Fall days

A quick look at the last week as we enjoyed the cool weather outside.I am most amused with Lu's recent penchant for doing anything her brother does. She knows no fear. This may be my undoing!! (Just so you know, on the pull-up bar, she is hanging all by herself. Rick is merely spotting for when she eventually lets go. I blame this on too much time spent in the airport lounge trying to entertain children with the empty rows of waiting chairs - crawling under them, pushing up between them, etc. The world is my oyster!)




 

Harvest Party!

I have been wanting a harvest festival birthday party for three years, and this was the first year we got organized enough to make it happen. I had a super birthday. Rick brought me mums - a tradition we had back in Michigan (filling the porch with mums each fall). Rick and Moo cooked me breakfast pancakes. And then we had a bunch of great friends over for a harvest party. We had11 kids including one 4 month old! He bowed out on the games in favor of napping in a nice quiet dark bedroom. The kids' rooms got sacked, and we sent home all the kids with major sugar-highs. Sadly, I was not the greatest photographer, so just try to imagine much of the mayhem in our home.

For the overly curious grandmotherly types....

Our decor: 

 

Our menu:

Caramel apple dip + apple slices from a friend

Turkey chili served over spaghetti w/toppings: green pepper, onion, corn, cheese

Cornbread

Pea salad (cold peas with mayo/sour cream dressing, onions, etc.)

Rick's jello - so re-named by some family friends who were overly impressed (stupefied) by his copious helpings of the jello they made for a dinner we attended at their house

Our order of activities:

Foam pumpkin decorating thanks to my summer stop at the Target dollar spot!

Eating donuts off a string

(a side activity was dunking the extra donuts in butter 

and coating with powdered or cinnamon sugar)

Bobbing for apples

Dinner

Dessert: Cupcake decorating (pumpkin flavor with cream cheese frosting!)

 & an eclair dessert brought by a friend

The day before: 

Moo tasting the donut batter to make sure it was safe for others

Lu trying on her fairy princess costume....only to later have Moo steal her wings and fly around the house like a super-hero fairy-king. She was unphased.

The day after: 

We all cleaned and collapsed.

Three days after: 

I'm wondering what to do with all that extra cream-cheese frosting. Eat it? Save it somehow? Invent some other kind of dessert that can use it? Eat it. 

Holidays

Recently we celebrated the founding of our host country. We got to attend the parade not from our house. It was a bit different than our independence day parade back home. It started with an hour of presentations, special music, and cultural dancing by some local school children. This was all on one street intersection. After it finished, there was over an hour of the local high schools marching (not in bands, just the students marching), a horde of bicyclists, a mass of motorcycles, military vehicles, vintage cars, and finally the public works trucks and ambulances with sirens blaring. The noisy ending part was just like the town parade back home.

 It was fairly warm, so I'm not sure how these kids did it with all those layers!

 Love these "bad guys"...interestingly, many wore jackets that said "freedom riders" in English but had a picture of the local flag.

 Lu's reaction to all those sirens.

Moo loving that there was a tow truck as the last "float"!! He even posed for a picture.

A new Sunday night tradition?

I heard recently about a few families that do popcorn for dinner on Sunday nights, because "Momma don't cook on Sundays" and other more spiritual reasons. I thought that sounded like an amazing idea except I think Lu is maybe still too young for popcorn. So, this new desire for tradition plus an attempt to get the kids to adjust to daylight savings time meant our first "Early bath and ice cream in pajamas in front of the Sunday night family movie" night. This week's feature? Nim's Island. Thanks Gorneys!! Moo loves it! (He also instructs us when to fast forward through the scary parts.) Lu just likes doing everything everybody else is doing. And she also likes turning the subtitles on and off and whatever else she can manage on our remote control.

Notable quotables

Cuddling in bed the other morning, Moo asked Mom and Dad, "When are you gonna have another baby?" Oye vay.

In the midst of the kids banging on our electronic keyboard tonight, Mom said, "Okay, Mom's turn to play a song." As she started to play, Moo said, "Why aren't you singin'? With your face?" Is that how they're doing it these days?

Start of October??

So, we just returned from a week of fun in the sun in October!! It has been so hot here, and I am beginning to wonder if Fall will be arriving at Thanksgiving again. We got to attend two really great conferences last week along the Mediterranean! The first conference was about educating your children in a foreign country - how to choose between the local schools, homeschooling, an international school, or a combination of the above. It was a lot of really good information for me to think about as we look at the future here for our kiddos. The lecturers were all very experienced and very encouraging. The kids got to go to 'camp' while I went to the seminars. They had a great time doing crafts, reading stories, playing games, learning songs, and just hanging out with other English-speaking kids.

At the end of the week, Rick joined us for a retreat away that some friends back home blessed us with. It also included kids' camp, a marriage seminar, and R&R. The best part was the beautiful location! When the kids were hungry, there was always somewhere that had food. When they wanted to play, there were water slides, indoor and outdoor pools, the beach (full of sand toys!), an indoor and outdoor playground, and more. When they were ready to konk out, we could put Lu in a pack-n-play in the bathroom and Moo in his bed, and "the adults" could chill on the balcony. It was such a good time for us to have fun as a family and really rest away from all the stresses of living cross-culturally. Thank you to our friends!

 

Kid-sized water slides! 

 Lu loves all types of slides - dry or wet.

 Moo was psyched to go down and not "go under". He did the slides again and again until he was purple, wrinkly, and shivery-quivery. Then we wrapped him in a towel and laid him in the sun to dry.

.

 The indoor Chuckee-Cheese style playground.

 Woah - check out this kids' restaurant...opening before the adult restaurant so the kids  could eat at little tables with kid-friendly food, cartoons playing, and a slide in the corner. Fun! Lu couldn't really handle eating in such an exciting environment, but Moo loved it and didn't want to leave. Lu was much more successful strapped into a high chair in the dining hall.

 Sweet girl.

Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,
    your faithfulness to the skies.

Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
    your justice like the great deep.
    You, Lord, preserve both people and animals.
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God!    People take refuge in the shadow of your wings. ^{- Psalm 36:5-7}

 Completely tuckered out...on the last day...falling asleep on the floor!

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul. ^{- Psalm 23:1-3}

^{Certainly this was a week for being refreshed. What a blessing.}

Back in the Saddle Again

We're all finally back at home in our own beds after two months of travel and guests. There's no place like home, truly. Even when it is far from many of our loved ones, it is so nice to be back in our own space with our regular routines.

Moo started back to pre-school this week and we're all excited that he has switched to afternoons. This means he gets to participate in the birthday parties and class field trips that always take place after lunch. Already on day two he got to eat cake and wear a party hat. And, surprisingly, he has jumped right into speaking the local language! His brain must have really benefited from a two month hiatus amongst English-speakers. He hugged his teachers and bus driver the first day back. He likes his routine too.

Lu loves having her own room again, although she is not so sure about napping all by herself. She napped in her stroller with kids running all around when we were at conferences last week. She loves having such a plethora of "new toys" to choose from again...which are really just her old toys that she hasn't seen for months. Both kids are driving trains all day long, each on their own track of course. Lu loves to say "Peece!" meaning "please"...for trains, food, drink, books, everything.

I went to the non-profit this week and took mental notes on how their cooking class runs. I'll be officially in charge in two weeks! If you have any great ideas or recipes for 'american meals' that I can teach the ladies here, I welcome the suggestions! 

Rick is back at his language learning and enjoying his routine of heading to work each morning. 

That's us in a nutshell....now, on to the photo montage!