Thanksgiving Pics

I posted all of our Thanksgiving pics on my Facebook profile page. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving together with our friends. Everyone chipped in and brought great food, helped set up and clean up so it was low-stress/high-enjoyability for everyone. There were more people from Finland than from the states and it was hosted at our German friends' house. We are so thankful for our international family here.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

 It's Thursday November 25th here in KT (our city) and I'm thinking about all of you loved ones who will be waking up in a few hours to celebrate Thanksgiving. I hope it's a rich, full, sweet time for everyone and that no one explodes (see my previous post regarding that) :) We will be celebrating Thanksgiving on Saturday at our German friends' house - isn't it nice that they open their home for our American holiday? There are 4 other Americans that we are friends with in our city and we are all spear-heading Thanksgiving. We even got a turkey. In addition to our dear German friends, there will be three families from Finland and one Brit. Living here, it's easy to be thankful. I found myself thankful for many seemingly small things the last few weeks. Bananas - that we can get them in Central Asia is awesome, that we can afford these decadent treats is another blessing. They are roughly 50 cents a piece right now here (which most people would say is expensive) and any kid would gladly receive a banana over any kind of candy most days of the week. Toilet paper - we mostly have the eastern block/Soviet times toilet paper - you know rough, brown recycled (maybe?) stuff - closer to cardboard than paper in my opinion. There are lots of families that can't afford t.p. and plenty of others (particularly in the more outer-lying areas) that just don't use it - they've never developed the habit of using it and instead use water or sand or rocks (I won't go into the specifics of that). That said, I'm also thankful to be able to buy some of the soft white kind too - you know, for a special luxury sometimes :) I'm SUPER thankful for nice neighbors and plenty of them. I never need to feel cooped up inside because there are also women to visit with somewhere close by. There are frequently even other kids who will play with my kids so I can talk to some ladies without being interrupted every 2 minutes. There are a few grocery items that I've recently found (or found with more consistency) that I'm so happy about: brown rice and wheat flour (this granola girl couldn't be more thrilled). Nodira - our house helper and friend. She makes life so much more enjoyable with her help around the house, her cooking ideas and her suggestions. She also taught me how to make good yogurt - yay! Jamila - who I refer to as Super Woman because I really don't think there is anything this woman can't do (and do with a smile and good humor, I might add) and I'm particularly thankful that she's going to make peanut butter for us with some consistency. We can't buy it here and with little kids and so much bread it's so nice to have but it's quite the messy endeavor making it (skinning the peanuts is the kicker). Of course, I'm immensely thankful for our family and dear friends. I still pinch myself when I think about all of you because I just can't believe how RICH in relationships we are! Seriously, we must be in the top 1% of the world - I don't know how you'd measure wealth in relationships but I'm sure we're up there. Thank you for supporting us as we follow our calling/dream living cross-culturally. Not everyone gets to do something like this during their lifetime and we are thankful we get to and recognize it would be so much more difficult without your support and encouragement (even from those of you who still think we're crazy and who swear you'll never understand why we are here - the fact you still feel that way and are still encouraging us means so much to us - thank you!). We thank God for you all regularly and will continue to. We are also so thankful for the reason we live and the hope that we have in Christ Jesus. That lens on this life makes us feel extra thankful for just about everything.
Here are some random pics of the last few weeks.

        Hannah and Emmett with a friend, Sayora, in their toy box.

 Hannah and one of our Tajik nieces, Sabrina, on Eidi Qurbon, going from house to house getting candy.

             Emmett eating a cookie Nodira made.

   Me, with two friends - Valuyat and Dilafruz (not to be confused with my Tajik sister Dilafruz).

Hannah and Emmett wearing some of the new jammies Grandma sent. Hannah didn't waste any time taking off her clothes and putting on jammies when we got the package. That's something else I'm thankful for - the generosity of our families and friends in sending us packages and the 7/7 track record we've had in receiving them. We never expected to be able to receive packages with any degree of predictability but we've been pleasantly surprised.