Pro Life

Firstborn is getting to choose some electives this year, which is fun for her. She is the yearbook editor, and she also signed up for Speech class. She has enjoyed creating and giving speeches, something that does not cause her a lot of anxiety. She had to choose a topic on which to give a persuasive speech. She chose the lie of Planned Parenthood "every child wanted." She wore her most professional clothes and delivered a homerun speech, knowing she might face some opposition. Her guy classmate came to tell me later, "I think she needs to run for President. She nailed it." I am proud of my daughter and her convictions. She's been firm in what she believes to be right/wrong since she was a little girl. Speak up and speak the truth! 

Fall 2015 Shots

We never made it to our Fall Place this year, the spot outside of town with so many deciduous trees. Our weekends this Fall have been so full! But before these beautiful leaves on my street turned brown, I was determined to take a few pictures of the kids!

Sweet Cheeks, with her new layered haircut!

Big Ben, sitting tall. Not so chubby anymore.

Miss Middler, beautiful inside and out! I hope she always wears braids.

Twinkle Toes, my sweet girl.

And Firstborn, of whom I am so proud!

Anniversary #19

We had such a lovely anniversary on November 16. Though we are not hitting a major milestone this year, #19 had to be one of my favorite anniversaries. Our children were so excited and jumped out of bed, wishing us a happy anniversary, giving us cards. The older girls had basketball until 6PM, so we came home and fed the younger ones, then went out for dinner alone. 

We went to the Japanese stir fry place I love! 

With the man I love! 

When I got home, I was given gifts from my children, which I certainly wasn't expecting. Twinkle Toes and Miss Middler painted me some watercolor art that is beautiful. I want to frame them. Then Firstborn presented me with this gift. I was speechless. She had taken pictures of things that created letters in our neighborhood (and one picture in Antalya). Then she put them all in sepia tone and paid to have them custom framed to spell out our last name. I really teared up. My kids are so thoughtful towards me. 

And then CC surprised me with this beautiful Turkish rug. We don't always do gifts for anniversary, so I just kept getting surprise after surprise.


And the best gift of all is the 6 people I live with!

Happy Thanksgiving

My blog is going to be a little bit out of order, but I wanted to post this to wish everyone far away a VERY Happy Thanksgiving weekend! We had such a lovely day. Back in the early days of the school, back when we were small, we worked a 1/2 day, then came home and cooked turkey for dinner that night. These days we get Thursday off. I was blessed to find a turkey (that's right...turkeys can be hard to find in Turkey!), and that one of our guests offered to take the bird off my hands and smoke it! Mmmmm. You must know that turkeys were named for the country of Turkey. The early Americans thought the bird came from this part of the world. 

We had quite the spread! And someone was quite ready to eat. I was given a ham last Spring. I froze it and saved it for this special day and my special guests.

 We got to have a baby at our house this year!!!

 After lunch, the teens and our IT guy played board games.

We had the Macy's Day Parade (not this years, it doesn't start until 4PM our time, so streamed last year's parade) on in the background and just enjoyed chatting.

And gaming.

Sweet Cheeks couldn't get enough of this sweet baby. And I couldn't stop thinking how much I miss babies.

Here's the whole group. They blessed us by sharing this special day with us! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Ankara in Two Days V

I have two last sweet memories from this amazing week the team was here. My sis-in-law and I found a quick hour to slip away. I wanted to show her where we are looking at moving in the next year, when our school moves to the new campus. The location has not been officially announced, but as the time gets closer, we are looking at moving to a house closer to the new school. We drove through the neighbhorhood, just so she could have a mental picture of it. Then, just as we were leaving, we spotted these sheep and goats. She had really been wanting to see some on our road trip, but because we flew instead of driving from Antalya, we hadn't seen any. Then God put some right in our new "backyard."

Our final meeting was a send off and just a time to say thanks to them. Here's the team and our family in our home. We are so thankful they came!

Ankara in Two Days IV

Probably one of the biggest highlights for all of us was our little trip down to the shack neighborhood at the edge of our town. We took food collected by the kids at school to distribute to some needy families living near us. This little gal was sobbing and would not be consoled. I later saw a picture of her, grinning ear to ear, next to one of the team members. It warmed my heart to see the rest of the story that day.

There are a couple of families that I recognize. I felt it was safe to accept their invitation to come in. They offered us tea, which we declined. But we did go in and greet them and spend a few minutes with them.

There are two families living in this small house. The patriarch told us this was one of his grandbabies.

We asked if we could pray for him. He simply asked that we pray for the health of all his children and grandchildren.

It was memorable for us. My new strategy for delivering Christmas boxes with my students is to find out the names and ages of all these kids, then assign a kid to each student.

We took one last picture as we left. This handsome refugee young man saw his opportunity to get in a picture with these pretty lasses. His folks and we both laughed at his amazing timing.

Beautiful people, beautiful day!

Ankara in Two Days III

We really wanted the team to see the school and get a little taste of what an awesome place it is! They gave of their talents and gifts to serve us for the two days they were in our city.

Character Building classes....

Subbing so teachers could have a little time to work on long-term planning....

Lunch and recess duties....

Teacher training....

Bible classes...

Music classes...(how many times did you say that you sang Old McDonald, guys?)

Parenting seminars....

PE!

And just some good ol' hugs and reminders that we are loved and not forgotten!