Found Fall, Winter and the End of the Rainbow

Finally, the promised pictures of our recent trip to France...

Warning: picture overload, enter at your own risk!

As mentioned in the title, we found multiple things while we there

Fall in the French Countryside

We love to visit Noah's grandparent's house. It was built by his great-grandfather (so the boy's great-great-grandfather), and is so beautiful. This is the first time we've had the privilege of seeing it in Autumn, and it was just what we had needed! Apparently the leaves did eventually change and fall in the forest around Istanbul, but up until the day we left we had pretty much seen nothing. I just love fall, and all the fabulous colors; so I was thrilled to finally get my fill of them.

A real fall experience including a downpour of apples from the apple tree! That's when you know it is truly time for the harvest season.

The boys also thoroughly enjoyed playing in raking all the leaves! They couldn't get enough.

Porter even helped Meme prune some flowers in the garden. Getting his fill of yard work while he can.

Family

Next we found a whole bunch of family members to spend some fabulous quality time with! We got to see many of Noah's relatives which was so nice. It is especially nice to give the boys every chance they can get to be with their great-grandparents.

A four generation shot

The boys with their Meme (great-grandmother)

Porter and Pepe (great-grandfather)

The boys hanging out with daddy and Cousin Raphael

Porter and Cousin Claire -aka "the only girl in the family"!

(Pepe did have a sister-but Claire is the only girl within the last three generations)

I'm so glad to have some more female influence when we visit, and she is just awesome. The boys just adore her!

We enjoyed getting to relax by a real fire as it started to get chilly outside.

Georges, Michelle, Raphael and us...just relaxing together!

Can I just say again that the boys have the entire family wrapped around their fingers?! They sure get plenty of loves and attention when we visit!

We did miss getting to see a few other family members that were far away, but it was wonderful to see those who where there!

Touristy things

When we go to France one of my favorite things to visit is Pompadour- a gift by Louis XV to his mistress, Madame Pompadour. It is a beautiful Chateau that we just love.

Do you think he is strong enough?

It was also a stop on the route through France of Richard the Lionheart. This was Porter's favorite thing of the trip, being that he has been recently a huge fan of Disney's animated version of Robin Hood. (the one with King Richard -who is a Lion if you'll remember)

Lastly, it is also the home of the French National Stud (hippodrome). There were not any horses out today, but we have seen some other times and the boys love to watch! It is such a pretty area, I love it all.

Ocean Views

For those of you who are wondering where the pictures of the Eiffel Tower are, I'm sorry to disappoint. We have been to Paris multiple times before, and still love to go when we are with others, but this trip we decided to just hit some of our other spots in the lesser-known corners of France. We headed to Nantes to see another of Noah's uncles and his family and did some new exploring in that region. We drove out to the Atlantic coast and stopped in this village (sadly I don't know it's name) to walk around and smell the sea air! It had a beautiful coastline.

It was also full of these little "private" beaches that were surrounded by rocks, but had little staircases leading down to the sand. They were pretty cool, I wouldn't mind spending some more time there in the future! Perhaps, on a warmer day though...

PORNIC

After driving along the coast a bit, we headed to Pornic. Now Pornic is special. Why you ask? Well, for several reasons. First of all, it is right on the coast, and has a beautiful boardwalk that literally takes you out along the water. The town is built right on the little harbor and the shops are so fun. It is great fun to walk around and be right in the midst of the boats. There is also a beautiful Chateau on the water which is pretty great.

Now all of those make it nice, but what makes it great, is that it is home to my FAVORITE ice cream in the WORLD. No joke. I've tried many, in multiple countries. (Not like the super bowl "World Champions", no offense) I really have looked far and wide, and this stuff is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. It is mostly different sorbets, but they are famous for their strawberry flavor. They have it in soft serve, plain or mixed with others or a delicious vanilla-or in hard form. The possibilities are endless! I've never found anything else remotely like it! I have no idea how they make it so different and amazing compared to other strawberry ice cream, but they do!

When we go in the warmer months we get like 5 ice cream cones before we leave for the day. It was pretty chilly this day (and they don't have indoor seating) but we toughed it out. It was SO worth it. We only got 2 cones each though, and then found out they had insulated containers so we took some with us home about an hour away! YUM!

