Thankful

When Noah first got this job, and still to this day I have/had numerous people ask me what exactly it was that Noah does? Even more still, were the surprising number of people who had heard of the State Department, but still mostly through knowing that the Secretary of State was someone important. Far fewer people than I had expected actually knew who,where, and what the Foreign Service Officers for the State Department were all about. Well folks, they are hard working men and women and fantastic colleagues of Noah's all over the world that help make Americans feel safe and protected and looked after no matter where in the world they may be (among many other incredibly important tasks). So for a real life example of what the State Department actually does for that matter....it is help out in situations like these. Noah has been a busy busy beaver recently, but it is nice to know that he is there to help. Mostly, I am just truly grateful for all of the hardworking men and women who help and protect us as Americans, and promote democracy and freedom all over the world. You really do help our world go round, and remind us how truly blessed we are to be Americans in our times of need. Thank you.

The truth of the matter

So, the truth of the matter is...

I have 3 very blogworthy things that I need to get posted-including our trip to France! I promise, pictures are coming. These are just things that will take some actual thought, picture uploading and organization; and sometimes that just takes the right mood to sit down and do it. So, the truth is I'm just not in the mood right now, but I am in the mood to jot down a few other random little things that have been going down around here. Number one: Ronan has been cracking me up lately with his terms for things. He calls Fruit Roll Ups "fruit blankies". He can also hear you mention ice cream from a mile away, yet when you are asking him to do something and are three inches from his face he can pretend he can't hear you (and you're not even there) without blinking an eye. He has also mastered the evil laugh of Mwa-hah-hah. Seriously, it's creepy how well he does it! He is still my snuggle bug though, and is begging to be rocked to sleep lately. I guess I will oblige, since when new baby comes it will be much harder to baby him. Number two: Food makes me happy. I've always liked to eat, sure. But for the last few months I've been making more of the things that I really have wanted to eat from scratch (something I was never very great at before). Now that I'm taking the time to do it (which still isn't my favorite part), I'm realizing how much I am loving getting to eat some super yummy food and dinners. We did our fare share of eating out when we were in the States, and we do some here...but definitely less than we used too. I think I went through kind of a food rut at first, then just decided I had to make it myself. I know, duh. But I put it off as long as I could. I was always the first one in line when someone said "who wants to go to Olive Garden?"! For example last night I made a tasty roast, rolls from scratch and real mashed potatoes (and it was a Wednesday night!) That used to only be on the docket for a special Sunday meal or something...well, and actually the homemade rolls would have been Rhodes rolls even then. I've come a long way:) I've been thinking about this, and decided that what it comes down to a lot of the time is parking. We do go to the places right by our house, but we don't want to overdo those, so some other places we might venture to normally make us change our mind because parking will such a nightmare to find. That's life in a huge city I guess though! And, it has helped out pocketbook as well. Anyway, those are my thoughts on cooking for the day. Number three: I love that Porter loves his school so much. He is thriving and getting such a great experience and learning about so many new cultures. He has been requesting to grow his hair long for days now (and I'm talking long like down to his bum, so that he can have a braid like his buddy from Singapore). These are things I love, although I have told him that his friend has been working on that his whole life...he is too far behind and it probably isn't going to happen:) Number four: We have also finally decided to have someone come help clean our house. I wanted to wait a while until I got myself settled and knew where I wanted things to go and feel at home before we got a helper. It is also more expensive here than many other posts to get domestic help, so I was debating whether or not I really wanted too. ( Cost wise I'd say we are a lot more expensive than all the major hardship posts, but probably not quite as expensive as the Western Europe places) We have ended up finding the perfect solution for our family though. We've been able to work it out for the help to come one day every other week! So yay! I am still getting some help, and at the very least my house will be deep cleaned thoroughly every two weeks, without breaking the bank. It is an amount in the budget that I can handle, being that I do stay home with the kiddos and all. So anyway, I'm quite excited about it, deep cleaning bathrooms has never been a favorite hobby of mine...but the BEST part is, they will do all the IRONING!! Love it. Number five: Porter got some rockin' Crocodile slippers the other day. They are dang cute, and he loves them. These hard floors are hard on our feet, and I'm glad that they have a good selection of slippers around. So, that's all. That's our life lately!

I never would have guessed!

Growing up I have fond memories of watching My Three Sons with my Grandma, and my mom for that matter. It was one of their favorites, and I thought it was great. It was always full of good lessons, good and fun parenting and some great times with brothers.

Now, being that I come from a family that heavily favored the female I never would have guessed while I was growing up that I would end up with a family of boys!

