Easter 2013

How is it that time goes so fast? I think I read once that the older you get, the faster time goes, because days and weeks and months and years are a smaller percentage of your life than when you're little. When you're five and your birthday is a year away, it's 1/5th of your life away. When you're 30, it's 1/30th. When you're 60, it's 1/60th, and so on. It makes me wonder if the rate at which time passes is exponential...

Anyways, all that to say, WOW, how is it already April? Today is my little sister's 30th birthday. Also unbelievable.

Easter for us was, in one word, unforgettable. To start, we spent the morning dying eggs, reading telling the Easter Story over lunch to Lane and some guests of ours, and getting the girls down for naps. We finished up our cooking and after the girls woke up we headed out to "the farm" (some friends of ours live in a village where there are lots of cows, chickens, goats, horses, and sheep wandering around. Since it's the closest thing to a farm that Lane's ever seen, and she loves the farm, we call it, affectionately, "the farm."). After 60 or so expats showed up, we all stuffed ourselves silly and then headed outside for a huge Easter egg hunt. The girls had a blast. Lane was so, so excited to hunt for eggs, and Noel managed to find a couple, too (with daddy's help).


Hunting eggs. Love the boots...they remind me of hunting eggs in the snow/slush while growing up in Alaska.


Chasing bubbles with friends.

After all the eggs were found and prizes distributed (awesome idea: give a prize in exchange for real eggs, so that kids are just as excited about finding them as they are the plastic ones), we gathered outside to sing songs about the Risen King. After worship time, the girls and I headed inside, along with almost every other mother and child under the age of six (it was getting chilly and nearly bedtime for many). I helped clean a bit while the kids were entertained in "Sunday School." And we all headed home around 8:30. Seven or so minutes down the road we got a flat tire. Ten people in a van on Easter Sunday at 8:30 p.m. and we got a flat. We didn't see a spare so we called a friend. He drove over and found the spare (under the van) and helped us get the tire fixed. He left, we all piled in the van, and...the van wouldn't start.

After rolling my eyes, I called our friend back. He came and we all spent the next hour trying to a) jump start the car, b) pull start the car, and c) keep the girls from melting down. At around 10:00 I finally told our friend that I was sorry but I really needed to get the girls in bed. So he ferried us all home, leaving a couple of singles with the van. We got home and I laid Noel in bed (we had put her in jammies before we ever left and she had fallen asleep in my arms on the way [p.s. awesome that car seats are not mandatory over here in situations like this!]). I got Lane into jammies and laid in bed with her until she fell asleep. Before she fell asleep she looked at me, snuggled next to her in the bed, and said, "Mommy?" "Yes, Lane?" "Happy Easter." It was the sweetest thing ever. After she fell asleep I headed to the kitchen to start some massive clean up, and Shannon came home around 11:30 after helping our friend tow the van into town and park it.


Lane's first spin on a tire swing.

All in all, the girls did very well being up so late. I was very glad we had made Lane take a nap (since she usually doesn't), and also very grateful that it doesn't phase Noel that much to be up past her bedtime. The girls both slept in a bit yesterday, Noel took a long nap, and we had Lane in bed by 6:00.


We have a photo of Lane at about this age in nearly the same pose, in Ephesus. You can see it here.

It was a good Easter. It was so fun to celebrate Jesus and his resurrection with fellow believers in place where most people don't believe. Lane had a blast running around with all her little friends, Noel enjoyed getting a dinner of rolls and strawberries, and we enjoyed fellowshipping with expats from many different countries. Next year will look quite different, as we'll be in the States for Easter. I'm looking forward to it. And to these two yahoos maybe looking at the camera at the same time?

Happy Easter!

Yesterday we took Lane to her first Easter egg hunt. She had a blast.

Daddy's leading her on the hunt.

Found one!

Chomping on some candy while hunting eggs.

Then this morning I hid eggs in our living room while Lane searched for them for about two hours. I still can't believe she was entertained for that long!

On tippy toes to get some eggs!

She made this face for every. single. egg that she found.

