Celebration #2

As mentioned in a previous post, we left our home on December 19 headed for the States. The first stop was Jacksonville, where we spent about 10 days and shared Christmas with my side of the family. Stacy and Paul drove in from Texas with their three--although they were actually at Disney World the day we got there. Here's the whole tribe together in our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes (with beautiful handmade dresses for all the granddaughters from G.G.).

One day, some more relatives came to visit from Georgia. Here's a shot of Lee Anna and Autumn up in the magnolia tree with Camden, who is my cousin's daughter. That means she's Lee Anna's second cousin, right?

And you can't really tell it, but I'm pretty sure this picture was taken right outside Chuck E. Cheese's! You see, G.G. needed us all to be somewhere else for a few hours while she got Christmas dinner cooked, so we went and played games.

Our two were pretty excited about the water fountains in America! You just push a button and cool water comes out of the spout! And it's already clean enough to drink!

We went to church with Grandpa on Christmas eve, and the girls got to sing Silent Night with their mamas. I wish you could hear the piano accompaniment. It was awesome.

Okay, you know how in pictures of your family from the 1940s or 50s, nobody smiles at the camera? Well, I thought maybe there was something really fun or cool or exciting about taking a picture that way and that's why they all did it. So I got my family to try it. Turns out, nothing special happens. It just makes you look kinda weird.

So we did it again, with smiles! :) And yes, I have teddy bear PJs, just like everyone else. Aren't they cute? Thanks Mimi!

The first two nights in Jacksonville, we left all six kids at the Grandparents' house and the four parents went and stayed in a hotel. Well, poor GG wasn't getting much sleep like that! So, we took the kids with us for a few nights. Since we didn't have a fire place, we placed the stockings in a dresser drawer. They got filled up just the same.

And here's the moment the kids were waiting for! Presents! With 12 people all exchanging gifts, we didn't try to be real orderly and calm. We just let the kids run the show and give them out as quick as they wanted to. It was a flurry of wrapping paper and bows and new toys for about 30 minutes. Thanks G.G. and Grandpa! We had a blast!

Sir Sawyer

Of all the Christmas gifts any of us gave this year, I think this one is probably my favorite. Lee Anna really wanted to make her own gift for each of us but had trouble thinking of something that her brother would like. I suggested that perhaps she could write a story for our little emerging reader. She jumped on that idea, and, inspired by our recent history studies of medieval times, decided that her story would be about a knight named Sir Sawyer.

She didn't want him to know anything about it before Christmas, so she would wait until he fell asleep each night and then sneak out to the computer where she could work on it. She typed every word of it herself (although she had a bit of help with layout and design). She loved searching through the clip art to find an illustration to go along with each page. Our search for "dragon footprint" came up dry, however, so she said, "It's okay, Mom. I can just make my own," and proceeded to design it with the line tool in microsoft word. It's a pretty good likeness, too. Looks like all the dragon footprints I've ever seen, anyway.

She was so excited to give it to him on Christmas morning, and he was equally excited to receive a real live book that was all about him! It has been read many times over, and even adapted into a stage play (check out the short video clip after the story text). We're still waiting for a film studio to call and ask for the movie rights--I'm sure it will happen any day now. You can click on the pictures of each page to make them large enough to read. Enjoy!

Celebrating Mimi

Today we are celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of Mimi's entrance into this world! Happy Birthday, Mimi! In addition to some other, more tangible gifts, we kids wanted to do something special for her on this momentous occasion, so we decided to come up with a list of sixty of our favorite Mom Memories. Claire, the recent college grad, determined that each of the four kids would need to contribute fifteen memories to make a total of sixty, so that's what we did. Tonight during our birthday skype call, after the kids had showed her the beautiful cards they made her and given a special piano concert, we read her our list of Mom/Mimi Memories.

I thought we would share them here, even though some of them won't mean much to those of you who aren't Mimi. I've put in parentheses who contributed each memory. Here goes...

