Merry Christmas!

by Amy

I hope you had a great Christmas this year as you reflected on the perfect, precious gift that was given to us 2000 years ago! We had a wonderful Christmas this year. On Wednesday night, we had about 20 friends over. We had fun sharing the story with those who had never heard it before as well introducing them to traditional American Christmas cookies. They weren't too sure about the colored icing on the sugar cookies, though.... We also had lots of fun doing a gift exchange and playing some games together. Then, on Christmas Eve morning, we were invited to attend a special gathering of about 700 local, like-minded friends as they celebrated our Savior's birth! It was such a precious thing to get to be apart of - It gave us a glimpse of heaven when those of every tongue, tribe and nation will worship before the King! What a blessing!

Later on Christmas Eve, we each decorated our own heart-shaped birthday cake for Jesus. After dinner and finishing our wonderful advent book, we sang Happy Birthday and enjoyed some delightful chocolate cake! Here are each of the kids displaying their hearts. You gotta love the "V" for victory, my boys are giving ya! That's what all the locals do in every picture they take!

We had quite a bit of batter left over, so we made and decorated some cup cakes too! Mmmm!

On Christmas morning, after eating blueberry muffins for breakfast, we packed up about 50 bags of Christmas cookies and little booklets and hit the streets. We had fun wishing the people we see everyday a merry Christmas. We visited the management office of our apartment complex, the apartment cleaning people and security guards. We also went to the newspaper stands, vegetable market, and flower store. We also went by Savannah's school and took a special gift to her principal and teachers. That afternoon we returned home to do a video call with Brad's mom, and let her watch the kids open some gifts.

This year, our kids Christmas gifts had 2 themes. Leapster and Legos! My boys are so into legos! So, this Christmas I think they each received four sets. And, Savannah really enjoys the Leapster that my parents gave her for her birthday last summer. But she only had 2 games. So, while we were in the States, Brad and I bought several more cartridges to give to her. They also got some fun books, Adventures in Odyssey CDs, markers, a digital camera (for Savannah) and color wonder stuff.

While the gifts were quite abundant, they serve to remind us that "every good and perfect gift comes down from our Father above." And that 2000 years ago the best gift of all was given! This holiday season, may you know the rest and peace that He can provide! Merry Christmas!

Fun in the Snow!

by Amy

Last month it snowed! It was so fun! So, I took the kids down to play on the first afternoon. It was COLD!! And, since snow is pretty rare here, we don't have good snow gear. Our feet and hands were freezing, but not too cold to have a good snowball fight!

After about 10 minutes, Peter and Alex were done! They were frozen through and through! But, not my Savannah girl! She wanted to build a snowman. So, she and I found some untouched snow off the beaten path in our apartment complex, and went to work. Did you know that if you roll a snow ball, it really gets bigger - just like in "Charlie Brown Christmas!" (Being a Texas girl myself, I just assumed that couldn't really work - but it does!)

Our city handles snow about as well as Houston does. Everyone here is clueless! My friend actually saw city trucks out spraying water on the roads to help the snow melt..... Needless to say, we had several fun-filled days INside! Even though this snow was a result of the government's cloud seeding efforts, I'd love to see it again! It was great fun!

Christmas Fun Day #2

by Amy

Well, after having so much fun making and decorating a large gingerbread house last year, we decided to do it again! But, instead of making one big house, we made three small houses -- like a gingerbread village! My dad mailed me a cookie mold, so I could use it to make my sides and roof. It was much easier than cutting out my own pieces that I measured. And, since they were smaller, they were much easier to put together. (It also helped that Brad, my engineer husband was home this time around, and took over during the construction/building phase.)

Making gingerbread houses is quite a project! I'll give you the day-by-day:

Saturday:

I took the kids to the grocery store to pick out the all-important decorating candy! They made choices based on color, size, and of course, taste! I think we ended up buying a little too much, but I doubt we'll have any problem getting leftovers taken care of!

Monday:

I made dough that night after the kids went to bed. That's more difficult here than it would be if we lived in America. I looked all over the Internet for a recipe that didn't use molasses. I couldn't find one, so then I searched for molasses substitutes that I have available here. After reading a few things, I ended up coming up with a recipe that and adaptions that I thought would work. So, I put my dough together and let it rest 24 hours in the frig.