This afternoon I took Lane to the bazaar and to the park while Noel napped and Shannon worked on some things from home (I know, sad to work on Easter, huh? But we had most of our Easter festivities yesterday). I let her walk a lot, climb on things, jump, and so on, and she had an absolute blast. It was a gorgeous day and we spent almost two hours out and about.

My favorite photo from Easter Sunday...she loved that gate.

And Noel...well, she pretty much slept all day.

Snoozin' away!

I'm really looking forward to next Easter when Lane will be old enough to understand more about why we celebrate Easter. For now, she claps and says "yay!" when we tell her that Jesus is alive, but anything beyond that is still lost on her. So next Easter...next Easter should be fun.

This is Christmas

Another blog I frequent had a post about a week ago entitled "This is Christmas." And much as I've tried to come up with another title for this post (so as not to be a copycat), I just can't. Because around here...

This is Christmas. At least this year.

Christmas Eve after Santa came.

The girls in their Christmas jammies (which, unfortunately, arrived the day after Christmas).

This was actually a quite relaxed (although quite tiring, due to a certain little someone) Christmas. I spent the week before Christmas in the kitchen baking...gingerbread cookies for the neighbors, biscotti, granola bars, breakfast cookies, chocolate crackle cookies, apple pies, and making hot cocoa mix. I was a mad woman. But it paid off in that Christmas weekend and this week we have had lots of snacks around the house and very little difficult cooking to do. I got to bring plates of gingerbread cookies to my neighbors, and since you can't get molasses here, they were quite taken with the cookies. My apple pies were a hit at our big Christmas dinner.

Cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning.

Lane playing in her new kitchen (which we scored used for $20!) on Christmas morning.

Christmas Eve we went to church and had our big Christmas dinner, complete with a turkey. (I got to bring the carcass home and made turkey broth with it, plus pulled four cups of meat off the bones.) We didn't get home until almost 9:00 and by then Lane was a mess. We got her in bed and then played Santa, setting out her new toys from us, her Aunt Rachel and Uncle Lucas, and all her grandparents. I prepped cinnamon rolls for the morning. And we went to bed super, super late.

A sleeping sweetheart.

Inflatable table and chairs (so we can take it with us if/when we move again).

Sisterly love.

Christmas morning was fantastic, as Lane came into the living room oohing and ahhing over her new things. She played all morning long. We skyped with my mom for about an hour that morning, since she's in Alaska and 11 hours behind us. Shannon went to another church that afternoon and the girlies and I stayed put. I made a super easy crock pot honeyed chicken recipe that I found on pinterest for dinner. We skyped with our families in North Carolina and Alabama on Christmas evening before putting Lane in bed at about 6:30.

Lane's loot (other than the kitchen and table and chairs): an alphabet puzzle (which she's already mastered), new books and dresses from Aunt Rachel and Uncle Lucas, new books from us, a matching game, mittens, and cover-ups for art time.

Practicing cutting all that new food.

And the day after Christmas we tried to start getting back into a normal routine of a kind. Shannon's been back at work (although I have been so thankful that he works from home most of the time). We've visited with a couple of friends. We got Christmas packages from Shannon's mom and stepdad. I've taken Lane on a few quick errands with me while Noel napped (to the park, to drop off a disc of photos to a friend, to the corner grocery store, etc.). I've done a million loads of laundry. We've discussed taking down our Christmas decorations, although that's as far as we've gotten. And we've started to attempt to tackle this thing called real life as a family of four.

I'll keep you posted on how that's going.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,

how much you make me smile!

I absolutely love the look of our decorated Christmas tree when all the other lights in the room are out. LOVE it.

Since last year's Thanksgiving Day experience, we decided to start a tradition while we live overseas (and don't generally have Thanksgiving Day off to eat and spend with family). On Thanksgiving Day (or evening, actually) we put up our tree and eat pizza for dinner. Then we celebrate "real" Thanksgiving on Saturday with others who had to work, or had to go to school or language class, or for whatever other reason were unavailable for a real Thanksgiving feast on the fourth Thursday in November.

