Merry Christmas!

Here's wishing a Very Merry Christmas from our house to yours!



I usually design and send out Christmas cards every year, but with all of the excitement these past few weeks, it just didn't happen.

I found this card on Shutterfly this morning and thought it was cute. They have some nice New Year's cards too...so maybe I'll try that instead.

For now I'm off to start making some tasty treats for our Christmas dinner tomorrow!

xo,

The Week Before Christmas...

...and all through the house we are battling mud and leaks and a spider or two. Actually, I haven't seen a spider in a couple of days, so maybe they all drowned, ha!

As for the mud, this is what it looked like outside most of the week.



I knew we were coming here in the rainy season, but after Utah and it's lack of rain, constant rain for days has us considering building an ark!

Here is what the front of our house currently looks like.



Very festive, don't you think? Yesterday morning I came downstairs to a dining room floor full of water. It seems that our front window casing has sprung a leak! Since the constant rain makes it impossible to repair at the moment, this is the only solution for now. I'm thinking of it as fancy etched glass, and not as plastic sheeting sandbagged to the front of my house. :)

One the bright side, people here are awesome! A new friend has remedied our lack of a Christmas tree.



Brennan was so happy to be able to decorate a tree.



Poor guy... This really was his happy face. He had a few days of not feeling good. Headaches and fever. No worries though, he's back to his normal self now.

Yesterday, we went to see Santa.



And to make some Christmas crafts.





I think he had fun.

A Little Bit o' Christmas

Usually every year by this time in December, my house is all decked, my presents are all wrapped, and we are fully immersed in fun Christmas crafts, cookie making, and holiday outings.

This year we are doing everything low key. Make that really low key. Of course, that is not by choice, just the circumstances we are in at the moment; I'm not going all bah humbuggy on you.


Ho, ho, ho! It's Santa Brennan.

As of today, I have no wrapping done. Actually, I don't even have any wrapping paper, and some of my need-to-wrap gifts won't even get here until after Christmas. We haven't done any cookie baking yet. I do plan on doing that soon. (The commissary here has several gluten-free flour options. Yay!) Brennan has decided Santa needs chocolate chip cookies this year. Sounds good to me. :)

As for all the other trimmings, I don't have any Christmas-y smelling candles, or a mantel to hang our stockings, or even a Christmas tree. But we have had a fun time making a couple craft projects to make it a little festive around here.


On our daily outings to the playground, Brennan has been collecting pinecones.


I told you it wouldn't take long to use my new glitter!




We've also made some paper chains.


Easy pack Christmas decor. :)


And we made a felt banner.


Banner making.

I was also able to mail over a couple of our favorites.


Our Christmas advent tree.


The snow globes we made last year, and our tiny first Christmas tree.


Brennan's nativity...and Spider-man gloves, and Matchbox cars, and Transformers. :)

And as is our tradition, our Christmas ornaments for this year.


Our family ornament. Fitting for all the National Park exploring we did this year. We found this leaf at Bryce Canyon National Park.


Brennan's ornament. Since we are now international, Santa on a globe was perfect for this year. Brennan has had concerns that Santa won't find him. I think the little man will be getting his yearly email from Santa any day now. :)

He will not, however, be getting the skateboard that he put on his Christmas list. I don't think my Mommy nerves are up for that yet. Yikes.

Our New House

The title today pretty much takes care of the intro...so here it is - our new house!


The front of the house. Complete with sunshiney day. :)


The back patio.


The humongous banana tree.


The backyard. See Chloe checking it out in the corner?


Come on in! Like my new wreath? The Community Center had a Wine, Cheese, and Wreath Making night this past Saturday. It was fun!


The kitchen.


The dining room. We built a new dining room table before we left Utah, and I refinished the hutch and buffet. (I know, finally!) I sure hope it all fits in there.  All the furniture we have in here now is loaner stuff.


