Dick Clark's Rockin' Christmas Eve!

As I've said a time or twenty, it's hard to get into the Christmas spirit in the land where there is no Christmas.  Thankfully, over the past few years it has gotten better.  

Our first year, the only place in the entire city that you could find anything remotely Christmasy was IKEA.  They had a tiny bit of junky stuff.  As it was the only thing you could find, we bought it!  The outdoor mall area attached to IKEA was the only place you could see any type of Christmas decorations.  In fact, we took a picture in front of the big tree because we were so excited to see it!

My babies have grown up!

 Slowly and surely the West has crept in, and now you can find Christmasy things in lots of shopping malls and more Western parts of town.  The big difference is that everything is for New Year's, not Christmas.  However, most Muslims do not know the difference between Christmas and New Year's.  Because the Western calendar is based on Jesus's birth (BC and AD) they have been taught that New Year's is the celebration of Christ's birth.  Think about that for a second.  The things that are broadcast in the media as New Year's celebrations- drunken revelry, car accidents, kissing at midnight, skimpy clothing- are thought to be the celebration of our Savior's birth!  

It's sad!  

We have this patient conversation with all of our friends and lots of other people during this time.  There is a lot of explaining to do when it comes to setting the record straight between Christmas and New Year's.

Our Christmas Flat

Today over at Kelly's Korner she's hosting "Show Us Your Life: Christmas Tour of Homes."  I thought it would be fun to link up and show what Christmas decorations look like for us.  We live in an apartment in a huge city in the Middle East.  We try to be as much like our friends and neighbors as possible- meaning we keep our circle of foreign friends very small and we try very hard to be highly contextual.  So, when it comes time to decorate for Christmas, something no one else here does, I like to be inconspicuous.  

I do most of my decorating in an area of the flat that no one sees but us.  One of my favorite things is this Christmas countdown banner that I bought a few years back.  It really helps the kids see when Christmas is coming.

We don't have a mantle, of course, so I just tie our stocking onto a rail with some pretty ribbon.

This is our Charlie Brown tree.  It's a bit of a piece of junk since it came from IKEA.  The funny thing is, it's an upgrade from our last one.  That one was tiny!  I tried to start a tradition of taking the kids pictures with that tree, but after two years they had grown so much that you couldn't even see a trace of the tree.  This tree didn't look so big in giant IKEA, but in our flat it touches the ceiling!  I sort of have to bend the top branches down and then just set the star in the branches!  Ha!

We only have a few random ornaments, and I just throw a white sheet around the bottom of the tree.  Most of my most special ones and our beautiful tree skirt are packed away in storage at my parents' house because I was afraid to bring them when we moved here.  I think next time we go to the States I'll bring them back.

We LOVE our Little People nativity.  It's the only nativity we have!  My kids have been playing with this since they were little.  With as much as we've moved, you can't be sentimental about too many things.  But this is one thing that I am sentimental about.  I hope my grandchildren get to play with this!

Since we have guests all the time, I just have a few little touches of Christmas throughout the more public areas of our flat.

The table in the living room.

One of my favorite things that we do is our advent candles.  We've done Ann Voscamp's Jesse Tree in the past, but this year we are doing an advent devotion from Focus on the Family.  It is really simple, just bits of scripture each night and then we talk about it a bit.

Our little kitchen table.

And, of course, I have to have a really nice candle.  I feel like candles set the mood for me.  And I am pretty certain that a season cannot begin until I have ushered it in with the appropriate candle burning.  This year I have a mandarin cranberry.  It's not my first pick for Christmas- I like Yankee Candle's Home for the Holidays or Thankful- but this is the only one I could find.  So it will do nicely!

I hope you have enjoyed a peek into our humble ex-pat Christmas!  We keep things pretty simple around here, but I believe that is one of the secrets to a joyful Christmas!

We pray that you and yours have a very Merry Christmas!!

"I have seen your salvation,

    which you have prepared for all people.

