Thanksgiving

It was great!
The final menu was,
Rhonda:
Turkey
dressing
mashed potatoes
pumpkin pie
watergate salad
multigrain rolls
chocolate mousse

Brenda:
corn pudding
seven layer salad
cranberry jello salad
green beans


I think that was it. There was food everywhere. We had a wonderful time of food and fellowship. Bro. Phil is encouraging my fed-up-with-his-PC husband to get Macs. Fine by me. We have been plagued with computer viruses.
Brenda showed me some really cool websites with crafts for Sunday School.
We also Wii'd a while. I am beginning to enjoy Thanksgiving more and more as I grow older.

We are gearing up for Christmas. Tree and decorations go up on Monday. Yeah!! I am thinking about how I will paint my windows this year.

Blessings!

The last ladies meeting of the year!

We had a soup and salad dinner. We had a salad competition. Above you can see some of the better entries. The salad "clock" won!. I taught about the power of praising God in all situations of our life. It was a great night, but I am glad the weekly meetings are over for a while. I'll be readly to start again, come Fall. South American Fall, that is, maybe Arpil, 2010. Do your faithfully attend your church's ladies Bible study? If not, you might be missing out on a huge blessing!

Do you at

Here it is!!!!

Dear Ms. Arias,



Thank you for providing evidence of physical presence in the United States for the periods of August 1994 to December 1995 (16.5 months), December 2000 to June 2001 (6.5 months), July 2004 to Jan 2005 (5.5 months), and August 2007 to Jan 2008 (5 months), for a total of approximately 33.5 months.



This, in addition to the evidence you submitted previously, is sufficient to proceed with the application for the Consular Report of Birth Abroad for your daughter, Vanessa Elena Arias. We will proceed with the application today


Yahoo and Praise the Lord!!!!!
Now, there is a good reason to give thanks

Vanessa's paperwork

We finally compiled several years worth of documentation to send to the US Embassy. It should have arrived there last Tuesday. We sent it by courier, so I know that it is not lost in the mail. The thing is that I have not heard from the charming vice-consul. I don't know if that is good or bad. I figure that if it were bad, he would have contacted me. By the same token, I expected to be contacted if the documentation was adequate. At any rate, we still don't know, so please pray. If this doesn't work, we'll have to go another red-tape route that will cost several hundred dollars more. Yuck!

What happens when your husband is tone deaf

My Dear Preacher husband used to be entirely tone deaf. Sitting next to him in Church during the song service was torture. When he was in Bible School, he tried to sing in the choir. The director finally broke down and told him just to lip-sync.

Anyway, he doesn't know if someone is singing good or badly. Now, I sing. Not great, mind you, but I love to sing. I started our ladies choir a while back. They are OK, not great.

So, Neil is at the conference in Argentina this past week, and they were planning one for next year here in Chile. He proudly offers my choir and ME to provide special music. Yikes! Oh, yeah, and they want me to be the pianist. Huh? My piano playing is "iffy" at best. I mean, its good for our Church where there's nobody better. Oh boy, we had all better get to practicing!

Dressing, a Thankgiving recipe

Julie Mom, this one's for you. I do warn you, however, that my recipes are not exact. I bake with exact measure, but the rest of my cooking is more "iffy". As one lady put it, I never get tired of my own cooking because nothing ever comes out the same way twice!

Dressing (or Stuffing) whatever you like to call it!
5 cups stale bread cubes
5 cups cornbread, roughly cubed
1/4 cup butter
1 onion, chopped
2 cups chopped celery
chicken or turkey broth, about 2 cups
1 egg
salt
pepper
sage


mix the bread cubes together
Saute the onion and celery in butter until crisp-tender
Add to bread
Add the egg, slighlty whisked, to broth
Pour the broth-egg mixture over the bread and stir until wet but no dripping.
Add salt, pepper and sage to taste

Pour into a buttered casserole dish, cover with foil and bake at medium for about an hour.

We love this stuff!

Thanksgiving!

Next week we are celebrating Thanksgiving. Not Turkey Day. Not Football. We are celebrating thanking God for his blessings and care.
Julie Mom is hosting a Thanksgiving recipe exchange. Now, I love recipes, but when it comes to Thanksgiving or Christmas, I go totally traditional. Nothing new. Its very comforting to me to know that our menu will be exactly the same every year. Here's the Menu
Turkey and gravy
dressing, made with white bread and cornbread.
Mashed potatoes
Corn or corn pudding
7 layer salad
Yeast rolls

Pumpkin pie,
chocolate mousse
waldorf salad, which we eat as a dessert
black bottom pie

I am going to try to do more tablescaping than I usually do, which is nothing.
I'll try to post some pictures.


This year, Mom and my sister and her family are gone to the US, so I am hosting this year. Also the Longs are gone, so its just us and the Robinsons. We see them about once a year for Thanksgiving. We always say that we need to get together more often, but we don't. I wish we did. We're all so busy!

Our nation seems to be forgetting the Pilgrims, and is celebrating ghosts, goblins and witches instead. Lord help us!

This year, after dinner wie'll probably go WiiBowling. Yeah! I love Wii bowling!

Wii!

Wii finally took the plunge and bought a wii and a wii fit. I have to say, we love it! Its been worth every penny spent. Wii only have the games that came with it, but we are having a blast.
The wii fit is not aerobic enough in and of itself, but we have all lost weight and gotten stronger.
The best thing is that we play as a family. The kids are so happy about that. We have a bit of a friendly rivalry going on. Everyone has events that they are best at. I am champion at the ski jump. Eileen is first in step aerobics while Ronnie is best at hitting the soccer ball with his Mii head. I also learned that my husband cannot do the hula hoop. Not in real life and not in virtual reality. Its a hoot to see him try though!


Neil's gone to Argentina for a Fuegos de Evangelismo conference. So, the kids and I are having a WII part-tay!

My baby's birthday

We had a special celebratory breakfast for Vanessa's first brithday. It has been an amzing year for all of us. I chose to share these photos because they show the sweet relationship between Vanessa and her brother and sister.
Thanj you, Lord, for them all.