Tuesday:

Tuesday night I baked the houses. I used the mold to make the sides and roof. Although it was easier than last year, I still had 6 of each piece to make (side, end, roof) and 3 chimneys. It ended up taking a couple of hours to get it all cut out, then in and out of the oven.

Wednesday:

We put together the houses. After making an edible royal icing (again thanks to my dad for mailing me meringue powder), I tried to make the houses stand up by "gluing" the four sides together. I let them dry for an hour, and attempted the roof. It was at that time (as my sides were coming apart and my roof was crooked) that my wonderful husband walked into the kitchen and offered to take over! No prob!

Thursday:

On Thursday morning, my kids ran into the kitchen to find:

They were super excited! So, on Thursday afternoon, (after they had attended their local schools that morning) the decorating began!

It was fun to see them each come up with their own patterns, and to hear why they chose certain candy over others. Alex's goal was to get as much candy on there as possible. Savannah's goal was to use use the icing in a bag with a decorators tip on it. While Peter just wanted to do his own thing. He didn't want suggestions, but he was glad to receive help in making his candy stick well.

After several hours of work, here are the final results:

Savannah:

Alex:

Peter:

When everyone was done adding candy, Savannah took the last of the icing and upon request, she added lots of extra details to the houses. She made "smoke" come out of the chemmnies, put borders on the roofs, added stars on top of the candy.

It was a lot of work, but it was tons of fun! I think we'll do it again next year! :)

Sam I Am

by Amy

Since I'm done with Teach Your Child How to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, I've been doing "reading class" with the boys. Basically, I'm using readers (easy to read books) to review and teach phonics rules. When I was using the 100 Easy Lessons I taught the boys individually. But, now that we're just using normal books, I'm teaching them together. Recently I told them that if they could each successfully read Green Eggs and Ham that we'd eat green eggs and ham for dinner. They were super motivated to work hard! [side note: real ham is a rarity around here, but since it's the holidays, we can order a whole ham from our import store. So, right now, we have ham in our home. -- it's delightful!]

Do those look like happy, smart boys are what!?!?

Our dinner consisted of green scrambled eggs with diced ham, chocolate milk, and cinnamon rolls with green icing. Mmmm! It was yummy! There were definitely smiles all around! Way to go Alex and Peter! Next I'm going to have them read something about chocolate!

Christmas Fun Days

by Amy

This is such a fun time of year! There are cookies to bake, crafts to put together, and memories to make! So, I've decided that once a week - usually on Thursday, we're skipping school (home school, that is) and having a Christmas Fun Day! Last week was my first one. After lunch, the kids and I made sugar cookie dough. (Making cookies is so fun and easy with Savannah's help! She sat at the table with Alex and measured all the dry ingredients--letting him pour--while I took Peter into the kitchen with me to cream the butter and mix the wet ingredients in the mixer. It was super fast!) While our dough rested in the frig for a couple of hours, I gave the kids their own foam kit. Savannah put together and decorated a snowman while Peter and Alex each made a Christmas train. These kits were complete with pre-cut pieces, rhinestones, and glitter glue! (I'd post pictures, but blogger is wiggin' out on me right now!) They're pretty cute. :)

After making our craft and enjoying a delightful cup of hot chocolate, we rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters to make all kinds of fun Christmas shape cookies. I remember doing this last year with my kids and it was a lot of work! They couldn't roll the dough; they would often place the cookie cutters too close together (overlapping) or too far apart. Then, when they tried to transfer the cut-out dough to the cookie sheet for baking, it got quite deformed. That was all OK because it was fun -- to them! This year was SOOOO different. OK, so the boys quickly grew tired of cutting out the cookies, and went to go play, but Savannah stuck it out. We had a two sheet system down. In the 8 minutes it took for cookie sheet of cookies to bake, she could roll out the dough, cut the cookies and place them on the second cookie sheet. She was super fast! We had fun working together!

As I watched Savannah open the oven and put cookie sheets in and take them out, I was amazed.... What happened to my baby? It seems like just yesterday she was learning to walk. Now, she's running around my kitchen, reading recipes and wearing an oven mitt! My the time flies!

Texas: Seeing it again for the first time

by Amy

I've only lived overseas for the last 2.5 years. That's not THAT long. I didn't expect to find many surprises when we headed back to the US. But there were several things that were shocking.

