Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello everyone and Happy Holidays!

I had a very tiring but absolutely fantastic week.  I survived my first major holiday away from friends and family and fully loved it.  I spent the day over at the Lackey's house, putting up their Christmas tree (which, I must say, is quite a different experience when you're working in 90 something degree heat and downing lemonade).  I had some help from a couple of the little ones around here.  Two year old Andrew loved helping to put up the ornaments.

Around 5:00 all the missionaries gathered at the Lackey's for the Thanksgiving feast.  It really was a feast, too!  We were blessed with such amazing food; turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, corn, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, homemade rolls, salads galore, etc.  It was just like Thanksgiving back home.  It was such a fun night; I would say that there were probably close to 30 people all together.  Lots of laughter, lots of eating, and in my case, lots of warding off a feisty Mmapula.

I am very blessed to have such a wonderful LBOM family to help get me through the holidays.  I was a little homesick from time to time throughout the day (especially waking up and not being able to run downstairs and watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade while drinking hot apple cider and eating orange rolls...I miss my traditions).  For the most part, I stayed busy enough to not get too bogged down with thinking about home.  That night, we went over to Brenda's to watch It's A Wonderful Life (another tradition of mine).  We were so exhausted from the day that we only watched an hour of it, then basically crawled home and collapsed into bed.
The next day, it was so hard to get out of bed and head to work.  Dietra and I were moving so slowly that day.  We definitely realized that we took having the day after Thanksgiving off for granted back in the states.

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving!  Happy Holidays!!

By the way, WONDERFUL news arrived Thanksgiving day...the baby house license finally arrived that day!  That is something that has been 5 years in the making; we can now start working with hospitals and the government to accept babies here!  Jana said that there are 3 that could be here by Christmas.  Praise the Lord!
(special shout out this week goes to my wonderful friend Brittnie for the care packages that arrived Thanksgiving Day!)
(and a belated shout out to my folks for the care package that came last week!)