Thanksgiving and TONS of Photos

So yesterday, we had our thanksgiving feast. It was delicious and wonderful. Of course, nothing beats being home surrounded by your own family during the holiday dinners. However, this was as special as it gets. We were able to show others what we love to eat and how fun it is to gather and tell how thankful they are for each other. I've posted a ton of pictures on this blog. It may seem a bit much, but I wanted to introduce some folks.

Bethany and I made pilgrim hats and indian bands for everyone to wear. Everyone was such a good sport and wore them the whole time! We all had a very nice time having a thanksgiving feast so far from home.

"Chief Dances With Flower Rainwater": Dave
"Flower Rainwater": Bethany
"Pilgrim Rodriguez": Anthony
"Pilgrim Wife": Erin
Yummy and Cute Turkey: Ryann

Such a fun photo!

Gobble Gobble Turkey Ryann

Chief Rainwater hunts the turkey but to his dismay, he couldn't shoot it! My little Indian baby

look at that expression on her face

Amanda (left) is American and she has been helping with the children's program here at Jubs and also helping out with Sunshade. She is from Maryland.
Bronwyn is employed full time at Jubs. She is mainly in charge of the children's program. She is South African.

Jo(Left) is a volunteer at Jubs. She is in charge of SunShade. Her husband Lex is an elder at Jubs. They are English. They have been missionaries in America for two years.
Darlene(center) and Jeremy(right) are both employed at Jubs and are in charged of all the ministries Jubilee does. They are going to be in America to help Louie Giglio's church plant.
This is Tessa.  She's so amazing.  She mainly organized this spectacular feast. She's the "secretary" that does whatever is thrown at her.  She's originally from Zimbabwe but is an South African citizen.
Bethany, whom you all should know.  Matt (center) is the son of Caryn.  Victor (right) is American, but I can't remember where he's from.

The most amazing Caryn.  She is the doctor who runs the Health Clinic at Jubs
Amanda is American and her hubby Jauque (sp?) is South African


These are the pies bethany and I made.  I made apple and the pumpkin pie with no leaves.  Bethany made the one with leaves.

The feast!

This is everyone who made it to the thanksgiving feast.

All the Americans who came to celebrate the USA holiday.

Pictures!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone back in the USA! We are all missing home and family. We love you and are very thankful for each of you.

Tonight we are going to pastors house. There will be over 20 folks gathered, most are not American. We are very much looking forward to it. I've been baking all morning yesterday making pumpkin pie, apple pie and cheesy potatoes. I'll bring corn as well. Bethany is making stuffing, broccoli casserole, pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheese cake! Yay! We will take lots of pictures and I'll post a few tomorrow.

But for now, here are a few new photos:

Caught "cleaning" the cupboards

On the beach one sunday afternoon

We were invited to a birthday party and Ry dressed up as a fairy

She can say "Hi dad" and "bye dad" and wave while she's doing it.
But, we aren't sure if she knows what it means just yet.

Family photo

"talking" to each other... looks we are puckering up the lips.

Breakfast 4 Dinner

Breakfast for dinner is pretty foreign to most people here in SA.  However, Tessa, our wonderful friend and coworker enjoys it so we invited her to sup with us one night.  It was a great meal!

Braai in SA

Jubilee has their own "thanksgiving" celebration.  At the service in the AM, it was all about thanks giving and showed a video of all the ministries that Jubilee has been involved with.  Since I'm in charge of the Mercy Store, i was in the video!  I wasn't too impressed with seeing myself up there in front of everyone.  After the service, everyone was invited to go celebrate and have a braai.  Jubilee rented a local high school's grounds and had huge slides blown up for kids, soccer games going, fun little activities for the little ones and they also rented the school's pool.  It was such a fun day!  

However, that is not the point of this particular blog.  The four of us (B, D, A and I) all have commented on how much a vegetarian would struggle here in SA.  People here LOVE meat!  There is meat everywhere!  EVERYWHERE!  So, because of the endless supply of meat, there is always an invitation to a braai.  A braai to them is what grilling/barbeque is to us.  The general rule is that if you are invited to a braai, you need to bring your own meat and drinks.  The side dishes would be provided by the "host".

At this particular Jubilee braai celebration, everyone had to bring their own food.  Anthony was in charge of getting it all fired up and ready for the meat to be piled on.  Then when the meat came, Anthony and Dave had been asked to take care of a few people's meat.  

Starting up the braai...

Few other men came to help out

This entire "grill" was completely covered with meat!  You can see many tongs poking through the smoke as the men guarded their meat.

Another picture of the meat filled braai.

Here the meat for the most part is cheaper compared to the USA meat prices.  Anthony had said that we could get four t-bone steaks here in SA for the price of one t-bone steak in the USA.  The t-bone steaks are no joke either, they are BEEFY.  One thing that is particularly interesting to me is that they do not grill hamburgers.  I'm still not sure of the reasoning.  They make burgers on the stove.  But that hasn't stopped us, we still make our juicy burgers!

It really has been so much fun to grill out every single week and have people over.  We all really enjoy it.  Well except Ryann, she hasn't gotten to the point where she can fully appreciate a dinner from a braai.

bday part 2

More pictures from my birthday. This was after Anthony took me out to dinner. Such a fun night!

Gifts I got from Wes and Leigh

Sneaking in some icing...

Yummy homemade yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

The awesome baker of this cake (Bethany). The top half is frosting from a can (dark color) the bottom half is icing that she made. She wasn't impressed with the icing that she made so she put it only on one half.

There wasn't enough candles to make a captital "E", so this is a lower case "e".

Cheesying It Up

Bethany and I were chatting and both agree that some of these photos will be the photos to embarrass Ryann during her teen years...  

"Geesh, mom! Why didn't you just wipe my mouth off?"  :)

My birthday

It was quite strange spending my birthday in a different country, so far from family and friends.

However, it was a fun day. Anthony, Ryann and I all went up Table Mountain via a cable car. It was beautiful up there.

It was a little chilly. So the jean jacket and socks were needed. I think shes adorable no matter what she wears.

Anthony couldn't stop taking pictures of me...

Beautiful Cape Town. However, Cape Town has it's share of pollution. It was so hazing we could barely see the mountains on the other side of the bay.

we gave Ryann a biscuit (cookie) for a snack. This is the end result.

This is the cable car we rode up on.

After Table Mountain, Anthony and I dropped Ryann off with D and B so that Anthony could take me out to a shushi place. I'm not a big fan of sushi, but this place has this DELIOUS grilled lemon/garlic salmon. I had asked if he would take me there for my birthday dinner a month ago and anthony was delighted to take me there because unlike me, he loves sushi. It was a win/win situation! After dinner, we headed home and Bethany made a yellow cake with chocolate frosting all from stratch. It was great! Wes and Leigh, friends/neighbor/coworker of ours came over for cake and to sing happy birthday. It was a very nice birthday.

Congrats to my beautiful twin sister. Her and her beau got engage on our birthday. I'm so happy for them. I love you Laura.