He is a light to reveal God to the nations,

    and he is the glory of your people."

Luke 2: 30-32

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Very early Wednesday morning I kept being woken up by the sound of snow pellets (is that a thing?  They were not quite ice, but not really snowflakes either- more like Dip 'n Dots.) hitting our windows.  We woke up to a little bit of snow.

Noah and Callie's bus helper usually rings my cell phone about 10 minutes before they are to be picked up so the kids don't have to stand outside (they do that for everyone, we're not special).  The call usually comes at 7:50.  So, even though the news said that our city's school had not been cancelled, when we hadn't received a call by 8:00 the kids were so excited that there was no school.

The bus helper called at 8:05.  Talk about taking the wind out of a kid's sails!  It was weeping and gnashing of teeth around here!

Throughout the day the weather was completely bipolar- blizzard on minute, then sunny the next.  By early afternoon the snow began to accumulate.  Noah and Callie were released early from school, and as evening approached the sun went away for good and the snow continued.

But, of course it stopped in the early evening.  Boo-hoo!  We wanted a snow day!

Here's my little snow bunny on the way to school yesterday.  She was making, "the world's biggest snowball!"

Bribery is the Best Policy

Noah likes his hair long.  In fact, he hasn't gotten a haircut since the day before school started!  It is disgusting and I hate it!  But, one of the things my momma taught me was to choose my battles, and that hair is a bit of a petty issue.  Lucky for us, she let my brother Alan have that long greasy mullet back in the late 80's.  So, now we have something to make fun of him for, and the pictures to prove it!

I have tired to follow in my mom's footsteps and be a bit hands off on the hair, choosing to focus on character issues and other things that matter.  But, I'd be lying if I told you that Noah's hair wasn't like nails on a chalkboard for me.

I told him the other day that all I wanted for Christmas was for him to get a haircut.  Without pause he responded, "it's going to be a sad Christmas for you, Mom."  HA!  Can you believe this kid?!

Anyhow, just like in the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau last night I seized my chance.  I had made Noah's favorite meal, pulled barbecue chicken.  As Noah was going back for his third big helping I said I don't think you should have any more.  When he started begging me the most wonderful thought popped into my mind.  I promise that this was not premeditated manipulation!!  "You can have one more helping if you promise me you'll get your haircut right after dinner," I bargained.

Praise the Lord, cue the Hallelujah chorus, he said YES!!  So, after dinner he and Justin headed out to find a men's hairdresser.  He can't go to the barber because they can only cut hair short, super short, or shaved.  We used to take Noah to a guy at the mall, but they raised their prices.  No twelve year old boy should pay (or expect his parents to pay) twice what the mom's haircut costs!  Anyhow, they found a place over near Justin's old office and the guy did a great job.

Isn't he cute?!  

I just couldn't stop looking at his face.  It's like I had forgotten what he looked like.  I had to admit that with the yucky long hair covering his eyes he constantly looked surly and aggravated.  This haircut helps me to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Noah tried to play it cool, but I could tell that he was really happy with it, too.  Christmas came early this year!

Epic Fail

Sometimes you win some and sometimes you lose some.  I have lost one.

The other night we had some friends over.  They have a new baby named Enis.  The visit went fine, our friends are perfectly lovely, and their baby is adorable!  However, the kids were unusually rowdy and kept laughing and acting really silly.  I thought that I wanted to drop them off the balcony!!

Anyhow, at 11:30, when Justin left with our friends to take them home, I wearily began the expedited bedtime process with the kids.  I started to get on to them about how bad their behavior was.  Finally, Noah told me the reason (well... at least a part of it).  I had been saying the baby's name,  Enis incorrectly.  I was in fact, calling their child the local word for anus all evening!

Can you say epic fail?!

Is Scatter-Brained a Politically Correct Word?

It is 9:46 in the morning.  Noah and Callie left at 7:55 for school. In the almost two hours since, Lucy has played:

Horses- She got out a million of those little plastic horses and set up a farm.  She used the laundry hamper to create a stable.  Then she brought out her Barbie horse.  So, of course Barbie needed to ride the horse.  That led to...

