Thanksgiving...Christmas...New Year's

I ended my last post by mentioning that we were headed to McDonald's to celebrate Thanksgiving with other ex-pat's. It was certainly not the most traditional Thanksgiving, but it was memorable!

 

 

 

After Thanksgiving we entered into a rather trying time. School became increasingly difficult, especially for Katie. We had a few meetings with the school and continued to have some recurring problems. We began to explore other schooling options. We did this with great reluctance, not wanting to institute another change for the kids but also wanting a school situation for the kids that would be good long term. We all decided together to have the kids visit another school in the city (a Christian private school). The lessons will still be in Lithuanian but we found the school somewhat easier to communicate with. The classes are smaller and the day is shorter. After visiting for two days we took some time as a family to process/discuss/pray and we were unanimous that a change in schools was in order. We made this decision during the last week of school prior to Christmas break. We informed their current school that we would be withdrawing and let the kids have a few more days of Christmas break (much needed rest I think). Their old school was a good school just not the best fit for us. Katie and Dylan will start at their new school on January 10. Please pray for them as they make this switch and have more new things in their future. On a positive note...they pass a yummy bakery on the way home from the new school and are excited to stop off for treats every now and then!

 

Celebrating Christmas in a new place was a challenge  for us. For most of the kids' lives we traveled over the holidays to spend it with family in PA, CA or AZ. Suddenly we were faced with a Christmas away from family and had to figure out what our traditions would be. We decided to have a nice Christmas Eve dinner (Ribs, pasta, veggies, apple crisp) and then go to a Christmas Eve Service in Klaipeda.

 

 

We are all dressed up and ready to go to church!



 

We agreed on a 6:00 wake up call for Christmas morning - but did get to sleep in until 6:15. Dylan was the first kid up (not surprising). He was very excited as you can see!

                                                     Katie got me a backgammon game.

Ken and Dylan

 

Dylan with some basketball cards and Katie with a cross, hand carved by a Lithuanian.

 

After presents we had Apple French Toast (Dylan's request). We had Christmas cookies to munch on throughout the day (Katie worked with me on the cookies and we had 5 different kinds). For lunch we used the leftover ribs for pork barbecue sandwiches and had fruit salad as well. Our Christmas dinner consisted of  potatoes that our friends here in LT taught us to make - very yummy. You put olive oil on a baking sheet. Scrub potatoes (dry them with the skin on). Cut the potatoe in half and put the cut side down. Use a brush to oil the skin and sprinkle with salt. Bake at 230 C. for 1 hour. They are YUMMY. We also had some sausages and fruit with a little leftover apple crisp. It made the Christmas cooking chores very simple for me so that we could spend the day together without me having to spend all of my time in the kitchen. We watched a movie, played some backgammon, checked out our new Christmas stuff and skyped with family. All in all it was a lovely Christmas.

 

The day after Christmas we caught a 6:50am bus for Latvia's capital, Riga.

Ken and the kids with a statue of the Bremen Musicians.

The Rabbit Kingdom

A Christmas tree in the square that has a monument noting that it was the site of the first Christmas tree...EVER!

A Church from the 1200's

Some examples of the art nouveau architecture that Riga is famous for.

The Swedish Gate.

 

We just celebrated New Year's. We were invited to spend it with another ex-pat family (the husband happens to come from my neck of the woods - went to Fairland Elem./Manheim Central...small world). We rung in the New Year with them and it was an experience. We went outside just before midnight and there were fireworks going off everywhere. Fireworks are readily available here and we were feet away from individual firework displays. Sparks were flying, kids were running around. It was chaos but fun chaos (especially since no one got injured)!

 

I can hardly believe all the changes that 2012 introduced into our lives. 2013 should certainly be interesting! Happy New Year!