This year, however, we didn't stick to tradition. A tradition that only started last year, actually, so I'm not sure if it's officially a tradition or not yet. Anyhow, this year we put up our tree on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Shannon, Lane, and I were all home sick. We all felt awful. I think I felt the worst, since I had just contracted the cold on Tuesday, whereas Shannon and Lane had gotten it the previous Friday, but still, the point remains: we were all home and all felt like doing nothing. So we decided to have our "Thanksgiving Day tradition" on Wednesday instead of Thursday. We put up our tree. We listened to Christmas music. We watched A Charlie Brown Christmas while putting the tree up. We let Lane help hang ornaments and lights. I made homemade pizza for dinner. We set out our nativity scenes, put out all of our fun Christmas stuff, and hung schizophrenic blinking lights in Shannon's office (as opposed to on the tree...our only colored lights are insane and blink and chase and altogether drive me batty. So they're not on the tree this year [by the way have I mentioned my opinion on colored lights as opposed to white lights on Christmas trees? No? Colored lights are WAY better...there you go]).

And we haven't stopped smiling since. Christmastime makes me happy. Our Christmas mugs from Poland make me happy when I drink tea or coffee out of them. Holiday candles make my nose happy. Watching Lane tote our stockings around the house makes me grin from ear to ear.

And once again, I'm ever so grateful that we paid that $200 to check an extra bag full of our Christmas things. Ever. so. grateful.

Baby's First Christmas

Merry Christmas from Lane!

Our Christmas Day began with Lane sleeping until after 8:00 a.m.! We were shocked. I nursed her and then led her out into the living room. She lit up and threw her hands in the air (a new thing she does when she's excited) and immediately bee-lined it for her Haba blocks. A few minutes later she played with some of the letter-link crabs.


Oooh, new blocks!

A little later she discovered her piano, shape sorter, and giraffe puppet.


She likes to carry the piano around now...showing off her strength!

We played a bit, snacking on our Asian pears and chocolate, and then went into the kitchen where we feasted on pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes (just pumpkin pancakes for Lane) I had made on Christmas Eve. We drank coffee from America (thanks, Aunt Teresa!) and Shannon ate more chocolate.

We got cleaned up and Lane got her Christmas dress on.


Cute dress, huh? We had to make due with pink tights since the white ones my mom sent haven't arrived yet.

We bought her this dress before she was born. We knew that we wouldn't be in America for Christmas this year (hence no Christmas dresses available), and all the dresses were on sale after Christmas, so we went ahead and bought it. It fit her just perfectly and she was able to get around in it just fine. It was really funny, though, when she'd drop something and it would land underneath her. She'd keep leaning over, picking her dress up and trying to look between her legs. It was too funny.


Lane's first dress with a petticoat.

I started some rolls for dinner, we played some more, ate lunch (leftover pizza), and put Lane down for a nap. We relaxed while she slept and when she woke up we headed out the door to some friends' place. It was 65 and a gorgeous day. We had church and ate turkey (yes, we found one! But I didn't get a picture of it before it got massacred.), and then we booked it home in order to skype with all of our families. The streets here were packed. We couldn't figure out why on earth it was so busy...Christmas here is just a regular 'ol day, but it seemed busier than usual. It took us about 15 minutes longer to get home than it usually does.


Some of Shannon's haul from his dad: Auburn stuff in the newspapers and magazines.

When we got home we skyped with Shannon's parents first, then my parents. Then we got Lane to bed, and then Shannon and I watched Miracle on 34th Street. We hadn't seen it in years. We watched Christmas Vacation yesterday, much to Shannon's relief...he was so scared we weren't going to work it in!

Today all of our decorations are put up, the tree is down, and things are back to "normal." We have company coming this weekend and we're moving in 12 days so it didn't make sense to postpone putting up the tree. Neither of us feel like Christmas is over. We don't really feel like it's come yet. I think that having classes and having to study and things like that contributed to the lack of it feeling like Christmas.

I find myself mourning the fact that Lane's first Christmas came and went and we didn't really do any of the fun things that I remember doing as a kid. But then I tell myself: she won't remember this Christmas. She probably won't remember next Christmas. And she might not even remember her third Christmas. We'll be in America for her fourth Christmas, right about the time that she'll definitely have memories associated with the holidays. And by then we (hopefully) won't be learning a new language and our way around the city, what we can find to make our traditional recipes with, and so on. By then we'll have time to watch movies and bake cookies and make gingerbread houses and cut out paper snowflakes and read Christmas books. It will get better. One day Christmas will feel like Christmas again. One day.


