Catching up (part 2): home sweet home!
Posted in family news by Liz on February 20th, 2012 at 1:56 pm.
One perq of going to language school in Canada is that we were able to go home for Christmas! It was such a blessing to be able to see our family again. This was of course true for Tim and I, but we were especially glad that the kids were able to reconnect with their grandparents!
Benjamin enjoyed giving out lots of hugs and kisses to everyone, which of course we had to get on camera!
Jacob had tons of fun with both sets of grandparents. Grandma Kathy waited until he arrived to get a Christmas tree, since we didn’t get one here in Canada. He got to help pick it out, string lights on it, and decorate!
Of course, after Ben charmed everyone with his hugs and kisses, they were putty in his hands. He cashed in on this for plenty of storytime!
Gifts were definitely a footnote this year, far overshadowed by the blessing of being with family (although shouldn’t it always be this way?). But I have to say, Tim’s mom got Jacob a pretty awesome gift: it’s a pen and recordable sticker set. What’s that, you ask? You take the stickers, put them on pages of kids books, press the “pen” to the sticker, and record the words on that page. The end result is multiple books that Jacob now has “read” to him by Grandma Rita, even when we’re far from Idaho! Jacob just presses the pen to the sticker, and Grandma reads to him. Oh the things that missionaries couldn’t do for many years, that we are now blessed with!
Now don’t get me wrong, we adults had some fun too! I especially enjoyed a night out at Simple Sushi with friends. Fabulous sushi, and even fabulouser company. What more could a girl ask for? Well, maybe she could ask for a photo program that didn’t cut people out of the picture… that would be nice! Sorry the pics are so small, by the way… we’re having some glitchy issues with Picasa that we haven’t gotten to the bottom of yet.
And of course I had to include a photo of the Christmas morning madness… where floor becomes a sea of tissue paper, boxes, and bows. Thank goodness for recycling! But what a special time to have with family – we stored up those moments to savor next year, when we are far from home!
Can’t end this post without showcasing what was perhaps Benjamin’s coolest gift – a handmade hat, knit for him by his (12 year old) cousin, Elijah! Perfect for a chilly Canadian winter!
Aren’t you proud of me for (almost) having caught up? I wasn’t sure I could make it happen, but it is fun to feel like I’m finally doing some justice to our domain name fees! lol.
Next up: the last “catching up” blog (at least for awhile!) – about what we’ve been up to since we returned to Quebec in early January. Stay tuned…
Catching up (part 1 1/2): journeying home for Christmas!
Posted in family news by Liz on February 17th, 2012 at 10:06 am.
So as I started to put together photos and content to catch up on our Christmas-time in the US, I realized that this wouldn’t be complete without describing our journey! We ended up with kind of a crazy itinerary, partly based on plane ticket prices (higher in Canada, lower in New York), weather (likely to be snowy everywhere, meaning the least driving we could do, the better) and what sounded like fun (train-travel, anyone?)! The end result? We drove to Montreal, where we spent two nights, dropped off our car at an airport parking lot, took Amtrak to Albany, spent a night there, then flew to Boise. We did the reverse on the way home! While some of the logistics were a touch stressful, we had fun overall. The only real bummer was that it was 10 degrees
in Montreal when we were there, making it too cold to wander around old town
Montreal with the kids.
Here’s a few pics of our travels:
We all really enjoyed the train! We took Amtrak from downtown Montreal to Albany NY, paralleling the north-south length of Lake Champlain. It was beautiful!
Pulling out of Montreal… Jacob loved watching the skyscrapers pass by!
We were blessed to have bulkhead seating, which gave the boys room to play in front of our seats (Jacob’s checking out our GPS here, to see how fast the train was going).
The bulkhead space worked well for when it was time for Ben’s nap, too!
The boys loved playing in the luggage compartment on the train…
And on the luggage cart at our Albany hotel!
We were happy to see that our flight would connect through Chicago O’Hare airport. The Chicago Children’s Museum has a permanent installation there – an airport-themed playground in the middle of the airport! Here’s Ben enjoying part of that…
The playground just plain rocks… here’s Ben in the passenger area of the pretend plane…
And now he’s flying the plane! There’s actually a phone in the cockpit that connects to the elevated control tower on the other side of the play area!
As much as I love O’Hare for the kids area, this is my favorite part… the underground
tunnel between two concourses. It’s an art installation in which there are tons of different colored neon lights on the ceiling, which move like rainbows… and the walls are wavy panels of what amount to large paint chips… and there’s cool tonal sounds that ring as you go by on the moving walkway! I have memories of this tunnel from when I was aged 7 and we went through O’Hare on our way to Australia, so it was really cool to take my kids through there, more than 20 years later, and see that it’s still there!
Catching up (part 1): the holiday season in Quebec!
Posted in family news by Liz on February 10th, 2012 at 2:06 pm.
So I thought I’d try to catch up the blog a little bit over the next few days… so here’s Catching up, part 1 – the holiday season in Quebec. Next will be Catching up part 2 – the holiday season in Idaho, and after that will come Catching up part 3 - what we’ve done so far in 2012! After that, I hope to just stay caught up on a more regular basis… wish me luck!
The holiday season was a blur of studying, festivities, studying, parties, exams, and of course, more studying! But we language students do know how to quit our books at the end of the day have some fun too, and we pulled out all the stops for a real American thanksgiving in late November. We had two turkeys with all the trimmings, plus some Korean dishes that some of our fellow missionaries from Korea brought! We topped it off with several flavors of pies, and my infamous chocolate cake (which as you can see below, Jacob quite enjoyed!).
When the Christmas season arrived, we had plenty of occasion to celebrate. This pic is of me enjoying some coffee with a classmate at our ladies Bible study Christmas party.
We also enjoyed a Christmas banquet put on by our language school, that combined the native French-speaking Bible students on campus with our group of missionary French-learners. Here’s a photo of some of us ladies who studied here last semester, all gussied up! From left to right, are: Dawn (also with MAF, headed for Congo), Lillian (she has served for a decade already in Burkina Faso and is will return there in a couple of months), Chelsea (also headed for Burkina Faso), Melissa (headed for Togo with her husband) and moi. Dawn and Melissa finished up their studies in December and are now preparing for the field – we miss them a lot! There were actually a couple of other ladies in the photo too, but Picasa seems to have decided not to show them at the moment, so I’ll have to include them in photos another time.
The Bible students put on a program – all in French of course – complete with spoof videos and some beautiful music. We missionaries participated by eating lots of yummy food (of course!) and singing a hymn in French in three-part harmony (we were a bit short on tenors!). Here’s our group singing:
Well, it’s back to the books for me for the moment, but I’ll be back soon with pics of the holidays at home with family in Idaho. Bon journée à tous!