BUT

As it turns out, I maybe should have started to guess when I married my husband. In the last three generations of his family they will now 12 BOYS and only 1 girl. So yes, to keep the trend going, she will get to keep her title of the "the only girl in the family"! We have now had 4 ultrasounds, and as much as I would have loved to see a little girl, there is no denying that we are having ANOTHER BOY folks!!!

I will soon be able to start conversations with those three words:

My Three Sons...

My Three Sons.....Aack!!

We are completely thrilled, and have already decided on a name that we both love; I just hope I am ready to handle what three boys will throw our way! Part of it makes me terrified, and part of it makes me SO excited that they can have their own little force of friends that will love to do all the little boy things as they grow up together all around the world.

So introducing Bebek #3

What a handsome little guy!

And yes, the money shot....

Although they don't point it out and write "boy" on it here, I think it is pretty apparent.

We love our little guy so much already, and by all accounts things are

going great and he is looking healthy so far.

And although we do like a certain name, we will keep you all guessing and not post it on the blog until things are final. (just incase)

So stay tuned!!

Winter Break At It's Best

This was taken after I woke Porter up at NOON! Yes, 12:00pm-lunchtime! And the best part....I had to drag him out of bed and he exclaimed, "But I am SOOO tired mom!"

Seriously, this kid! He is so hilarious sometimes. Only a few more days buddy, then it is back to the grind.

New New Year's Traditions

For New Year's this year, we kept things low key...yet had a terrific time and discovered some things that we have decided we want to make new traditions out of! Last year, for those of you who choose to remember with us, we spent New Year's Eve 2009 in Zanesville, OH with some Tim Horton's and Chinese food that the front desk person at our Fairfield Inn recommended. We were on our very last leg of our cross-country drive to Washington D.C. to start training in A-100! What a difference a year makes! Wow. I can't believe that was already a year ago! Anyway, it actually was pretty good Chinese, and we decided that it might be fun to go with that idea again and make it a tradition for our life in the Foreign Service. We were going to go out for lunch, but the boys put up a stink and we ended up just doing takeout. It worked out great though, as the boys had plenty of room at home to play with their chopsticks!

"Isn't this what belt loops are for Mom?"

Such a cutie- and L.O.V.E.D. those chopsticks!

Later that night we got together with our terrific friends to use up some of the other holiday goodness (ham from Christmas dinner, pineapple chunks left from our Christmas drink, and an extra pie crust) and whipped up some delicious homemade pizzas! They actually turned out really great and were a lot of fun to make!

Ours had ham, bacon bits (yes, I know-both Pork) and some pineapple! It was SO yummy, and just what I had been craving! It was actually our friends idea, and I'm so glad they came up with it! I think we might do it every year now. It was great.

Porter made one by himself-he loved it, although he preferred to use the "dump and smash" method when it came to applying the cheese! It was pretty funny.

To top off the pizzas we broke out the board games and played a round of Settler's of the Stoneage! It was a good game, although Mr. B took home the W and entered his name in the box top for posterity! Congrats again B.

Seriously, sometimes it doesn't get better than this...too much yummy food, friends, and board games! A great relaxing evening for sure.

Now C is also the fantastic party girl and picked up these terrific hats for the evening! My boys LOVE party hats. It was a dream come true!

The kiddos did amazingly well, we were planning on calling it a night early- but falling asleep to movies seemed to be the order of the night for the littles!

Thus, just us adults made it to the countdown. We watched the countdown on the TV and said Gule Gule to 2010! We also were even then able to see some of the fireworks over the Bosphorus from our window! Welcome 2011!

Porter and Ronan went up to our bed a earlier in the night-Ronan couldn't make it, but surprisingly when we went up Porter was still awake and watching his movie! He loved it, and was proud of himself for staying up until midnight!

Now for New Year's Day we took the boys swimming in the morning (gotta love the indoor heated pool!) which they always love. Then with not too much else specific on the docket for the day we were invited over to our friends for another round of Stoneage AND...

perhaps our new favorite thing about New Year's Day!

So our friend is from the south and they eat Black Eyed Peas every year on New Year's Day for good luck! Now, being that neither one of us are from the south we have not previously done this...or ever even eaten Black Eyed Peas before! They were SOOOO yummy though, and we were both in love. I'm getting her recipe for sure and I think we will be doing this again! If our new home base is going to basically be DC in the future it can almost be considered "the South". So I say we can adopt this tradition.

It worked out well for us as well, being that we definitely need some good luck this year! In 2011 we will be wanting good luck for the birth of our new little one, AND we will be bidding in the fall for our next post! Hopefully the peas will do their job! Happy New Year everyone, and we hope 2011 is a great one for all!