Merry Christmas from the Scarbroughs!

Santa Came!

While we actually don't plan on "doing Santa" with our children, it really doesn't make any sense to wrap a bunch of presents for an 11-month old who doesn't yet know how to unwrap them! So we put most of her gifts under the tree unwrapped. She has (left to right): clothes and Haba First Blocks from Mimi and Papa, a shape sorter from Papa Buck and Nonna Lou, books from us, Mimi and Papa, and Grandma, letter link crabs from Aunt Rachel and Uncle Lucas, a giraffe puppet from Pops and Grandma Joyce, a keyboard from Papa Buck and Nonna Lou (and family), and a Haba Nelly Doll from us. There are some other gifts wrapped under the tree, mostly books and clothes, and I think two dvds.

We're very, very proud of our families. We feel like Lane is going to have a fantastic first Christmas and be very, very blessed, and we feel like our families honored our wishes to not go overboard. She'll be getting more stuff for her birthday in four (FOUR!) weeks. But we just want to say "thanks!" to all of our family members for all of the fun stuff they sent for Lane, and for keeping it simple. We're sure it was difficult...it was difficult for us too!

I'll be back in a few days with pictures of Lane in her Christmas dress, playing with her toys, and of our turkey (yes, we found one!) that we'll be eating tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmastime!

You know, there's just something about living in a Muslim country during Christmastime. I mean, it just doesn't feel like Christmas! They do celebrate New Year's over here and they put up trees, but it's just not the same. There isn't Christmas stuff, oh, everywhere. I've seen a very select few "Christmas" things out there. There's no snow, it's not very cold, and well, quite frankly it's just a little sad to me.


A Santa made from a coffee can that my mom made like 10 years ago, and a tray and coasters that Cindy, Shannon's stepmom, gave to us 2 years ago.

For all of those reasons, I'm very, very glad that we have a Christmas tree, a nativity (two, actually!), stockings, and a few other Christmas-y things. We paid $200 to bring a trunk full of nothing but Christmas stuff with us, and while it was hard to justify spending that money at the time, right now I'm very, very glad that we did it. I kind of wish we had more!


Our nativity. I've been hauling this around with me since college, so at least ten years.

I wanted to share with you a few of the things that we brought with us, things that make our home feel Christmas-y. Things we deemed important enough to pay $4 a pound to bring with us.


Our Christmas book collection (yes, I know, it's small. But it's growing!), and a few Christmas stuffed animals.


Our second nativity (oh, so small...great for traveling!), a box that holds my Polish ornaments, and an ornament hand-painted by my mom.


I inherited this pillow when my grandmother died. She did all the needlepoint.

Then we have our stockings, but you've seen them before here. And then there's our ornaments. I love ornaments.


Our ornament from last year, hand-painted Polish ornaments, and an ornament that was mine when I was a little girl.


My hot-air balloon ornament that my sister got me and an Auburn ornament that some of Shannon's friends got for us our first Christmas together.


Our " Our 1st Christmas" ornament.


Lane's "Baby's 1st Christmas" ornament.


Another ornament from my sister: it's Italian blown glass and a nativity scene (although it's hard to tell in this photo).


This year's ornament...we think it's perfect...a daddy marshmallow, a mommy marshmallow, and a baby marshmallow!


The blue ornament is from Prague, and the Auburn tiger is well, strangling an Alabama elephant. :-)


A Polish pottery ornament, a wooden "three wise men" ornament from Bethlehem, and a glass-blown ornament from my dad and stepmom.

And last, but not least, we have the few ornaments that are so ugly that they are relegated to the back of the tree. They were all Shannon's, pre-marriage.


Ugh.


Double ugh.


Oh, the humanity...

Anyone else notice a trend with all of Shannon's ugly ornaments? They're all Auburn ornaments! I mean, we have nice Auburn ornaments that we can display on the parts of the tree that people actually see. But these...these are too hideous to make people look at, don't you agree?