Jubilee’s Christmas Crafting

This year Jubilee is loving Christmas crafts. It is really fun since she can do so many more things than she could last year. I have only done a few with her so far. A few weeks ago we made these salt dough ornaments so that we could get some off in the mail to some very special grandparents:

Today I drew a triangle on a piece of paper for Jubi and she colored it in and then glued some colorful squares to it for ornaments

Then we did a big project. I have a bunch of cardboard rectangles that I punched holes in. Then I grated some red and green crayons. Jubi sprinkled the shavings onto the cardboard and covered them with wax paper. Then I ironed them to melt the crayon. Then we peeled off the wax paper, covered them with glue stick, and stuck on letters that I had cut out yesterday. After the abundance of glue was dry (gluing is really one of Jubilee’s favorite things to do), she helped thread some yarn through the holes. Then she and Daddy hung up our banner and posed for a picture:Merry Christmas!!

Pregnancy

I keep getting questions about the new baby coming, so obviously I have done a terrible job at communicating about this pregnancy!!
The new little one is due March 3- just 3 months away!!! I will have the baby here in Cape Town - hopefully at home. I found a team of two midwives that I am Very happy with. They have lots of experience and are so gentle spirited, I feel blessed to have found them.
The midwives had me go in for an ultrasound at 22 weeks (mostly so they could see the position of the placenta.) I didn’t have any ultrasounds with Jubi, so it was a whole new experience for me. It was so fun to see the baby and definitely upped my excitement. The disc of pics will not open on our mac though, so we still need to borrow a pc and burn them on a new disc. We did try to find out the sex of the baby, but this little one would have none of that. Baby did not cooperate one little bit with that, so we’ll have another surprise- which will be lots of fun anyway!
I also went to the big Maternity hospital here a few weeks ago to meet the doctor that we would use in case of emergency. I was nervous, but so glad that there is an official back up plan should the baby or I be in distress.
I am getting things ready for the baby, but not too concentrated until after Christmas. Then, I will start sewing cute things, and the crib will move from our garage to our bedroom.
Here’s a little peek at how the baby and I are growing:

Thanksgiving

Hello everyone. Long time, no blog…. Woops!
I know this is late, but I just thought I would tell you how our Thanksgiving went. (For any Canadians reading, I am referring to American Thanksgiving, which takes place close to the end of November… I’m not that late.)
We hosted Thanksgiving at our house for all the Americans on staff with All Nations. (We let Stephen stay, and we had a few other nationalities too.) I felt like a real married woman since I was responsible for the turkey, chicken, stuffing, corn casserole, jello salad, and pumpkin pie.

This was my first time to cook a turkey, so I was a little nervous. But, you will get no funny pull out the fire extinguisher stories from me- my turkey turned out great. I wanted pumpkin pie with graham cracker crust, which sounds nice and easy- but not in Africa! There is no such thing as graham crackers, let alone a store-bought graham crust. And you can forget about pumpkin in a can. Here that easy sounding dessert requires the following steps:
1. Bake graham crackers
2. Boil pumpkin and puree
3. Crush freshly baked graham crackers
4. Make crust with crumbs
5. Mix up your pie filling, pour in pie crust, and bake!
What we Americans will do to have good pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Love to all from SA!
Tricia