The living room and a goofy Brennan playing PBS Kids. Poor kid - it's been raining,  he's not in preschool, we don't have a tv at the moment and most of his stuff and our art stuff isn't here.  To combat boredom, his normal hour of computer time a day has been expanded a little. We still get our daily dose of Curious George though. Thank goodness for streaming Netflix!

...and that's all I have for now. We also have three bedrooms upstairs, 2 1/2 baths, lots of closets and storage spaces, and a laundry room. When we get all our things here, and I get everything all snazzy I will give you a full tour.

Though that will probably not be until sometime around Valentine's Day. In the meantime, I'm sure it will continue to be interesting. Without all of our stuff here, we're learning to do a lot of improvising.

Like this:


How about a pot of brownies? We have no mixing bowls in the house, so a pot worked in a pinch!

They were still yummy, of course. :)

Greetings From Turkey!

Yay! We made it!

Actually, we have been here for a week now, but you know how it is when you move, living out of suitcases, the disruption of being dislocated, unhappy camper children and husbands (and me), plus a heaping dose of jet lag.  Whew! I'm glad we're done with that for another couple of years!

So far we have moved into our house and have internet set up. We've also dealt with a whole pile of paperwork, signing in this, registering for that. I'm glad Jason keeps up with all that stuff, and just tells me what I need to do or sign.

Now we just have to wait for our household stuff and the jeep to arrive and we will be good to go. Ugh, I won't even go into how much of a pain it has been not having the jeep here right away! We're managing though. Jason took a taxi to work this morning. He had been walking when he could, but this morning it was raining. If we had to do it again, we would do our outprocessing stateside a little differently. Ship our vehicle earlier, take leave enroute - that sort of thing. So if you're reading this and are coming to Incirlik, a bit of advice - ship your vehicle as soon as you can!

Also, if you're like me, and like to bake stuff, do yourself a favor, and mail over your measuring cups and spoons, cookie sheets and cake pans. We have some borrowed pieces from the Loan Locker, but not enough to be very useful. Of course with it being close to Christmas, I got the urge to make my Mom's Chocolate Cherry Torte. But then of course I realized, aside from the lack of measuring cups and spoons and cake pans, I have no cake stand or a trifle bowl (yes, a cake stand or trifle bowl is a requirement for the Chocolate Cherry Torte), so I guess I will be waiting until January to whip one up. I won't even mention how much I am missing my Kitchenaid Mixer. *sigh*

On the bright side, I did mail myself some glitter. Ah, glitter! A big 30 piece set of glitter, no less. I'm sure I will be getting craft happy with that any day now.

p.s. Next time there will be pictures.  Yes, I know how you all like the pictures. I was too lazy jet lagged to load and edit any for today. :)



 

October

Wait, what...October?! And the end of it no less. How did that happen?

Well, hello everyone! Did you miss me?

So...Let's just ignore for the moment that it was June when I last posted.  I really had intended to, but time just got away from me. We have had some super busy months!

First, Jason got back home safely in July! Yay! We are so glad to have him home!






Next we went on vacation to see Nana and Papaw at the Grand Canyon.


The canyon is awesome!


Angel's Window






The jeep found some mud.








A double rainbow!

And then in September we went to Yellowstone...


Buffalo have the right of way. :)








King of the world!


A very HOT pool.








Yellowstone River











A couple weeks later we drove to Indiana for a visit...


Driving through Colorado


Wii Bowling Tournament


Hanging Out With Grandma Brenda


Aww, brothers sharing their toys. :)


Wrestling Match


Four Wheeling


Cousins


Tie-dying Shirts With the Cousins


Buddies

And of course we had to take some family pictures while we were there.






Whew! As you can see we've done a little travelling. :)

In between all the fun stuff, though, we've also been busy here at home. We only have about a month left before we leave for Turkey! We've had some stressful moments trying to get everything to work out, but it seems like everything is headed on the right track now.

So that's the compact version of our summer/fall. Hopefully next time I'll recap October and not just tease you with a title. :)