American Thanksgiving

So much for "stay tuned for a bunch of posts"...

Three days after the turkey-toe fiasco, we celebrated American Thanksgiving. I hate having to specify which Thanksgiving, actually, since I used to only ever think there was one. :) But where was I... oh yes, the Thanksgiving get together. So much fun! We had I think nine people at our get-together. Food was the classic menu with a few special (though not exotic) dishes... turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, noodles (in a gravy for on top of the mpotatoes-- a kirksville thing), gravy, green bean casserole, garden corn, sweet potato casserole, cranberry jello salad (Tim's grandma's recipe), rolls, apple pie, pumpkin bars, peanut butter (and chocolate) pie, and ice cream. It was all so yummy!
We also had our Gratitude Garland displayed. It is a tradition we're hoping to make annual... you write things you're thankful for on autumn-colored paper leaves. Then you string them together and hang it as decor! We have so much to be thankful for, so it is a very good exercise to remember all the blessings God has given us over the past year.

-JLR

Halloween 2009

We spent Friday afternoon carving our pumpkin. Tim loves to clean out the pumpkins, I love to carve, and Micaiah enjoyed a bit of both! We also enjoyed the roasted pumpkin seeds a few hours later. :)
Micaiah in her giraffe costume (a hand-me-down from her cousins). Giraffes are her favorite animal.
So the funniest thing happened last night while I was handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. First of all, Halloween is really big here in BC. REALLY big. There are houses really elaborately decorated. One of our neighbors even staged a car vs bicycle accident in his driveway, complete with loads of fake blood! There are also lots of fireworks throughout the night and especially late in the evening. It was strange but we had been forewarned, for which I was very thankful. Anyway, a boy--probably 9 or 10 yrs old-- walked up to our door. We happened to be in our entry way and saw him reach for the doorbell (there's a window by the front door). At the exact moment he reached for the doorbell a neighbor set off a firework in our yard and it triggered the alarm in a truck parked on the street. He was so terrified! As I gave him candy, I would have sworn he had pooped in his pants bc it smelled awful! I felt so bad for the kid and yet, it was the funniest thing I'd seen all day!

-JLR

Sabbatical

As you may (or may not) have noticed, this blog has been severely ignored for the past 10 months. For lack of a better term or excuse, we're calling it our sabbatical.

Lots of things happened in those 10 months. We said goodbye to all of our friends, colleagues, and Tanzanian friends in our little town of Musoma, Tanzania. We packed up all of our earthly belongings (again...) and put them into storage. We traveled to the UK for a holiday in Groomsport, Northern Ireland with our friend Katie over Easter, then on to Horsley's Green, England for a three-week academic writing course for Tim. Then it was back to the US. We arrived in St Louis on May 8 and spent the next 3.5 months traveling, speaking, and sharing with our team. Then it was packing (again...) everything we owned into the back of our little CR-V and trucking it West across the US. We are now in Langley, BC, just North of the US-Canada border on the Pacific coast.

It's beautiful here. I was thinking about the beauty of fall today while we were on our family bike ride (you just can't waste a sunny Saturday around here!) along Fraser River... oh, how I had missed autumn! The colors, the chill in the air, the crunch of leaves underfoot... this is a good place to be.

There will be more to come-- I hope!-- but for now just a note to stay tuned. :)

-JLR