Big holidays

It's been so long since I've written! I wanted to put up our "first Christmas," but then I remembered that I never said anything about Thanksgiving. Back at Thanksgiving we had planned to celebrate with a few friends. One of them had already said that he would cook a turkey for us. Then an American family new to this region invited us out to their village. We agreed, if we could bring our friends and the turkey. When we got to the day before Thanksgiving, our friend had the turkey, but he was sick. His wife brought it over, and we all prepared it, with his remote supervision, then we went out to the celebration. It was really a nice time together, and the new family has wonderfully cute little ones.

So, now I jump forward to December 25 and also a few Advent photos. (This year for Advent we read The Christmas Mystery again and a Lilias Trotter devotional that was new for us and very good.)

Since Prawin was sick on Thanksgiving, we planned a second round of similar food with them for Christmas. He cooked two chickens: one plain, one Indian style. The Indian one involved making a tiny fire in our kitchen to get a smoky flavour. And we made sure that his wife Masha (and others) experienced pumpkin pie for the first time.

The rest of the photos are here. I really didn't take many that day; I was too busy.

Also, the day before our home "first Christmas" celebration, our church had a really big first: the first time back in the big hall, all together, since the fire in the spring. We got to help with a few more cleanup days leading up to it, and the night before our girls didn't even come home from working. Then it was finally all ready and so beautiful! Here's one video clip from a friend (don't know if this will work?):

Professional photos are here.

While I'm posting, here are links to two video concerts that our kids were in recently: winds and percussion, and bandura.