Thanksgiving Weekend

We spent Thanksgiving in the homes of three embassy families.  They all live in the same building, two of them being on the same floor, and one below them.  So about 100 people joined in on the fun, and one apartment was for appetizers, one for the main courses, and one for desserts.  It was a great way to see so many people in such a short period of time and in one place.  I brought a few of my family's favorite, traditional Thanksgiving foods:  Pumpkin cookies with cinnamon chips and a pecan cream cheese dip with crackers.  We left the gingerbread pudding at home with gingersnaps for us. ;)

Everyone brought something to contribute, but these three generous families had the turkeys and other main dishes catered by Eve, our embassy cook.  She did an amazing job with the turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, and creamed corn.One of the dessert tables, followed by the gluten free table that I stopped at. ;)

The kids had a fun time running around with all of the other kids, so we barely saw them the whole time!  I wish I had taken more pics of the kids and everyone, but we were busy eating and visiting.  Oh well.  We all ate and left happy. :)  

That weekend, when there was no work or school, we of course wanted to decorate for Christmas.  We started with the nativity sets, setting out some of our new ones that we purchased traveling around Europe this year.

And then the tree.  The only place we've had to store that thing is in a little "storage room" on the side of the garage, that is unfortunately open to the air and all of the humidity and mosquitoes.As the box was opened, and the tree fluffed, we did say hello to a few mosquitoes.  Not sure I want to know what else is in there!

And putting the ornaments and lights on, there was a lot of debate and racking of the memories to try and remember whose turn it was to hang the star on the tree this year.  I finally resorted to last year's photos, and determined that Thomas hung the star last year, so it was the girls' turn.  However, the girls decided to let him do it again so he could have a few more times hanging the star before leaving the house.  Hard to believe we're counting down the years on one hand that Thomas has left at home!

While dad adjusted the star to make sure it wasn't going to fall off, the girls started getting goofy and Thomas got in on it too.

 A few hours after decorating, when we were finally out of our pajamas, ;) the girls helped me to adjust some of the ornaments so they were spread out a little better.

This is our last Christmas season here in Latvia.  We enjoy the snow that makes it feel like Christmas, as well as the lit streets and stores and Christmas trees at the mall.   It's definitely more of a commercial holiday here than a Christian holiday, but at least it feels a little like home. Things will be different in China, our next post, around the holidays, so we'll eat up the holidays here!