The boys have been sold on it for sure!

The view while you sit and eat is terrific. Picture perfect!

Other Fun Festivities

While in Nantes we did some other really fun things, including getting some tasty Kebabs at "Istanbul Kebab"! They were impressed with Noah's Turkish, but oddly enough we laughed because the family running it was actually from Izmir, not Istanbul.

The cute cousins-sans Nico. I just thought this picture was great, the boys adore their cousins!

Nantes is also where Jules Verne is from (of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, and of course Back to the Future 3 fame). They have a fantastic museum place there based on some of his type of inventions/machines. They are amazing, and it was really a cool exhibit. Totally worth going if you are ever in Nantes! Now, my camera battery died during this, and for the Nautical museum we also went to (which was great) so these are the only pics I have.

Outside the museum they have this giant elephant...it is incredible! You can take rides on it, and it walks around in a giant loop. It is HUGE and kind of scared the boys though! This picture was taken before it was moving.

The boys and Noah's uncle Michel

They have carousels in tons of malls there, and the boys begged and begged to go. Porter turns out was not such a huge fan (I think he is scarred from the one on the National Mall, which admittedly does go VERY fast). Ronan, on the other hand, could not get enough! He went three times on this one and screamed when we left.

Lastly in our exploring of Brittany they took us to this cool little village that still uses the real thatched roofs! They were amazing!! It is apparently a dying craft, so it was cool to see. This village is one of the only ones left. Apparently a good roof like this will last about 25 years.

New Roof

Old Roof

Sadly, I had some more pictures of the rest of the family that we visited here and from when we went down south near Toulouse that I can not get to load! So sorry, just use your imagination!

Also, while we were there (it was the very end of November) we were able to take the boys to Toys R Us and mail their letters to Santa. Here in Turkey, they did put up lights and have poinsettias, but the whole "Santa" thing is largely missed because they decorate for New Years. I was really happy then, that we were able to still get our fill of more traditional American Christmas fun. The toy stores and malls were all totally decked out, and we enjoyed getting in the holiday spirit.

Although we did get to see Santa at our Consulate party, this is about as close as we could come to getting a picture with Santa at the mall this year! These boys and their picture faces...they will be cracking me up for years to come!

Switzerland

Now lastly, just because I feel the need to document our first official trip to Switzerland I will throw in a few photos. This time we opted to fly into Geneva instead of Paris, being somewhat comparable in driving time to his grandparent's house. I am SO glad we did too. We flew in on a gorgeous sunny day with amazing views of the Alps. We did not spend too much time this trip in Geneva, just in and outs at the airport...but it was gorgeous, and it helped me with my longing for some mountains! (Colorado girl, remember). So though Geneva is quite close to the French border, we were still able to see what we could there and then drive the rest of the way through the French Alps. The colors were out in full force on our drive in and it was SO PRETTY! Of course, I in my genius-did not get any pictures, thinking I'll just get some on our way home. Well, the trip home helped us with one last thing....

We found WINTER in full force!

Now, I have to say we were actually pretty excited about it though; because it helped it feel like the holidays. We happened to leave on Thanksgiving weekend, and it just wouldn't be right without a good snowstorm to drive through! So anyway, for your viewing pleasure here are the only shots of Switzerland that I got! So, needless to say...the storm kind of ruined my plans. It was terrific just the same though, and I am happy to report that renting a car in Switzerland has it's advantages. Our car was equipped with snow tires and chains. We met people who had rented a car in Nice and were slipping and sliding everywhere! Those Swiss know what they are doing! We'll be going back for sure...and I promise much better photos next time of the Alps.

Oh yes, and we found the end of the rainbow! While up in Brittany we saw these two full amazing rainbows. The picture does not do it justice. It was fabulous, and the colors were brighter than any rainbow I have ever seen!

This first photo was from a ways off....

Turns out, when we kept driving the end of the rainbow was literally on the hood of car! It was crazy, and really fun. Truly, it was right there! So we got a laugh-but no pot of gold. Sorry folks, I think that is just a myth. Now we know.

So there you have it- the end of the rainbow, the end of our trip, the end of this post!

If you are still reading this you are amazing! Give yourself a pat on the back!

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!