I've been told that the hardest part of living overseas is going through the holiday seasons without the festivities, family and friends that you are used to, especially your first year.
But I'm praising God that I can honestly say we really enjoyed our Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. It was different, of course, but still wonderful in its own way.
I decorated a lot this year!
There were no decorations in the community so I made up for it in the house.. :)
My sweet mom-in-law sent us everything we needed for an authentic American Thanksgiving dinner and we were able to order a turkey from our meat man. Our dinner turned out just like we're used to! It was so delicious!
Our friends came over on Thanksgiving day so we made lots of food, watched movies, played games and ate a ton!
We had so much food! After lunch all the kids crashed on the couch watching The Polar Express and the adults got to sneak in some fun times playing games.
This was actually the week before Thanksgiving.. a little pre holiday fun- making sugar cookies in Thanksgiving shapes. Then eating them all.. they were really good.
I've always liked the idea behind the Jesse Tree ornaments so this year I made salt dough ornaments and painted them for our tree. As the kids get older we will go more in-depth each morning of December to really stay focused on the joy and gift that Jesus is to us.
I decorated a ton for Christmas too. Our kitchen was probably my favorite.
I don't have a picture of it but I also made a faux mantle in the living room area to put decorations on and hang our stockings from. Since this is our first Christmas here I spent a lot of time making all of our decorations, stockings, tree skirt etc because we didn't use our luggage space flying over here for holiday stuff. Our home feeling Christmas-y was a concern of mine and I'm really thankful to say that it still had that real Christmas feeling.
On Christmas Eve we made a big family dinner and snuggled in for a Christmas movie.. we started with The Nativity, but that didn't keep Ezra's attention. haha We want that to be a family tradition but we may have to wait until after the kids go to bed for a few more years. haha
Christmas morning we opened presents and skyped with family then that afternoon we went to our friends house and had Christmas dinner and festivities with them. It was such a sweet time of fun and food.
Our favorite Christmas gift this year was definitely learning that we would be having a girl! We got to surprise family when skyping with them and it made for a very special moment - especially since she will be named after Luke's mom.
A little Madelyn Cavo is on her way!
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