Friday, November 27, 2009

Being Truly Thankful and Changing the Countdown...

We have so much to be thankful for this year, as always! Here is our spread - between us and our wonderful friends the Wilsons and Buis, we filled the kitchen for the meal and the entire table for dessert.....

We had turkey, dressing (thanks, Angie!), gravy, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, potato casserole, salad, cranberry sauce and homemade rolls.

For dessert, we pulled out sugar cookies (which the kids decorated themselves, and in fall shapes thanks to Aunt Brookie), peach cobbler, pumpkin cupcakes (in fall liners, with another big shout to Aunt Brookie), fudge mint brownies, oatmeal chocolate no bake cookies and pumpkin pie.

Now to those of you in America, this may just sound like the normal holiday meal, but to us it was a FEAST. We planned for months to have all of these things available, since cranberry sauce, stuffing, pumpkin, andes mints, brownie mix, french fried onions, and occassionally even butter and cheese are difficult to come by and sometimes even impossible to find. We splurged on spray whipped cream for the pie and coffee this year, too, since we could find it! Even when you can find these things they are dreadfully expensive - Case in point: The turkey that fed our 6 adults and 6 kids cost $75 US when according to my sister in law it would have been 49 cents per pound in America!

We also drowned ourselves in sweet tea and coffee, thanks to some of you guys who have sent us decaf tea bags and coffee from America, as well as flavored creamers (yes, I'm talkin' to you, Angie). Yum Yum :)

We had some beautiful paper products, due to the generosity of Albert's sister, and we had my wonderful spiced pumpkin Yankee Candle burning bright, sent with love by my parents - seriously, the whole apartment just looked and smelled like home!





Here are my pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing (another shout out to y'all who sent me cake mix and frosting!) - I decorated some of them like turkeys! Aren't they precious? I got the idea from Family Fun magazine online. The only negative was that I had to save some of the precious candy corn that my parents sent us, which was a feat of will power, indeed.





We also played a few games of Settlers of Catan between wanting to sleep and eat again. It was an even race: Jasper won once, Aaron won once, Brooke won once, and Albert, Brooks and Kendall played close races each time. I never played because my brain was half comatose from food overload, but I am not complaining whatsoever. It was a day full of not thinking of anything but doing fun stuff with friends and all the things we were thankful for. It was incredibly awesome :)
We are also incredibly thankful for something else. You may have noticed that our countdown clock has changed. Your eyes are not decieving you. We have cut our countdown in HALF, and for that we are very thankful! We will arrive in SC on the evening of April 6th, 2010, and we cannot wait to see you. The earliest date that we would leave to return to Asia would be the end of January, 2011, but much regarding that is yet to be determined. What is already determined is that we will be living in Columbia, SC, for our time in America during 2010 and we are beyond excited - More details to come :)



Who Will Be The Sole Survivor???

Brooks was finally able to have his 14th birthday party, and what a fun party it was! His cake was chocolate fudge with crumbled cookies, sour coke flavored strings for weeds and green (edible) gummy army men....

The first challenge was seeing which team could get more marbles out of freezing cold water with their feet (each person had 2 minutes). It was amazing how these guys could use their feet like hands! Notice that Frank is watching from under the table and must now have no doubt that he really does live with crazy people.






Next the fellas are attempting to whistle with two moon pies in their mouths. Kendall is on stand by with a trash can - I was determined to not clean up puke for any reason...
Another challenge was creating a slingshot out of wooden chopsticks, rubber bands and their own smarts and trying to shoot down as many paper cups as possible with a ping pong ball. They really had some great ideas for slingshot design and paper cup formations.
The other challenges had to do with strange foods: wasabi flavored potato chips, chicken stomachs, sardines packed with black beans, and smashed chinese hot dogs in a dog food can. No pictures were taken of these activities in order to protect the guilty.
Pizza and fun were had by all, and Jesse was the sole survivor and winner of a floral toilet seat cover (no one guaranteed that the prize was prestigious or anything.....).







Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Sending a Message to Two of our Favorite People!


We were out of town last week, which explains the lack of picture and update. Also, to answer some questions regarding why we have neglected to throw Brooks a party, it's because we told him he had been really bad this year, so, no party for him. WRONG! We had to postpone it for a few weeks until all his friends could make it and Albert gets back from his trip to Columbia, SC. Our pictures this week center around the fact that I am without a hubby for a little while, as he is visiting his dad. The granddaddy picture shows the children being their blessed, sweet selves. The daddy picture shows them how they look normally so that Albert will recognize them.
We miss you and can't wait until you come back! And we wish we could have visited you too, Granddaddy, and can't wait to see you again!