Our Fifteen Mimi Memories

1. (Jason) Being invited to come and cook steaks for Dad's 45th birthday before Beth and I were even dating--an obvious sign that you were trying to set us up!

2. (The kids) Eating breakfast in bed when we visit your house.

3. (Beth) Our Beloved Disciple trip--Athens, Corinth, Patmos, Ephesus, Mykonos--an amazing trip!

4. (The kids) Playing with Jesse at your house!

5. (Beth) Our Cape Cod trip--playing on the beach, touring New England (all of it, I think!), running up all the steps we could find, reluctantly documenting it in those notebooks you made us keep, and watching lots of movies in the van all the way there and back

6. (Beth) You making my prom dress

7. (Beth) My napkin notes

8. (Beth) You meeting all the little girls over here named "Ismi"

9. (The kids) When Mimi & Papaw--and their friends from America--were our teachers!

10. (Beth & Jason) Your cauliflower bouquet at Fagnoon

11. (Beth) Our family devotional times on vacations--blowing our horns, turning the other cheek, searching for treasures, and lots more

12. (Beth) All those matching Chocolate Soup outfits the boys and I wore

13. (Beth) The styrofoam bowls

14. (Beth) Planning Jason's 40th birthday surprise

15. (Beth) My many, many angel food with strawberry birthday cakes

Happy Birthday, Mimi! We know this is going to be your best decade yet!

Christmas Part One

Our Christmas morning started just like yours did, I'm sure. I got online and ordered breakfast from McDonald's delivery, just like any other normal American dad. That gave us a 30-40 minute window to tell the Christmas story and get started on the presents before the pancakes and egg McMuffins showed up.

Let's back up a bit. Though we really did do that on Christmas Day, these pics are from a good bit earlier. We started the day after Thanksgiving, decorating the house and trimming the tree. We even had some festive holiday pancakes that morning (see above), and Sarah Claire wore her favorite Christmas sweater (see below).

Here's a shot of the living room on "Decorate for Christmas Day". The TV stayed on all day in the background so that we could keep up with news of the protests downtown again. Just like old times at Grandma's house.

Y'all smile for the camera!

The 25 days leading up to Christmas we have a countdown calendar. Traditionally, that would be the first 25 days of December, but we had a flight out on the night of December 19, so we pushed everything ahead 6 days and counted down to 19 December this year. Every day in the calendar, the kids find either candy or a paper that says "Christmas Activity." Some of the activities this year were gingerbread playdough... 

marshmallow snowmen...

and real-live gingerbread men!

And, in another old-school tradition, Daddy got to stay up late on Christmas Eve (aka December 18), working on the "Some Assembly Required" toys. Really, it was just this one little pink kitchen, but man did it have some parts. I think there were 37 parts, not including screws and other fasteners. The instruction manual was 20 pages. It took the better part of three hours to get it all together! Right behind me in this picture, you can see the iPad with the ESPN GameTracker keeping up with Tebow and the Broncos' game for me.

And here it is in its more finished form.

Lee Anna has been wanting a microscope for a long time! She'll have fun slicing things up to inspect them.

And Sawyer got his own guitar. And 10 years of lessons, to help him get started.

Sarah Claire loves the kitchen! (Boy am I glad!) She calls this her "iPhone," and she's having fun playing with it all. We've had lots of soup and sandwiches from her kitchen this month.

We had two more family Christmas celebrations in the States. But we'll save those for another night. 

Turkey Day!

Just a week after we returned, it was time for Thanksgiving. The cool thing about traveling to America right before Thanksgiving was that it meant we could bring back some typical Thanksgiving items (like canned pumpkin, pecans and mini marshmallows) that are pretty hard--or very expensive--for us to get around here. We had several families join us for the day, and we had a great time eating, relaxing, and watching the news. Yes, the news. Since we're half a day ahead of American time, it was too early for football. And besides, there was more excitement in the streets that week, so we needed to keep tabs on what was going on in other parts of the city. 

