gift from us today. It seemed silly to take it to the U.S. and bring it back, especially since we hadn't made it yet. So in the U.S. we gave him a few clothes, but today we're giving him a matching/memory game we made. Daniel took some extra wood, cut it into small squares, and painted it with white oil-based paint. Then I used puffy paint we bought while we were in the States to paint numbers, pictures, and letters to make two sets of a matching/memory game. The idea is for him to learn to match the numbers with the number of pictures on the squares, and the capital letters with the lower-case letters. Later we can turn it into a memory game (using some at a time). We only have letters A-O right now. But that's still a lot of squares!
Here's a picture of the completed squares:

In other news, we're going to Pizza and Pepperoni tonight along with other staff to welcome the new staff arriving from Marion!