Life Update in Pictures

We're back from Thailand with a stop in HongKong and another city here on the way home! It was a great month of traveling, resting, and enjoying relationships with lots of friends. I am glad to be back in my own house and not living out of a pack though! 

I haven't posted any everyday life pictures since the end of October, so I thought I'd post some for my fam & the few people who might be interested in such a thing. I'm going to keep my commentary to a minimum. 

{one of my new favorite little buddies who I call "little fish"}

{playing at the park}

{Sweet baby}

{Our friend Darrell came to visit in November}

{pigs feet}

{brave guys}

{local food at its best}

{Thanksgiving}

{Thankful for imported Turkey}

{Annual Turkey Bowl Football Game}

{My sweet friend Lori}

{The newest DARLING addition to their family: Ruby June} 

{she took quite the liking to Adam}

That's just a little peak into our lives this fall. I've got more on deck. Life & Projects. Prepare yourself... I've had pictures uploading for the last 2 days! Back on the bandwagon. Promise. 

Joyfully Back,

Thankfulness

I think one of my biggest "worries" with moving overseas was the idea of being away for holidays. So with Thanksgiving approaching, I knew we had to make the most of it so we corralled some of our friends to make a feast together. 

Thanksgiving CLEARLY isn't Thanksgiving without a Turkey.... so we did what it took to get one. Ashlei told us about one man who sells them in the city so Adam and a few others went on a search to find him and were successful. They found a 14lb. turkey imported from Utah! While most things are somewhat cheap here- imported turkeys aren't. This guy was $50! But again worth it- and when shared between 6 people, the cost isn't too painful. 

Cooking the turkey was definitely a risk with what we had to work with. Since Adam cooked one in America last year, he took charge on getting this bird ready. 

Cooking a 14 lb turkey in a normal oven isn't too big of a deal.... 

but we weren't so sure that he (the turkey) was going to fit so well in here.... 

After shoving some veggies, an onion, and an orange up the poor guys rear, he dumped more veggies into the oven bag....

Sealed it up

And what do you know!? It worked! Here it is cooking away in our tiny oven! 

I'm pretty sure if it were any bigger, it wouldn't have fit and this was the smallest the man selling them had... we were pretty thankful. 

Creating everything from scratch doesn't always make things as tasty as you might like- like my green bean casserole. I tried to get creative with making the fried onions with onions and flour. I didn't have any eggs and I didn't have enough time to go to the market to get some, so I crossed my fingers that they would still fry in the oil without the flour coming off....

.....but they didn't. They ended up just greasy somewhat cooked onions. They did make the casserole pretty though! 

I am pretty thankful that Campbell's has taken up stock on this side of the world, and canned "cream of ___" soups can be found at times. 

So we did have cream of mushroom soup. 

Here it is before cooking....

It really just wasn't the same without canned french cut green beans and fried onions though. 

Ryan made both of these AMAZING rolls from scratch. I'm pretty impressed. 

Here's the spread! 

Mashed Potatoes, squash, stuffing (that Joseph made from scratch and was by far the best I've ever had), gravy, turkey, green bean casserole, rolls, sweet potatoes, corn, and cranberries of corse. 

There was no shortage of food here! 

For dessert we had Joseph's homemade pumpkin pie, Ryan's homemade pumpkin crisp, Janessa's homemade fudge, and Hannah's homemade ambrosia. Pretty impressive! 

This was all that was left of the turkey when all was said and done.... Then this was boiled for the broth to have soup in the future. We definitely put this guy to good use! 

I hope you had a WONDERFUL thanksgiving filled with love & gratitude!

Joyfully full,