Here's some of our delicious feast. Funny story about the turkey: Our friend called about a week before Thanksgiving to say that he had seen a butcher near his house selling turkeys. Since they can be really hard to find, he offered to buy it for us, and then Jason arranged to meet him and pick it up the day before Thanksgiving so that I could cook it before lunch on Thursday. I've never cooked a turkey, but I read up on it all that week and was ready to try it.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Jason got another call from our friend. As scheduled, he had gone by to pick up the turkey that afternoon, but when he got there, there was a little surprise. The turkey was already cooked! Apparently there was a bit of Arabic miscommunication (it happens from time to time!), and the butcher thought we wanted it cooked, so they had taken it to a nearby restaurant and borrowed their oven for a few hours! Thankfully, it was delicious, and it made Thanksgiving Day even easier for me!  

Lee Anna had fun overseeing the creation of our "Thanksgiving tree". The kids cut out the leaves, and then on each one we listed something we were thankful for. When our friends arrived, they also helped us add to the tree. I took the pic below the next morning before we took it down. Next year (assuming we're not traveling all month), we'll do this all month long.

The kids also did a cute little Build-a-Turkey craft after we ate. Another mom had printed and cut out all the Mr.-Potato-Head style pieces, and the kids got to choose which ones they wanted for their turkeys. They loved it!

We sat around and visited, laughed a lot, sang together, and thoroughly enjoyed having a day to reflect on all that we have to be thankful for.

Whirlwind Tour of the South

Well, after Sarah Claire had sufficiently amused our section of the plane (see yesterday's post), we finally made it to America. It had been over two years since Jason or I had been back, and it was good to be "home." The kids were also thrilled to be back in the land of grandparents, and Sawyer was excited to be back in the land of many iPads. Now we have an iPad, mind you, and Sawyer spends plenty of time with it, but there's just something about exploring someone else's iPad and playing the games that you don't have on yours that makes this five-year-old boy very, very happy. So he did.

The kids were also really excited to see this guy again:

This is Jesse, my parents' dog. He is a fairly recent addition to the family, so Jason and I hadn't met him in person before (though we've had some meaningful Skype chats). Sawyer and Lee Anna met him when they came back for a visit last summer, though, and they have been wanting to see him again ever since. I think Jesse was happy to see them again, too, if  repeatedly jumping high up into the air is his way of saying he's happy.

Our main reason for coming back to the states in November was to attend a meeting in Mississippi, so after we had drained our bank accounts visiting all those stores we hadn't been able to go to in two years, we headed north. It would have been worth the long trip back just for the chance to make that drive. The fall foliage was absolutely beautiful. Apparently everything came together weather-wise just perfectly this fall in Mississippi, and it made for a stunning display of God's beauty. We soaked it all in (sorry for the terrible picture--you'll have to just imagine how beautiful it was!).

Visiting Mississippi meant we got a chance to visit both of the kids' living great-grandmothers. They were excited to see their Great Gran and climb the trees in the yard across from her house.

And they were even more excited when they discovered that she had real live pine cones! You may remember that there was a time not so long ago when my kids had no idea what a pine cone was. Mimi knew this, and she was so excited to the pretty basket of pine cones that Gran had collected and set out as a decoration, that she took the basket and scattered the pine cones all over the backyard so that the kids could gather them up. 

We got to stay with some sweet, longtime friends of ours while we were in Mississippi, and it was neat to be able to introduce all these kiddos to each other. Sawyer and Grayson really hit it off and had fun playing (and getting into trouble!) together. The girls were precious, too. Here they are eagerly waiting for Mae Mae's pancakes one morning.

Our November trip was quick, and jam-packed full of activity and travel, but we loved getting to see so many special people. And when it was time to head back, the goodbyes were unusually easy knowing we'd be right back just a month later.

Always at home, sort of

When you are a TCK (who is always at home) the question “Where are you from?” can be considered a trick question. We left Amsterdam early one morning heading to America. Our first stop was in Atlanta. In the airplane, Beth and Sarah Claire were in the two seats next to the window, and I was in the middle section with the “twins.” A nice, older, Dutch couple was sitting behind Beth and Sarah Claire, and Sarah Claire stood up in her seat from time to time to visit with them. 

