What's Happening

You may be wondering about the results of my son's biopsy.....well, so are we! The doctor who performed it said that it should only take a week. When the week came and went we called the nurse and asked for the results. She sounded surprised that we called and told us that biopsy results take 2 or sometimes 3 weeks to come back. So, we have a little bit longer to wait. I'm sure I'll be posting about it as soon as we hear something. And just so you know, I still have that PEACE from the Lord about everything! AMEN!!

I thought it was funny to read your comments concerning my last post about visiting the Old City. I guess I didn't express my feelings very well. I was laughing as I was writing all of that out, but you all thought it sounded scary! We weren't scared at all.....just chalked it up to another adventure! I'll have to be more careful about how I word things in the future.

Yesterday was odd for us because we didn't get to go to church. Our driver had more important driving to do, and there was no other way for us to get there. Which leads me to what's going on with our car. It's still sitting where we left it a week ago! The car we have is a Chrysler, but was originally purchased in Cairo, Egypt (by the previous owners) as an export. So now that we have it here in Israel, we're finding it difficult to find parts for it. The people here, hear "Chrysler" and tell us to get the part from the U.S. --- the stores in the U.S. tell us that it's an export, and to get the part where we are. Can you say, "Catch-22"? But, the Lord works everything out....my husband knows a guy who has a brother that happens to be a mechanic. He researched everything for us with our VINumber and found the part for us and has sent it to us by mail. Hopefully, we'll be able to be driving ourselves again soon. In the mean-time, we're saving a lot of money in gasoline. You may think you pay a lot at $3.00+ a gallon....can you imagine paying $7.00 a gallon?! That's how much we pay....and that's with a diplomatic discount!!
Last night we still had our grocery shopping to do, so when the driver was free he took us to the store. Two hours and $200 **GASP** later we stood waiting for our driver to pick us up, when what do we finally get?? RAIN!! Nice timing, huh? Ordinarily I would be annoyed to stand in the rain with a cart full of groceries, but it's been so long since we've had rain that we just enjoyed it. It is starting to get cooler here too.....we're still praying for snow in a couple of months.

For Thanksgiving we are having a houseful of people over and I get to do all the cooking ;) Israel is not exactly the place to find things like whole turkey, cranberries, pumpkins, etc. So we've been planning our meal for a few months, trying to find ingredients from the internet and the surrounding areas here. We've ordered a couple of turkeys from a place in Tel Aviv -- I'm a little nervous about this though. I've been told that these turkeys come with the head and some feathers still attached! About 11 years ago I worked in a chicken factory. That only lasted 2 months, and I still have trouble dealing with raw poultry! My husband has volunteered to dress the bird for me --- thank you! You can't find fresh pumpkin here, and canned pumpkin would be expensive because it's been imported from the States. An equally good, and inexpensive alternative, is sweet potato. So, I decided to make sweet potato pie -- which I've never done before. I thought I'd better experiment early so I'm better prepared on the "big day". Yesterday I attempted one, but the pie crust was a disaster! Funny how I forgot to take pictures of that! ;) Today I tried again and was very excited to see that it looks half decent. (And tastes better than it looks!) I'm not much of a baker, since we don't eat many desserts and I don't get a lot of practice. But, I've learned a lot since we've lived here. It's amazing what you can do when you have to!

We're still trying to locate cranberries, but I guess it wouldn't ruin anyone's day if they were absent. If it was just our family I wouldn't worry about the things we don't have. But the people we're having over are away from their home and without any of their family. We'd like to make this holiday nice for them.

Today is Veteran's Day and so my husband only stayed at work for a couple of hours. We were all very happy to have him home. As a treat for the kids, my husband bought a coconut at the store yesterday and used this time to show the kids how to open it. The kids were thrilled with this since they'd never had a real, fresh coconut before. Like my friend Laura ;) we are all about working smarter, not harder. A drill works very well for poking the coconut's "eyes".

Next the coconut milk got drained and filtered with a coffee filter.
The kids think their Daddy is the strongest guy in the world; and watching him hammer this open only proved that in their eyes.

In the end we all got to enjoy tasting fresh coconut. And better still, our children will have this wonderful memory of time with their Daddy.