House Photos

So I realized I haven't posted pictures of our house now that it's furnished and homey. So here it is. We love our apartment and neighborhood and it really is feeling like home.

Our bedroom. We have a 9 ft. tall wardrobe that's not in the picture. They don't have closets here, so we have to use wardrobes instead. There is a small balcony off our room.

Our living room. I couldn't get Ryan to move for the picture :)
Our dining area. Off the dining area is a nice balcony.
The bathroom. Yes, our washer and dryer are both in the bathroom.
Owen's room
The kitchen

The Seaside

Though we live just 30 minutes (on foot) from the seaside, we hadn't had the chance to spend a day at the water. Until today! We got up this morning and took a wonderful, quite walk to the seaside to enjoy the nice weather and great views. It was peaceful and quiet this morning because our country is celebrating a huge holiday called Kurban Bayram (Sacrifice Holiday). So all the businesses were closed and everyone was home with their families today. We took advantage of this day to be outside without all of the normal street noise and commotion. There is a walking path and parks all along the seaside, so Owen had a great time running around and of course throwing a million rocks into the water.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It can be hard celebrating holidays when to everyone else around you it's just another day. And of course our country does not celebrate Thanksgiving. But fortunately this year, our country is celebrating one of their biggest holidays of the year this weekend. So although they are not thanking God for their many blessings and eating turkey till they bust, there is a festive spirit in the air that made Thanksgiving Day special.

We had a great time celebrating with our friends yesterday. More than 30 of us gathered together to eat and enjoy the day. There was a ton of food and lots of Mexican Train, which makes for a perfect day in my book. Thanks to the creative women who lived her before us, we even had sweet potato casserole (made from carrots, since you can't get sweet potatoes here). It totally tastes like the real thing.
Happy Thanksgiving to our family and friends. We miss you today and love you lots!
Oh, and Happy Birthday Mom! You're the best!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Ryan turned 31 this year. In order to properly celebrate this grand occasion we made the arduous trek to the European side to enjoy a meal at our very favorite restaurant, Chilis! We invited some friends to join us and we all piled into their car to begin the 1+ hour battle through Saturday evening traffic to get to the restaurant. Our friends have 3 young boys, so we brought a DVD player to keep the kids occupied in the car. About 45 minutes into the trip the boys started getting hungry, so we just rolled down our window and bought bananas from the banana guy standing in the middle of all the bridge traffic. Bananas? Really? At 6pm in crazy traffic? That's what we said, but it proved to be a good idea.
We made it to Chilis and enjoyed a fantastic meal. It tasted just like in the states, including the bottomless chips and salsa, which ended up being complimentary thanks to our friend Rob! Free refills are generally non-existent here, except for at Chilis, so I think Ryan drank his weight in Coke! Here are pics from the evening.



Owen and I are so blessed to have such a great daddy and husband. Our life has changed an unimaginable amount this year. Ryan has led our family in some huge steps of faith and he has trusted God through it all. There is nowhere else I'd rather be than serving our God alongside Ryan in this new place we call home.

Fun with Goldilocks and The Three Bears

Owen has started to really enjoy reading fairy tales and one of his favorites is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. This story is packed with great teaching points for preschoolers like opposites and order, so I decided to center a whole day around the book. We started with making porridge (oatmeal) and placing it in a small, medium and large bowl. We have to make our oatmeal from scratch here, so Owen really loved dumping in the sugar, cinnamon, apricots and raisins.

After breakfast Owen helped me change the sheets and make the beds (As much as I would love to, I can't spend all day playing Goldilocks, I have work to do, ha ha). After making the beds, we tried them all out and decided which one was too high at the head and which was too high at the foot and which one was just right!
For our morning snack, we made and decorated the Three Bears' Cottage out of bread, peanut butter and anything else I could find in my cupboard. I'm not sure if we had more fun decorating our houses or eating them when we were done.

It really was a fun day. I'm sure we will be acting out many other fairy tales in the days to come!

Silly

Need I say more?

The 2 year old imagination

It seems that in the past month Owen's imagination has really taken off. He really enjoys pretend play and is always ready to take a make believe adventure. This is fun for him, but I have to say that I enjoy the creativity just as much as he does. Here is some fun we've had the past few days.

We made a Little People house out of the box that Anne sent to us in the mail. The refrigerator was Daddy's contribution to the project. The next project is the swimming pool.


Owen has been really into the book Where the Wild Things Are and is always hunting for Wild Things around the house. One evening he told me that there are Wild Things in the park next to our house and that we should go "check it out". So he proceeded to dress himself for the hunt. He has his Turkcell hat that looks a bit like Max's wolf costume. He has his sunglasses to help him see in the dark. He has a fork that apparently scares the Wild Things away. And he has his Batman cape just because it's cool. When we came back from the hunt our little neighbor boy was standing in the hallway and Owen announced to him "I'm a hero".

He doesn't miss a beat

Owen woke up from his nap and immediately went to his bookshelf. Grabbing his little language picture dictionary, he informed me that he needed to read this so that he could learn how to talk to his teachers at school. He called it his "for class book".
NOTE: You'll see that Owen is no longer sitting on the floor. Yes, we finally got our couch and chair. More photos to come.

My favorite thing about this city

The Weekly Neighborhood Bazar!
Every week, vendors from all over set up tents on a designated street and sell everything from fresh produce to vacuum bags. We happened upon our neighborhood bazar last Friday night and I put it on my calendar to attend first thing Friday morning. It's just a 7 minute walk from my house and it's there every Friday of the year, rain or shine. Here is just a sampling of things that I have bought at the bazar so far.
Bananas, raisins, rugs, vacuum bags, tupperware, blankets, potato peeler, Tommy Hilfiger socks
And my favorite part of the bazar is that they love to barter! If you know me at all, you know that I love a good deal! Enough said.

First Day of School

Owen started school on Thursday. We found a great little preschool just 10 minutes walking from our house. For months we've been discussing how important it is to us for Owen to have a chance to socialize with national kids and learn the language. Since I will be going to class 3 mornings a week (I start Monday), we thought this would be a great time for Owen to go to a class of his own. So he will be going to school 3 mornings a week while I am at my language class.
Owen did great his first day. He was so excited to play with new friends and he loved all of the toys and the outside play equipment. He got a bit frustrated during the transition times because he didn't understand what they were doing next. But overall he is doing well and I'm sure he will learn to communicate quickly!
Some of his school activities include:
Ballet
Music
Art
Yoga
English (he should do well at this)
Drama

Here are some pics of his new school