Our 3rd Christmas in the Desert

This is yet another long, slightly overdue post... Things have been busy in our household and we have much to share with you... As to be expected, I had another "photo shoot" with the kids... Its tricky taking the pictures and entertaining them, bribing them to smile at the same time!

Love this one of Morgan!!!

Micah is seriously starting to favor Randall... good thing, there are some handsome genes in the family! :)

Santa Clause is kindof a foreign concept on this side of the world... Our kids are not sure what to think of the idea of Santa Clause and the whole chimney thing, stuffing the stockings, naughty or nice, etc... And by the looks of this next picture, you can see why the confusion sets in so deep in our kids... This is a Santa Clause Mannequin at a local grocery store...

What's Christmas without all the fun, holiday sweets? White Chocolate Covered Pretzels...

Gingerbread Men (1st attempt to make these & they were yummy!!!)

And this has become a new tradition: decorating Sugar Christmas Cookies with friends!

I tried to get crafty with the kids this year.. these are Christmas trees with the kid's handprints (in paint) as the tree and their fingerprints (in paint) as the ornaments...

These are homemade ornaments we made with our friends.. involved all the baking goods, cooking in the oven, etc... but then they hardened and the kids painted them and hung them on the tree...

We found green nail polish at a store so I painted Morgan and her friend's fingers red and green!

The best part of Christmas: Spending time with Loved Ones!!!

We were blessed to have our friends fly over and visit us for Christmas! Here are the kids greeting Lucy at the airport!

My sweet friend Alison

Randall and Brad... entertaining the kids at the mall, on a free train ride, while Alison and I hit the shops!

Christmas Morning...Morgan was on cloud 9 because "Santa" brought her a Ken Doll

(her 1st one ever!!!)

Randall and his new pull-up bar!

As you can see, Micah was very busy with his trains!!!

We were then blessed to host a Christmas gathering for 37 people at our house...

20 Adults & 17 kids. One of the Moms put together a Christmas Play for the kids..re-enacting the Nativity Scene... Morgan was an Angel (yes in a pink dress) and Micah was suppose to be a Shepherd but decided playing with his new trains was more important...

This was our 3rd Christmas in the Desert and we continue to be so blessed, surrounded by loved ones. We hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well and look forward to celebrating with you next year in the States! Merry Christmas!!

We received a card in the mail and inside of it was this awesome message we wanted to share with you...

What does it all mean? The symbols in the 12 Days of Christmas Song:

The Partridge in a Pear Tree (Jesus Christ)

2 Turtle Doves (The Old and New Testaments)

3 French Hens (Faith, Hope and Love)

4 Calling Birds (The 4 Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John)

5 Golden Rings (The 1st 5 Books in the Old Testament)

6 Geese-A-Laying (6 Days of Creation)

7 Swans-A-Swimming (The 7-Fold Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy)

8 Maids-A-Milking (The 8 Beatitudes)

9 Ladies Dancing (The 9 Fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and SelfControl)

10 Lords-A-Leaping (The 10 Commandments)

11 Pipers Piping: (The 11 Faithful Disciples)

12 Drummers Drumming (The 12 Points of Belief in the Apostles' Creed)

Somebody Turned 30!!!

We celebrated Randall's 30th Birthday yesterday 12/12/2011. It was kindof an all weekend long celebration as we started on Friday the 9th when we were at our House Group. Randall's favorite cake is "Better Then Almost Anything Cake" (although there are many different titles to this cake!!!)... so on our last road trip, we were able to find toffee candy a.k.a. heath bar wannabe candy at IKEA... and the rest of the ingredients I was able to find here on the island.

The actual day of the 9th was Abby's 7th Birthday, so we did a dual celebration! We like to think that each of the candles represents the #10 to equal 30!!!

But the night before Randall's actual birthday, the kids and I got to work in the kitchen while Daddy was at work...

One of Randall's favorite breakfast foods is blueberry muffins... but I totally forgot to look for mix at the store, so I got creative. I took a bag of frozen berries from the freezer and made Berry and Oat Muffins as a substitute... pretty healthy (for muffins); had flaxseed, wheat flour and berries in the mix. Micah's job was to help pour the dry ingredients as well as line the muffin pan with liners! He and Morgan were my Big helpers!!!

Here's the final product!! They were yummy!!!

Next the kids got busy making B-Day cards for Randall... Morgan took her job very seriously!

Birthday Breakfast is served!!! I ended up going out later the night before and bought blueberry muffin mix with the fear that the Birthday Boy might not like the substitute muffins...

Better to play it safe!!! But He liked both kinds!! (Thankfully I married a man who is not picky!!)

And to top off Randall's birthday, our friends took care of the kids while we went out to one of Randall's favorite restaurants: Chili's

We continued our date night back in our own living room where we had rented State of Play(which by the way we recommend to all those who have not see it; great movie!).

Happy 30th Birthday Randall!!! We Love You!

Road Trip!

