Thanksgiving Day

This was my first time back in the U.S. for Thanksgiving since 2002, so the first one for three of my children, and the first one in memory for two of the other three.

My mother took Lukas and Katie out to the garden in the morning to harvest what was left. There wasn't a whole lot, but they were very pleased with themselves:

The morning was occupied with various activities. Mom, Katie, and Jörn folded won-tons:



My sister-in-law played with her two littlest nieces:

The big cousins played tag and hide-and-seek outside in the gorgeous weather:

Dad and my brother (who requested that his name and face not appear on my blog) put a new cat-door in the new outside door they got for the bathroom:

Here's the old one, which is proof for why it had to be replaced: (we didn't take a photo of the new one after it was installed and it's raining now)

Then my sister Erin and my sister-in-law took a turn at the won-ton folding:

 ...and various people flopped on the couch.

Finally, the turkey:

For some reason, we didn't get any photos of my Grandma, who was happily able to come for a couple of hours and enjoyed herself very much, nor of my aunt and cousin, or of the festive tables. There were 19 of us all together. My sister-in-law did take some photos, which I might be able to add later, but for now I just wanted to get this posted.

Conversations

"Dog!"

"I can get a bathroom in there in two days."

"Do you like my princess?"

"And then she said okay."

"I'm not sure if they're open then."

"We go through a lot of milk in our house."

"Oh, I think we'll be in the Mediterranean for a good long time still."

"Leave the dog alone!"

"So, do you think you'll get the roof done this week?"

"This storm wasn't anywhere near as bad as they said it would be."

"Someone needs to change the baby!"

"Dog! A pet it!"

"See? The princess has a pink skirt!"

"So do you really like the Nook?"

"Leave the dog alone!"

"Who wants to see the movie?"

"Dog! I like it!"

"Okay, so I might not have it painted in that time."

"Do we need more milk?"

"We raced the boats in the ditch canal."

"I need to go on Farmville because my crops have all died!"

"Did you see this photo of a bear?"

"Cat!"

"Turn the TV off!"

"So did you hear that his sister had the baby?"

"Just help me."

"Don't scream at the cat."

"They are shooting ducks."

"These are cabernet glasses."

"I'm sure she needs her diaper changed."

"This is fake sugar but it has the same volume."

"What are you looking for?"

"This toaster is slow."

"He's a Cream-of-Wheater."

"Pick up the train pieces."

"Away! A throw it!"

"Can I go on e-mail?"

"Where are my socks?"

"So what time are you leaving?"

"No, I don't want to see the movie."

"Banana!"

"And he said, 'But he CAN'T go back with them!' "

"No, not even when he was a baby."

"How short can I make it?"

"No, you don't need to be on there."

"I'd just like to know if it's fixable."

"These socks never stay on."

"When are we going skiing?"

"No, she peels it herself."

"Leave the dog alone!"

Guess what: there are 14 people living in this house at the moment, and we had up to 18 on the weekend. And two dogs (well, just one now--the other one went home with my sister) and three cats (not that we've seen more than two--one of them stays away from children). And it did snow Saturday night but was raining Sunday morning and has been raining almost ever since, and now it's Tuesday morning and I'm going just a bit stir-crazy...

Not exactly an introduction

Friends' reports were correct: this website is very easy to use and photos upload quickly. It took two tries for me to convince Blogger that I wanted THIS time zone, but it's now set correctly. The only question I have is that since I corrected the time zone and it re-dated and re-timed my first post automatically (and correctly), does that mean that if I post from a different time zone, my choices will be either to let the computer think I'm still in Cyprus, OR to have it reset the times for ALL previous posts?

In the meantime, I've now posted a profile photo, a photo that my friend Peggy took of me a few weeks ago, while I was breastfeeding my two youngest children at the computer.

