Getting in the Spirit

We went up the mountains to cut our tree!  It's been a "warm," dry winter, so there was very little snow.

We found a cute little tree, just perfect for our cute little house.

And my woodsmen cut it down!

 Grandma and Grandpa picked one a bit bigger.

And up it goes!

We had a buddy spend the night, so we had extra help with the tree

We are all prepped for Christmas and anxiously counting down to Daddy's arrival in 4 days.

Brighter Days

After grim reflections, let's focus on the joy.  We have plenty to go around.

The recently toothless Gabey enjoys the meal he cooked this week: Brinner

Maestro preps for his orchestra concert

With Grandma and Grandpa after the show

'Bout That Time Again...

When you awaken at 5 a.m. to emails from your hubby of post reports and housing questionnaires it resets the turning wheels.  Those wheels of time start rolling, the wheels that tell you to pack a bag and dream of new terrain.  It is the expat blessed curse.  Life is a cycle of pack outs and post bids.  And those wheels rattled our world today.

When I excitedly told the boys we would likely be packing up again in under 8 months they seemed thrilled.  Tales of a new international school with new ASAs and exciting layovers in Istanbul sparked smiles and chatters of excitement.  Zack would play all the sports and make new friends.  Gabriel would try out the Coding class.

But it all melted down when my emotionally thread bare extrovert collapsed in a heap during violin practice sobbing that he missed his dad and he doesn't want to move again.  He is tired of saying goodbye.  He is tired of packing up.  He is tired of new schools.

It is the expat life cycle.  It is a constant roller coaster.  And right now we're riding it out again.  Today we shed tears.  Tomorrow we will laugh.  The next we will fear for our safety.  The next we will tour the Old Silk Road.  And so it goes.

What will tomorrow bring?

Terrifying Tuesday

Tuesday is our crazy day.  It's the day we leave the house at first light and return after dark.  Of course, in a Wyoming winter all too easy to return home after dark.

But it was a productive Tuesday.  We all spent it improving our arts, making Mazlov proud at every turn.

Zack passed his AJF belt testing to earn his green stripe.

Gabriel, customarily a picky eater, has developed a sudden and (presumably) undying love of chicken wings.  He cooked them for us Tuesday evening.  They were delicious.  He enjoys his bounty below.

And I am working on those tricky stabilizers, trying to move beyond flexibility and actually strengthening the muscles so I can fall easily in and out of splits and straddles rather than using the floor or hands for stretching aids.  I also have Pimsleur Russian playing while I train in preparation for Uzbekistan next year.

And that's where we are this week.  Christmas decor makes its appearance this coming weekend with a possible tree cutting expedition.

The More Things Change....

As they say.  But they say a lot of things and so it goes.

I have a very poor history with good blogging habits, but I hope my recent Facebook defection will encourage me to more consistency.  I have an incurable obsession with posting picture of my ridiculously adorable children (yes, I'm biased, but it's true), so that will probably spur me to a more pious blogging life.

I have several reasons for leaving Facebook, none of which I feel like discussing in an online forum.  All in all, it's not earth or life shattering, so moving on.

As those who follow us on Facebook already know, the boys and I are back in the U.S. for the year while John serves in Kabul.  We are here in frozen Sheridan, WY (a.k.a. purgatory) and enjoying lots of wonderful quality time with family.  We purchased our first home and I am finishing grad school.  We'll be in Uzbekistan sometime next year.  We tend to change gears quickly, so try to keep up, but good luck.

We just returned from a 2 week drive down to Florida where we visited my amazing sister who works two jobs sewing for Disney and Universal and just purchased her very own house.  Look at us all adulting all over the place.  We bounced up to TN at my parents' for Thanksgiving and drove through a blizzard to get home to snowy Wyoming.

And now the moment most of you have been waiting for, pictures of my guys.  They are absolutely enchanted by the snow and have been tracking ice in and out all day.    And, by the way, it looks like dawn because it is.  Either they hate me or they are still on EST.  You decide.

Back to our regularly scheduled program...

It's been a whirlwind couple of months!  We had guests, a big Christmas Eve bash, Christmas, a trip to Bali, school re-starting (kindergarden and homeschool pre-school), and massive flooding.  This included 10 days of no internet, so I'm giving myself a pass on my horrible blogging inconsistency.

Our friends, Jason and Martina visited from Vienna over Christmas.  They spent their first week on a small island southeast of Bali then spent Christmas and New Year's with us.  We hosted a big Christmas Eve dinner which included a couple of very tasty duck.  Duck is now our new obsession.  I used the carcasses to make broth and the fat to make a host of other things and we were in duck heaven for almost a month with fried rice, Pho, and various other soups and stir fries.  I just bought another duck today to start paradise over again.


More wonderful friends, Ryan and Allie, came to Bali for their honeymoon and we met them in Denpasar and all shipped down to the same small island (Nusa Lembongan) Jason and Martina visited. We spent a wonderful few days lounging on the beach, riding scooters, eating delicious food, and relaxing.  I left my phone behind and enjoyed the days of technology purge.  The only drawback was that I had a cold which, rather than getting better, started turning into bronchitis while we were in Bali.  I was down for the count by the time we got back to Jakarta.

But I've recovered now and the boys and I have been working on getting back into our school routine.  Gabey and I take Zack to school around 7:20, then we spend our morning with various fun activities.  We might stay at school for a bit and peruse their wonderful library.  We might head down to the club where we sometimes swim, sometimes Gabey plays in the playroom while I do yoga at the gym.  Sometimes we have grocery day.  Sometimes we visit daddy.  It's a tough life.

Two weeks ago the whole of Jakarta suffered a massive storm with terrible flooding.  Tens of thousands were displaced.  We were stuck for two days and we lost internet for 10.  We lost electricity, but our compound has an excellent generator, so it was only out for a few minutes before the generator took over for a couple days.  Some people are still living in shelters, refusing to leave until rainy season ends.

Traffic has been getting steadily worse since we arrived.  Jakartans confess that this year is considerably worse than last year and I have noticed a change for the worse just in the past month.  It is to the point that we can't leave our house from about 4:30 pm until 9 pm.  I had to go to rehearsal at 7pm on Wednesday.  I left at 5:40 and arrived to my rehearsal (5 km away) at 7:20 pm.  If I felt safe enough I would probably walk next time.  I will actually consider taking an ojek instead of driving next evening rehearsal.

But, really, traffic is the only real negative here.  We've settled into a really nice life.  The boys have great friends, I have a wonderful Bible study, John is enjoying work, and we all have a such a great time together.  We miss everyone so much, but life is good.

Sushi

We've been really into sushi-making the last couple weeks.  On Fridays Johnny and I have been making a simple dinner for the boys then making sushi for ourselves after they go to bed.  We didn't realize it was so insanely easy!

First you make a big ol' bowl of rice.   After cooking the rice you stir in a mixture of oil, salt, sugar, and rice vinegar to make the rice sticky.  Press the rice onto your nori and add your goodies.  This bad boy below is alpukat (local Javan avocados) and seared tuna.

Roll it on up!

Slice it into cute little sushi rolls.

This week we got a little carried away.  But that meant we had three days worth of sushi goodness to inhale.  Below are tuna and salmon rolls with alpukat and cucumber.