Barbies- Barbie and Ken got married again.  Barbie rode a horse in an evening gown.  They had a baby.  Lucy got tired of that and decided that every stuffed animal she owns needed to participate in...

Dance Class- Flex, point.  Flex, point.  Everybody did it and then class was over.  Lucy loaded them up into the laundry hamper horse stable and took them to her room.  Seeing her room in such bad shape led her to decide to have a...

Sale- Lucy brought out a carpet and laid all sorts of things on it to sell.  One of those things was a set of teacups, which led to...

TeaParty- I was starting to get a little weary by this point so I wouldn't let her use real tea or even water.  So, it got old quickly.  But, while she was making tea, she was singing her favorite song, What Does a Fox Say?  which led to...

Song Writing- Lucy thought that it would be fun to re-write the song as What Does a Horse Say?  After she wrote her new version of the song, it was time to make a...

Dance- Everyone knows that a song isn't a hit until it has a signature dance move.  She worked on that until I was about to combust.

I stopped her just as she was going for the paper to start an art project.  Good thing she still had homework to complete.  So it's on to...

Homework!

Sweet mercy!!  What a Monday!!  There isn't enough coffee in the world for this job!

Sunday Sneak Peek: The Juice

Makin' OJ!

No Tropicana or Florida's Best here.  So, as soon as oranges are in season, not too sour, and reasonably priced we start making our own orange juice.  It takes a bit of time, but not too much, and it can be a mess... especially with helpers!  But, having nice, nutritious orange juice in the winter is a blessing!

The Grossest Thing I've Ever Eaten

Thinking about aşure yesterday led me to be so thankful that the local food is delicious.  (I don't know why I have been talking about food on my blog so much lately!)  When we felt called to unreached people, I begged the Lord not to send me somewhere where I would have to eat gross things.  I'm just not good at it.  Way back when I was a young chick, Justin and I were on a short-term trip to Peru.  The night they served guinea pig (a local delicacy) I couldn't even come to the table.  I faked a headache!  I'm not a total wimp, but I have my limits!!

Praise the Lord, the food here is amazing!  We love it!  The grossest things that people eat here are tripe soup (which is stomach lining), liver, and intestines cooked on a spit and then chopped up with onions and peppers.  I don't really do organ meat, but lots of people worldwide do.  So, on the scale of gross foods, especially in Asia, our local cuisine is at the low end.  For Pete's sake, our friend in China has had to eat fried bees and warm thick curdled ram's milk.  Do rams even produce milk?!  I do not want to know where that stuff comes from.  On the nasty scale that is a 10++!!

Anyway, until the other day, I could easily say that I had never eaten anything here that was truly gag-inducing gross.  Then I went to visit my friend, Yıldız.  Her family had participated in the sacrifice slaughter and killed a young cow.  We were chatting about all manner of things.  Of course, you cannot enter a local home without experiencing profuse hospitality.  So, she got the tea going on the stove and, despite my protests of not being hungry, she was rooting through her fridge to find something to feed me.  "No, thank you," is not an option when visiting.  You must accept one's hospitality!

Anyhow, she comes out of the freezer with something that I, "have to try!  It is the most delicious thing you will ever taste.  The blessed meat from the sacrifice!"  Now, I don't know the origins of the sacrifice, but these days, for our neighbors and friends, it is not a sacrifice to atone for sin or anything like that.  It is more a social act of mercy to receive blessing.  They divide the spoils from the sacrifice into three portions.  The first 1/3 is given to the poor, the second 1/3 is given to neighbors and friends, and the final 1/3 is kept for the family.  Being a friend and neighbor to many folks who faithfully sacrifice an animal each year, I have received my share of sacrifice meat.  They plop it in a baggie and bring it on over, often times still warm because it is so fresh.  I wrote about it here, here, and here.