1. The sky is blue. Houston in one of America's most polluted cities (I just read it's #6 - after 5 California cities - in Ozone Ratings -- whatever that means exactly.) But you sure couldn't tell. The sky was amazingly blue. You know Crayola has a color "sky blue." It's really that color! Absolutely breath-taking. (The city I live in is rated one of the world's top 12 most polluted cities. The sky's never blue-blue. Occasionally, it's clear and light blue, though.)

2. Houston traffic isn't all it's cracked up to be.... Granted the freeway (I-10) that runs between my parent's house and my mother-in-law's house has been under construction for the last 10 or 15 years and now it's finished. So, obviously the lack of construction helps things flow faster than I remembered, but still.... The Houston traffic is NOTHING compared to what we're used to here! One day, when Sue was driving Savannah, Savannah said, "Grandma, where are all the cars? It seems like we're the only ones on this road." And, my boys are convinced that Papa has the fastest car in the world. He has open roads on which he can drive 70mph. My kids have only been that fast in on a train.

3. There's something to be said for lots of employees. Here, every aisle in the grocery store has at least one or two employees standing around, waiting to help you or show you how the products work. In the past I've found it annoying. There are enough people in the store without 100+ employees clogging up the aisles. But, while I was in Texas, I cannot tell you how many times I wandered around a store looking for someone to help me. It was tragic, too, because I would have been able to understand their answer. (That's some times a little tricky here!)

4. Pedestrians have the right of way. I forgot that. One day I was driving in front of an HEB and a guy was walking out of the store. After spending 2.5 years sitting in a taxi - driven by aggressive, really aggressive, drivers, I forgot that I should be polite and stop so he could walk in front of me and go to his car. As I zoomed past him, he yelled, "Yeah, thanks!" through my open window. Whoops.

5. People come in all shapes and colors. We live in a place where the majority of people, men included, don't weigh over 120lbs. Typically they're short and skinny here. (Except for grandmas....I'm not sure what happens when they hit 60....) And, there's NO variety in race. 99.5% of all the people in our city look the same. That's why we stand out everywhere we go. It is NOT that way in Houston. It was so cool! You had people from Asia, India, South America, Africa and everywhere! Houston has a minority majority. That means that more than 50% of the people are not "white" (According to the 2000 census). To be honest, my kids were a little confused by that. All of the Americans we know here are white (except for newly adopted Makaria). So, our first few days there, they kept pointing out people and asking if they're American too.

6. Two for $20 - Chili's - SHOCKING! Delightful! Yes, I ate a Chili's 4 times in a month.

7. Pappacitos - 2 for 1 Fajitas -- even MORE SHOCKING!! Yeah, I ate there a few times too. Peter kept asking if he could go back to that "chip restaurant. You know - the place where I ate 3 and a half baskets of chips...." Whoops! I guess I was talking a little too much to pay attention to what my kids were doing!

Well, my husband is ready to turn in for the night, so I must sign off. I'll post some pics and share some more "fun in America" next time.

Brain Freeze

by Amy

One time, probably about a year and a half ago, my kids spent the night at Uncle John and Aunt Rachel's house. After dinner, while enjoying some ice cream, Uncle John introduced my kids to the concept of "Brain Freeze." (You know.... you eat too big of a bite of something cold and your head hurts....) I'm not exactly sure what crazy things Uncle John was doing and saying, but it made a lasting impression on my kids.

Fast forward to today....

Since Peter and Alex are finished with their 100 Easy Reading Lessons, we've been having "Reading Class." In reading class, we just read an easy book together. But, before we read, I review (or teach) some words/sounds they'll come across. Today, we were going over the "ai" sound. So, I wrote several words on the board and had them take turns reading them. Alex - nail. Peter - pain. Alex - train. So far, so good.... Then, I asked Peter to read "brain." He sounded it out, and pronounced in correctly, but slowly. I wasn't sure he knew what he had said, so I asked, "Peter, do you have one of those?" "Uh...no?" he responded. "Sound out again," I said. "See if you can figure out what that is." "br-ai-n...brain... Oh, I know. It's that thing that hurts when Uncle John eats his ice cream too fast!"

Clearly, I need to start teaching a basic science class!