Celebrations

We celebrated Thanksgiving extra-well this year, complete with two Thanksgiving meals! Our first one was lunch with a couple of American friends, one of whom is married to a South African (not pictured). 

This was his first Thanksgiving, so we had to do it up right, complete with turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Then we went to a celebration with all our colleagues from our office, and ate all of the above plus more. It was a special day to be thankful not only for our own family but also for the extended family God has blessed us with here in South Africa.

The following week, we kicked off the Christmas season by setting up our Christmas tree and hosting our team's annual Christmas party.

The tree-trimming process was a three-night ordeal -- the first night it took forever to make the tree stay upright (the tree stand is too big); the second night Deron had the classic "battle of the lights" -- some blinked, some didn't, some colors worked, some didn't, etc.; the third night, we were finally able to put decorations on the tree. Poor Kylie was very patient as she had to wait so long to put on the decorations. As you can see, we have lots of low-hanging ornaments this year -- she liked to cluster all the ornaments she hung in the same spot.

This year, our team decided to have a costume Christmas party. Can you guess the theme of each of our costumes? 

Our teammates were very creative as well - we had snowflakes, five golden rings, popcorn chains, and more. It was a lot of fun to hang out with our local "family" again.