Anyhow, all that to say, I'm not bothered by the meat.  But, this was a new one for me.

Yıldız pulled out a plastic container of meat bits.  She started chomping away marveling at how delicious it was and encouraging me to not be shy.  As she got up to get the tea, I carefully selected the smallest piece that I could find and went for it.  I found out really quickly why the meat was soft enough to eat even though it had been in the freezer.  It was almost pure fat- cold, congealed, grainy, fat!  It was the kind of fat that coats the roof of your mouth and tastes like eating the fat that collects in that little cup at the side of the Foreman grill- only cold, and grainier.  Yum?  Not so much!  It was rough.  When she came back in with the tea she begged me to eat and so I took another tiny speck and made a big production of eating it.  In her generosity she wanted to share more, forcing me to eat up!  Lucky me!

After a few minutes Lucy and my friend's granddaughter came into the room and wanted to know what we were eating.  Of course, my sweet friend encouraged Lucy to partake of the blessed meat.  As Yıldız got up to refill our tea glasses I gave Lucy the look.  Of course the look means different things at different times.  And unfortunately for my kids, in this culture they have to practically be mind-readers, because the look can often mean the opposite of what I am saying.  In this case, I was saying, "of course you should try this, Lucy!" (You can't refuse a child something to eat, that's a sin!)  But, the look was saying RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!  FLEE THE MEAT!!  Good thing for Lucy, she's learned my nonverbal clues and she went skipping away.

So, there's the story of the grossest thing I have ever eaten.

Oh... they do eat a special kind of cheese that is green with mold.  It tastes exactly like you think mold would taste.  I've eaten it and am alive to tell about it, so there you go.

But, really, I promise, the food here is incredible!

Aşure Zamanı

Aşure is a local word that is derived from the Arabic word Ashura, meaning tenth.  It is a special pudding made during the tenth month of the Islamic calendar.  It is also called Noah's Pudding and loosely celebrates the story of Noah.  It typically contains at least ten ingredients, and none of them are animal byproducts.  It is a bit of a reminder of the types of things that Noah may have found or eaten after the flood.  People make it in large quantities to commemorate the ask's landing and pass it out to all of their friends and neighbors.

My Sweet neighbor brought five of these little bowls of Aşure over on the beautiful tray that my mom gave her.

The pudding is bursting full of good things- hazelnuts, chickpeas, walnuts, coconut, pomegranate, mandarin oranges, cinnamon, bulgar wheat, rice, and who know what else.

We get a lot of Aşure during this time.  I don't love it, but I don't hate it.  At the very least, it's a springboard for discussion about one of the prophets.

It's Time to Let the Cat out of the Bag

We believe that the Lord is calling us here.  The thought of it is both thrilling and terrifying!

Good thing the Lord will be right there with us!

"This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."

Joshua 1:9

A Girl and Her Horse!

Sorry for the fuzzy camera-phone picture, but I had to share a shot of Lucy on her new pony.  Her smile is as big as the cheshire cat's!

She had been riding Karamel, but this week she got Kardelen.  When Lucy asked about Karamel, her teacher said that he was gone.  Lucy thought he died!  So we had to clear that up!  It turns out that he was just sold.  I may have jokingly wondered out loud if Karamel was sold to Daddy for a Christmas surprise for Lucy.  This was a bad idea!  I have a feeling that, even though I tried to backpedal on this one, Lucy still holds hope that Karamel will be sitting under the Christmas tree this year!  Whoops!

Anyhow, riding lessons continue, and we have one happy little girl on our hands!  It's the birthday gift- soon to also be the Christmas gift- that keeps on giving!  Thank you so much Gamma and PawPaw!!  You have made little Lucy one happy girl!


**** I am updating this post with some new pictures.  I took my camera today and took real pictures.  I was trying not to disturb Lucy's lesson, so they are still aren't the best pictures in the world.  But at least everything is in focus!

Eavesdropping

While I feel like I constantly get on to my kids about eavesdropping, I cannot help but listen in when they are playing.  Over the extra long weekend I overhead things like...

