Wedding Festivities

If we have learned nothing else since arriving to our Island home, it is to expect everything to take longer than you think it will. This held true this weekend when we went to our friends younger brother's wedding. Usually at weddings here, you show up, shake everyone's hand as you walk through a receiving line, eat a plate of food and then go home. It is a quick "eat and run" type gathering. This past Sunday, we arrived to our friends house at 8:30am and realized that we might be in for a longer day. Normally guests only come to the reception and only a special chosen few go to the actual wedding, which is very formal. I guess we are special, because we arrived at the grooms house to have a formal meal with both sets of families. Then we traveled with 6 tiny ladies all squished in our car to the brides house, where we separated men and women and had a formal religious ceremony. After that, we all went outside and had another huge meal. My only question is how everyone here is so tiny but can eat so much. Our second full meal of the day (huge plate of rice, vegetables and spicy goat and chicken) was all before 11am. We arrived home hot, exhausted and not wanting to eat again for days, but thrilled to have a glimpse into the culture of our host country. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera, so we only have a picture of us after we got home.

Autumn Events

Living on a tropical island does not lend itself well to autumn celebrations, so we are having to be a little creative to teach the kids about fall, harvest and thanksgiving.
It all began when Elijah saw a picture of a jack-o-lantern on one of his cartoons. Since we are far away from all things American, we felt at liberty to embellish a bit regarding normal jack-o-lantern traditions. Now Elijah and Anna think that carving a pumpkin is the first step in roasting a pumpkin for pumpkin pie. This served the double purpose of satisfying both Elijah's craving for a carved pumpkin, and our craving for pumpkin pie!



We have decided to celebrate Thanksgiving all month really since we didn't realize just how much pumpkin comes from a medium sized jack-o-lantern.


It was enough, for 2 pies, a cake, a batch of pancakes and a large serving of what I told the kids was pumpkin sauce. (Kind of like applesauce, but with pumpkin.)



We also spent our family fun day, (Our day of rest for the entire family with nothing but fun and hanging out with each other,) decorating the house. Thanks to my mom and some really nice guests who brought us some decorations from the States. It really helped to make our house feel more like home. Elijah is now even saying that he wants to be a "pillow-gram" when he grows up. Took us about an hour to figure out that he was trying to say pilgrim.





















We tried to turn everything into quality time, so the kids even got to help wash the dishes. So far, they still think this is a treat since they get to get covered in soap bubbles and drenched to the skin!














We ended the day with reading David and Goliath (Elijah's favorite) only to discover that Elijah had really taken the story a little bit differently than we had hoped. He wanted to be Goliath. When we went to check on him after he was asleep, we discovered that he had fallen asleep with his "sword and shield" aka a plastic playdough knife and Anna's toy teapot.

New Baby

We have a new baby in the house that has caused quite an uproar, or should I say an "up-mew"...a new fuzzy baby kitten that is. Elijah has wanted one ever since his Grandma and Papa's cat had kittens in the States. He now has someone to tell all his stories too.

Stuffed to the Gills

Today marks the last day of the month long fasting holiday, or Ramadan, that is celebrated in our new country. Today is actually called Eid ul-Fitri and I'm not sure how that is translated since it is arabic, but I am guessing that it means "Eat yourself comatose." Either way, that is exactly what everyone here does. Everyone makes large quantities of sweets, cookies, cakes and fruit punch, which is an appetizer for the traditional meal of steamed rice cakes that are topped with spicy curried vegetables, boiled egg and topped off with a side of stewed beef in spicy coconut broth. Tradition dictates that you drop by each of your friends homes and eat some of their food. What I didn't realize was that you eat the full spread at each house! Thankfully, we only had two homes to visit today, but lets just say I have never been so glad in my life to come home and put on pants with an elastic waist!

washing away our cares

Water has always been an escape for us as a family. No matter what else is going on, or how crazy the children are, water in any form (oceans, rivers, ponds or even wading pools) seems to have a calming effect. It's a good thing for us that we live on an island. With some guest from the States, we had a good excuse to take a trip to a water fall and to the beach. The waterfall wasn't really a place to go swimming, but we couldn't resist dipping our feet in at least. At the ocean however, we stayed as long as the setting sun would allow us.

Mango Cobbler

Stress is a funny thing...sometimes it makes us lose our appetites all together, and sometimes it makes is eat more than ever. We seem to be going through the latter after our recent earthquakes. Tonight it was mango cobbler. Not as good as peach, but they are the closest equivalent. Two days ago we made a batch of sugar cookies and even splurged and added some of our M&M's that were brought to us by Brad's mom and dad during their recent visit. The cookies are long gone and we made a pretty good dent in the cobbler tonight. I thought about feeling guilty, but when you spend your day timing your husband running up the stairs of your house to see how long it would take to get ourselves and both kids out of the house when the next quake hits, I decided to cut myself some slack and have another bite of cobbler instead.

Anna's 2nd Birthday

Anna celebrated her 2nd birthday on August 23rd. Due to the fact that she is a poor neglected 2nd born child and that she has a forgetful mother, the pictures are just now making the blog. She is becoming quite the little knock-out lately with a sassy little personality to go along with her good looks. She is starting to talk a lot in sentences, but you have to speak "Anna" in order to understand. She hums half of the word in the sentence. "I hmmmmm Oooo Mama!" and "Hmmmm mulk" means I love you Mama and Want milk, in Anna-language. Too cute!