Recently we went on a road trip; decided that we would take the family on one of Randall's business trips... (hey, we like to explore as well!) Funny thing, living on an island, we have to pass through one of the most conservative countries in order to travel to any other country by car. Of course the one day we decide to travel... its raining!

And to give you a "hint" of which conservative country we had to travel through; take a guess by my outer appearance:

Once we got through our 1st border of country #1, we thought we would reward the kids with a yummy, although not so healthy of a breakfast! At this point, we had already been traveling 1.5 hrs as the rain seemed to slow everyone down, possibly helped the border workers to feel "unmotivated" to work quickly at the customs booth, seeing as it was a long, waiting process for us... And we knew we had at least 3+ hrs left to travel before we reached our destination.

Happy Kids = Happy Parents, esp cooped up in a car!

At last we made it! And the wait was well worth it!!! Isn't this view amazing? So peaceful.. although very chilly, we enjoyed every second of this view!

It did help that there was a play area on the cornish for the kids; great set-up: Kids played with Daddy while Mommy enjoyed the view, chilly weather and...

A Nice, Warm, Yummy Starbucks!!!

Another incredible view of the outline of the city!

Hence the towers, I'm sure you can guess where we visited!

Another cool tower in the middle of the city!

Of course, we added a morning of fun for the family! Decided a long time ago, the phrase "All Work, No Play" was not a phrase we were going to live by... And So we Played...

If you could only see how happy our little boy was when he saw the train at the zoo! Micah loves trains... he somehow manages to create anything into a train, makes the noises and all... And to be able to ride on a "train"... made his day!

Brave Daddy! He thought it would be funny to entertain the kids by "feeding" a moose or a deer... you decide.. the interesting thing about this zoo is that we were able to get really close to the animals... maybe a little too close!

Isn't this bear sweet? At least that is what our kids kept saying; "Aww, look at that bear, he's so sweet!" (looks like the coca-cola bear in my opinion!)

Black Ducks? Really? This was a first for us!

During our 4 days, we were able to do much research on the living conditions, school costs for the kids, language options, possible job opportunities in the future, etc... Who knows, maybe we'll move countries in the near future??? But we agreed that the most amusing thing we continued to see in all public places was this:

Notice, its a trashcan with an ash tray on top, with freshly used cigarettes in it, reading "Thank you for not Smoking!"

So Much to be Thankful For

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year, spent with our family away from family. It was our 3rd Thanksgiving in the Middle East and we have so much to be thankful for. On the actual Day of Thanksgiving Thursday, Nov 24, we had homemade cinnamon rolls and coffee with our friends, while the Macy's Day Parade from 2010 played in the background. The kids enjoyed making crafts and playing together. Then On Friday November 25, we celebrated with a Traditional Thanksgiving Meal with our family on this side of the world.

Enjoy some of the neat crafts that gave an extra special feel to our Thanksgiving this year:

We made Thankful Turkeys as individual families

The kids made Pilgrims/Indians out of toilet paper rolls and construction paper.. correction, the Moms made the craft while the kids chose the paper color! haha! It was funny after about the 1st 5 mins when we lost the kid's attention span to toys and found ourselves (us Moms) doing the craft!!!

Micah made this turkey with finger paint and his fingerprints

Then we made edible turkeys using homemade popcorn balls as the body and a variety of yummy treats for the feathers, face and feet... You don't see Micah's turkey in this picture because he ate each feather as we strung the food on the tooth picks and then before I could help him start over, he had already taken a huge chunk out of the popcorn ball!

Hey, someone should really feed this kid!!!

Randall's favorite part of Thanksgiving is Pecan Pie. And the "problem" is that Liz doesn't like pies and so she never makes them and always counts on someone else to make "THE PECAN PIE" for the Big Thanksgiving Day for Randall... Well this year, I (Liz) decided to try and make THE Pecan Pie ...First of all, I signed myself to bring pecan pie to the meal with 20 other people (so I was committed!!!), then I researched pie crust recipes... found one, tried it out, made a spinach quiche to taste it.. tasted good! So I made the official pie crust for The Pecan Pie and then found a recipe for Pecan Pie... However, for all you Bakers out there reading this, I found a recipe that did not include Karo Syrup (corn syrup)... thought I'd try it out.. why not? I don't like pies, never made one before, so nothing to compare it to... RIGHT?

WRONG! When I took the pie out of the oven, the look on my surprised Husband's face was not very encouraging for me, who was trying to meet her husband's Thanksgiving "needs"...

A little scared, anxious and somewhat stressed out... awaiting the moment of truth... meal had settled enough.. time for dessert... I watched as Randall dished his pecan pie (The one thing he had been waiting for since last year's Thanksgiving) onto his plate...He took a bite and...

Smirked over at me!!! He said "This is pretty good"

HALLELUJAH! Music to my ears!!!

Then in the car on the way home, I asked him what he really thought and he said (and I quote) "I thought it was really good.. I might even like it better then the traditional pecan pie with Karo syrup"...As the title of this blog reads... so much to be thankful for!

Just a few shots of our family, celebrating Thanksgiving together

We hope you too had a blessed day, remembering all we have to be thankful for!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!