(In a disgusted tone)  Oh great! My pants just fell off because my cheetah pulled them down!

We need more stools to support the fort!

I'm going to hide the animals and yall have to hunt them.

Put all the supplies you need for survival in your backpack.

Who is going to be the baddy?  (They picked up the term baddy, meaning bad guy, from our British co-workers!)

I'm going to be a baddy knight!  I just need to make a shield.

I won't shoot you in the face so it won't hurt!

Let's make a movie with our fort.

A large crash and some crying.  (I don't think the fort stood strong!)

I am a princess but my mom kicked me out because I wanted to live wild.  Now, I'm in the forest and I have friends that are bears, cheetahs, and leopards.

It's the Noah and Callie show!

Noah, don't try that!

Are you wearing pants?

It's craft day!!

Ewww!  Lucy just picked her nose and now she's trying to rub it on me!

I am NOT cleaning up this mess!!


There is never a dull moment with my kids!  We have drastically limited their screen use, and they are learning to use their brains and play again!  Sometimes it is quite painful, but mostly it has been a good change for them and us!

Sunday Sneak Peek: Certified Helal

I guess my neighbors weren't the only people questioning if this brand of chicken was up to their standards.  They had decided the brand (among many other things) should be boycotted.

Today I noticed that they had special stickers on all of their packages indicating that it was, in fact, helal.  Perhaps it should have been written in the local language?

(Hilarious side note: my autocorrect tried to correct helal to hell.  Ha!  If you only knew, Mr. Autocorrect!)

The Thanksgiving Feast!

We had a great day celebrating Thanksgiving with four other ex-pat families.  Everyone squirrels away special American favorites (except I forgot to bring back some canned sweet potatoes) and makes the most wonderful dishes to share.  It's a lot of work, but worth it when we all sit down together!

The 26 pound turkey!
Turkeys can be found here, but need to be special ordered from the butcher.
The most difficult part of cooking the turkey is cramming it into our tiny ovens!

Our hostess sets a lovely table!  She even collects beautiful fall leaves (hard to find in the city!), presses them, and then uses them to make place cards.

Our fantastic hostess searching her cabinets for just one more serving platter!
There are never enough for our feast!

 I don't know how I didn't manage to get a picture of the food!  We had all the traditional Thanksgiving fare- the huge turkey, stuffing, gravy, rolls, cranberry sauce (thanks, Mom!), mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, a dish sort of like candied sweet potatoes but with pumpkin, steamed veggies with cream sauce, and a cooked purple cabbage dish.  It was all sooo yummy!

After the feast, we took a breather and watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  A few of us napped while a couple of the men did the dishes.  Then we had a time of worship and thanksgiving.

Finally it was time for coffee and dessert!!

The desserts were fantastic!
Pecan pie, pumpkin pie, lemon meringue pie, and my apple pies. 

This is what Lucy looked like after a nice large helping of dessert!

Noah made good use of the whipped cream and added a few dollops to his hot chocolate!

It was a great day with friends who are like family!  According to Linus in Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, America was the first country to set a special day aside just to be thankful.  What a great legacy on the importance of being thankful!

(As a side note, have you seen Charlie Brown the Mayflower Voyagers?  It was included on our Charlie Brown Thanksgiving DVD.  I highly recommend it!  It is a great history lesson!)

Time to Get Cookin'

I'll be in the kitchen the rest of the day making two different apple pies- one traditional double lattice crust, and one with a streusel topping.  Then I'll be making creamed spinach.  It's really easy and super yummy.  The worst part is washing the spinach.  I guess spinach is grown is sandy/moist soil, because the spinach here tastes wonderful but it is so muddy!!  This Thanksgiving be thankful for those bags of washed baby spinach!  HA!

Anyhow, I love an afternoon cooking blast!  I've got my laptop set up and White Christmas playing on Netflix!  I'm breaking the no Christmas until after Thanksgiving rule!