When the captain started talking about landing, they asked Sarah Claire where she was from. “Are you going home to Atlanta?” So Beth told her to tell them where we live. Now the child knows more geography than your average two-year-old, and certainly knows what country and city we live in. But when they asked her where we live, she said, “Number Five!”  We laughed and laughed. Every day when I bring her home from her day care, we walk up the stairs and look for door number 5. So, she was exactly right. We live in Number Five.

Amsterdam Part II

In the middle of downtown Amsterdam, they have these big, fun letters that spell out "iamsterdam." The kids had fun playing on them, and we got some cute pictures.  

We spent our second afternoon in Amsterdam walking around and shopping, and then we finished up with a delicious dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. It's always fun to eat good American food, and to be in a restaurant that is loud enough that I don't have to worry about my kids being too noisy! We left the next morning to head to the States, and we'll pick up that story another day, because right now we need to share one other story from our time in Amsterdam. We've decided to let you hear this story from two sources; you decide for yourself which version is more accurate.

Jason says:

Here's what happened:  Beth and Ashlie and I left their house one morning to take the kids out to see Holland. We stopped at a grocery store for some snacks/lunch stuff and Beth and Ashlie left me in the car with all 14 kids. Maybe 16. It was hard to count because they wouldn’t quit squirming around. They were in that store for 6 or 8 hours, when we started getting hungry. So, in order to distract the large horde of hungry little ones, I started telling stories about the people we saw in the parking lot and playing pretend. I told the kids to pretend that all of the people on bicycles were “bad guys.” So, we got into telling funny stories about the bad guys stealing things and chasing people. The bigger kids thought it was great fun: “Look! That bad guy is going into that house over there!! He’s going to steal all their furniture and take it home on the back of his bike!!”  And “Look! There goes a bad guy getting off his bike to go into that store!” There are an inordinate number of people riding bicycles in Amsterdam, so there was no shortage of material for our stories.  

It was just good, clean fun. Then, after apparently looking at every item in this large grocery store multiple times, Beth and Ashlie finally came back out toward the car. A harmless-looking older guy was walking behind them as they approached, so I told the kids, “Look! There’s a bad guy walking behind the Mommies! He’s going to get them!” The bigger kids played along and thought it all pretty funny. Poor little Whit, however, wasn’t so sure. He grew a little concerned that his Mommy might be abducted by the Bad Guy. So he simply said, “I’m not happy,” and pleasantly requested that we change the subject. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Beth says:

Here’s what really happened: My dear, sweet friend Ashlie was kind enough to volunteer to take our whole family of five PLUS her three small children to a Dutch tourist spot, even though her husband Chad had other responsibilities and couldn’t go with us that morning. She suggested that we take a picnic, but said that we would need to run by the grocery store to pick up a few things on our way out of their neighborhood. After getting all six kiddos strapped in the car, we left their house and drove to the grocery store a few blocks away. When we pulled in the parking lot, Ashlie asked Jason if he would be okay waiting with the kids for a few minutes while she and I ran in the store. He questioned the wisdom of that plan (I guess he thought it would be quicker for him to go shopping by himself in the Dutch grocery store that he had never been in before?), but reluctantly agreed. 

We walked quickly into the store, went straight to the aisles we needed, paid, and hurried back to the car. We could not possibly have been gone more than 10 minutes. When we got back to the car and opened the door, poor little three-year-old Whit was crying hysterically for his mama. It didn’t take us long to find out that he was afraid for her life because of the terrible “bad guy” that was just about to get her. Of course he believed it--Mr. Jason said he was a bad guy! Obviously Whit had not spent as much time with Mr. Jason as my kids have. They know to check with Mom before they believe any far-fetched tales from their Daddy.  

After Ashlie had spent the next several minutes calming her son down and assuring him that her life was not in danger, we headed out to see the city. The rest of the day was delightful, and by the time we left, Whit seemed to be okay being in the same room with Mr. Jason again.  

We report, you decide.