Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

OK, so yes, we are aware that Thanksgiving is traditionally a late November holiday, but that doesn't mean that we can't be thankful at other times!

And, since our coworkers David and Christy are leaving T-land soon, we decided to celebrate while they were still here. Personally, I just think B has a thing for feeding large numbers of people, and any excuse is a good one, but she claims that she wanted to be thankful for our team while they were all still here.

Also, as an added bonus, the field's language consultant is here checking up on our progress (hint: it's pretty limited so far) in language and culture study. It's been fun to have her around, and of course we wanted to include her in our Thanksgiving feast as well.

Anyway, enough blathering. On to the pictures:

What a feast. Bobbie managed to track down a turkey (in T-land!!), and between her and our guests bringing stuff we managed to add broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing/dressing, and even a Siberian sort of cranberry sauce! True genius.

Of course, the decor was outstanding as well:

The guest of honor - a reasonable sized turkey.


The kids are doing great, still. I honestly think Steven might learn to read before he can talk, as weird as that sounds. If you show him the letters, he can make the sound for most of them. It's a bit weird that he still doesn't like to put them together into words, but I guess he'll get around to it, eventually. He's even turning into a real Picasso:

Matthew's doing good, too. I just thought I'd throw this picture in so that we can bring it back up on his wedding day to embarrass him.


And just so the post isn't totally devoid of newsy news, we did get the keys to our apartment and completed all the paperwork the other day. Now we just have to wait a month or so while the deed is put into our name. Meanwhile we're fixing up the apartment (mostly installing flooring in one room and replumbing the bathroom), and hopefully we'll move in in a week or so. Pictures of all of that to come in the next blog.

While all of this is going on, we have meetings with the aforementioned language consultant, and the hunt continues for good language helpers. In addition to evaluating our progress in language and culture study, she's also here to train me (Jesse) and our coworker David to be language consultants ourselves in the future. At some point, whenever our training is complete, we'll also be traveling around on occasion and helping those doing culture and language studies to do that effectively. So, basically, a busy time. Thanks for thinking of us, and we'll see you again here next week!