(I had two breastfeeding children when we first got internet connection and e-mail almost 11 years ago and my friend Amy sent me a list of common abbreviations--LOL, DH, DD, DS, and so on. I printed the list out for easy reference, and one day I read NAK in an e-mail from her. I couldn't remember that one and wrote back, "What does NAK stand for? I don't have the list within reach and I'm nursing Jacob and don't feel like moving." She of course wrote back ROFLOL because I'd not been able to look up NAK because I was NAK: Nursing At Keyboard.)

Anyway (I say "anyway" a lot, which I have to, to get back on track after my paranthetical comments, which have a tendency to be longer than the original ones), the photo seemed a good choice because I'm not often on the computer and NOT NAK, although I don't usually have both children at once. Ironically enough, I started the last paragraph with my 11-week-old in the bouncy chair and my thisclosetotwo-year-old climbing on my husband, but I'm now NAK tandem while I sit cross-legged on the couch, the laptop balanced between one knee and the piano bench... (Baby in the cradle hold, older child in the football hold, for anyone who's interested. In the photo, they're the other way around. I also often have both in the football hold, but the little one is now too big to comfortably have them both in the cradle hold at the same time.)

I'm trying to remember if I had a point? I think I was going to list the places I've lived, but I don't think I feel like it now. On e-mail lists I always signed myself "Sheila in Germany" or "Sheila-usually-in-Germany" (for when I was, um, writing while not in Germany...) until we moved to Cyprus in January 2009, so for awhile I was then "Sheila-in-Cyprus-but-was-in-Germany" and finally got comfortable with "Sheila in Cyprus." But at some confusing point--I think it was while we were in South Africa, but going back to Germany after a few months and I knew we'd be moving to Cyprus eventually--I joined a homeschool forum and had to give a name, so settled on "Sheila Somewhere." That name, at least, will always be accurate. Since this blog has no stated purpose except for me to have fun rambling without feeling that I'm imposing on anyone, I couldn't come up with any more accurate name than that.

Here's a photo of my second-youngest daughter, Helen, who will be two years old on Sunday. This photo isn't one of her cutest, but I'm posting it because although it's from a couple of weeks ago this is about what she looks like at the moment ("Mommy-get off the computer!"). And besides, it's so easy posting photos and I don't know what else to put here!

The photo in the first post is, fairly obviously, our whole family, taken about two and a half hours after my youngest daughter, Elisabeth, was born. :-)

And now, having rambled about nothing in particular, I have to come up with a title for this post.

Here I go again

I like the idea of blogging. It took me awhile to like it, though, and I'm still not sure why I do.

My first blog, Trying to Homeschool in Germany, was started because more and more people were asking me to keep them updated on our struggle to gain permission to...guess what...homeschool in Germany. I copied and pasted all of my updates dating back to, I think, July 2004, and was fairly good about updating when there was any news on either our family or in general in Germany with regards to homeschooling. My blog was found by googlers and we even helped two other families get permission, but our family never did. We also spent a significant amount of time outside of Germany, and were in such a precarious legal situation while in Germany that I no longer was able to post much about our own struggles anyway, which rather defeated the original purpose of the blog.

When we moved to Cyprus in January 2009, several people asked me to please continue updating my blog so that they could keep up with us. I ended up starting a new blog that was for that specific purpose, with the grand and glorious title of The New Blog. I've sometimes tried to keep up with it, but haven't done a great job. It hasn't helped that I started getting (a bit too much) into Facebook, and the specific people who asked me to keep my blog updated are all on Facebook now. In fact, one of them is on FB ONLY so that she can see our photos, as that's considerably faster than e-mail and I haven't managed to post photos to the blog, for no reason I can understand.

Then not long ago the host made some changes that I found confusing, not to mention did away with the wonderful template consisting of just books. I don't mind new things--in fact, I very much enjoy new things. What I don't like is changes to things I like! Friends kept recommending blogger.com, so being up with my very-nearly-two-year-old too early this morning, I decided to have a go.

So, here I go again. If I can now manage to post a photo, I just may post here again someday, from somewhere...