Christmas Morning 2010

What the boys walked into after Santa came...even though half of the presents this year were small like DVD's and Nintendo DS Games, Santa wrapped them in big boxes for effect! The boys LOVED it. We have definitely decided that watching your kiddos on Christmas morning is one of the great joys of life!

Now here Santa showed real smarts...what better gift for two kids stocking stuffers living in Istanbul than some awesome headlamps? For power outages, you know. We don't get a ton, but we have certainly had our share of "brown outs". Mom and Dad each have one, and the boys always want to use them. Now we can each have one tucked safely in our bedside tables! Santa did a great job with the colors too, Porter's is green-the color of monsters of course!

Ronan and his favorite gift of the year...WOODY! Too bad he was too enthralled with the new video on the TV and pulling the string on Woody's back over and over for a decent picture.

Ronan again enthralled by a new gift, Chutes and Ladders from Aunt Katie. Maybe if he stares at it long enough he will learn how to read!

Now ridiculous as I am, I realized that besides these two photos of Ronan I actually didn't get any more of Christmas morning! We got a ton of video, which there is far too much of to try and upload; but then I realized too late I'm afraid that I hadn't gotten many actual pictures. So sorry, this will have to do with a promise to do better next year!

We had a terrific rest of our day, spent mostly in our new pjs, and I tried after modifying the recipe by trial and error to make homemade cinnamon rolls! They eventually turned out pretty decent actually and we chowed down on far too many, washed down by some yummy hot chocolate!

Finally, that evening we combined forces with our pals to actually create quite a large, delicious, and basically traditional Christmas dinner. We shared each other's traditions and enjoyed both ham and cheesy potatoes and swedish meatballs! We also had some amazing deserts, an amazing pie made by Miss C, and we provided our "Turkified" version of my family's "Christmas Drink, or (Green Drink as it is sometimes called)".

Now this is a tradition that we have done in my family every single year that I can remember. A recipe that all of the grandkids were tutored in many years in a row. Now the traditional recipe includes vanilla ice cream, lime sherbet, pineapple juice, and ginger ale.

Here in Turkey, we had to make do with what we could. (Now we have dabbled in other flavors at home in the States for other holidays such as Halloween and Valentine's Day (orange and raspberry sherbet substitutes) so we knew it could probably be done. Since there was nothing remotely close to lime sherbet anywhere to be found, or sherbet really at all...we settled on some Raspberry Sorbet instead. Now, I think we paid $19 (US) for this sorbet instead of the few bucks for some lime sherbet, but it was worth it!

I had to get a picture of the ingredients we used for our first overseas Christmas drink, then we can compare in the future! So instead of the lime sherbet we used raspberry sorbet, and instead of the ginger ale we used mostly sprite (we found one can of ginger ale at the American Store, but that was all-we should have shopped sooner I guess!), and instead of getting a big thing of pineapple juice we had to drain cans of pineapple chunks. All in all it worked out pretty well and it was actually very delicious! We were proud of ourselves for making the moment happen no matter what, and I think it was enjoyed by all!

The finished product-and a finished blog post! We hope everyone's holiday was as nice as ours!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve Fun

We had a fun filled Christmas Eve this year, that included decorating sugar cookies for Santa to come that night. Ronan was not much in the mood unfortunately so Porter just went at it, but he did a tremendous job for the both of them! He was quite excited to be given free reign and had a great time.

That blood red candy cane that you see below had red icing, then DRENCHED in red sparkle sugar. The purple one met a similar fate shortly after this photo with blue sprinkles. It was enough that it almost even ruined the cookies!! It was so hilarious, but I guess that is what you get when they do it by themselves!

We were able to attend a fun party that night, with TONS of delicious food which was a great time with some great friends here from the Consulate. Then we scurried home to open our Christmas PJ's, which the boys both loved. This was always one of my favorite traditions, and I'm glad my boys are taking to it as well! Ronan was SO excited for Porter to open his. It was pretty cute.

After we all opened our PJs we let the boys each open one more present (books from Noah's Mom and Dad) which we promptly read, then watched the mandatory Garfield's Christmas, and a new favorite addition-Twas the Night Before Christmas (the one with the mice from the 80's, for any of you vintage holiday movie lovers), and last but certainly not least we watched a Nativity video that our Church puts out and had a good little discussion about the true meaning of Christmas with the boys.

After the boys were nestled snug in their beds, the reindeer and Santa munched on the cookies and carrots that were left for them (they have to leave some of course, so they know they ate them but were saving room for other houses too:) and finished off the chocolate milk (Porter's idea, to butter Santa up you know). Whew. What a day, Santa, his elves, and our little family were all pooped! Merry Christmas to All, and to All a good night!