Saturday, December 8, 2012

It's A Wonderful Life

You know you are living a good life, when, as your husband gets off work for the week, (weekends are Friday and Saturday here,) he calls and asks if you want to head to the beach.

I had a drive through the desert, with rolling sand dunes and herds of camel flanking the road on the way to Sophia's doctor appointment. Irony was abundant as I blasted "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," "White Christmas," and "Sleigh Bells," and sang at the top of my lungs.

Our Christmas tree got set up after a day of trouble shooting. Apparently the salesman who sold me the display tree for dirt cheap, forgot to include a tree stand. And, as it turns out, it's hard/near impossible to find a tree stand for an artificial tree in the Middle East.

Who knew?

But, thanks to our ingenius ACE hardware employee who helped us, our tree is now standing with the help of an outdoor umbrella stand.

Who knew?

I thought I was pretty smart by cooking up all of my holiday favorites for our small group this week. My plan was to  be able to taste them without having a ton sitting around in my house for a week. My plan failed, however, when only four adults showed up. I had cooked for twenty. Boo.


Our Thanksgiving was...okay. Thanksgiving is the hardest holiday for me living overseas. In America it would be the holiday with all of my extended family gathered together, and it was purely an "American," thing. Here it is so diverse and we share our holiday with many other cultures, it can be a little tiring. We got to spend Thanksgiving evening with sweet friends, eating delicious food. And that might be the first time I ever had spring rolls for Thanksgiving. My friend, Bonnie, wrote a beautiful post describing the evening.

Grace has taken to saying "Oh My!" with a breathless excitement whenever something strikes her fancy. It blesses my heart to hear her so happy, full of life, and enjoying herself!


3 comments:

jessica m said...

great post! I live away from our family so the holidays are very hard for us too. Hoping all is well for you now!

Emily Powell said...

I love the feeling of your own life being a breath of fresh air!

Callie said...

So glad you got your Christmas tree all set up, even if it did take a little creativity. :-)