Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Heading into the new year



New year's eve we invited the Stave family and while the night was young we did our own fireworks. The boys were motivated to stay up till midnight to see the real fireworks and since we watched a movie, the time passed quickly. The noise overwhelmed David but overall the boys were impressed by the show we could watch from our window. people set up all kinds of colors from every year around for miles!


The story about Samantha and her sweet tooth tells of a girl that liked sweets and believed that when her tooth fell out she would be loosing her sweet tooth. In preparation she started trying vegetables of different kinds to get herself prepared and when she felt a bump of the new tooth she was sure her days of liking sweets were going to be over the next day. But, she found she still liked sweets and she liked vegetables. So, when her mother offered her cookies one night she asked for Carrot cake instead. Thus a request for carrot cake in our house. And they ate it just fine!
Putting together a race track gift.



Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Christmas 2011

Funny, this year I already easily write 2012 and it usually has taken a while to write the new year without thinking, now it seemed strange to write Christmas 2011.











We had Grazina Bielousova, a Lithuanian family friend to share the Christmas eve and Christmas Day with us. She was a great help in making the authentic Kuchios dishes that I have been trying to make on my own these years. And it was nice to have some help in getting Christmas meal ready too. But even more than that we are so grateful for Grazina in our lives as a friend, babysitter and colleague at LCC too. And she was happy to have a home to share these holidays in where the warmth and joy of family was open to her. She was also able to help us get family pictures!

Catching up continues in the New Year

November went by quickly in the sense that most of my time was absorbed in preparations for Global Leadership Summit and since that did not involve the boys there are less pictures and events to report on for them.

We did have one night in the hospital though with David for testing and we can gladly report that he does not have epileptic seizures. We are not sure what comes over him some times, but it is not that.

And then it was Thanksgiving celebrated on Saturday after the American holiday for the LCC community. Gregg had another meeting and the boys were not too settled about eating around tables with lots of people, so no good pictures of that. But there was time of activities for kids and they enjoyed that and mom got extra time for hanging out!


At LCC celebrating Thanksgiving also means welcoming the Christmas season, decorating the buildings for the Christmas program the next week. The semester ends early enough that to get participation the celebration is quite early. we saved one picture from after the program.

And then it was on to school charity concert the school held to raise money for families with children with heart problems.


And school Christmas entertainment:





And Advent and Christmas event in Silute:



The Christmas season seemed richer to us because there was interest from our Lithuanian church friends in Silute and Klaipeda in learning more Christmas carols- more are translated to Lithuanian than are in common use. So this is something we could do- teach Christmas songs!