Christmas and New Year’s

Hello again from a LONG silence. I wish it was because I had been hibernating, but unfortunately that is not the case. I’ve been slightly busier than normal. We closed clinic on the 22nd of December, and immediately picked up the pace on finishing the new clinic building. There wasn’t terribly much that I did there the first week we were off, but with Christmas and New Year, I got to work in the kitchen and help make some special food for the holidays. That was a lot of fun, and I had a bit of free time too. I knew as soon as we could start moving in, there would be more than enough to keep me busy. For Christmas Eve, we went up to Rhonda’s. That was a fun time, and lots of good food. We had ham and cheese sandwiches, pickles, chex mix, cheese ball, and cookies and chocolates; all because our families and friends remembered us and sent the things. So thank you all for remembering us! We sang for a while Christmas Eve, we had some extra folks around and some new songbooks!

Christmas day we had brunch, and then there was an emergency run that Michael had to do. Thankfully he found another ride out to Ti Goave for the lady, so no one had to go all the way out on Christmas day. We had the afternoon off, and then we had supper. Wow, what a supper! Ok, you have to realize that we eat food like is in these pictures one time a year. This time. My dad bought a cured ham down, and we made mashed potatoes, and sweet potato pudding, and carrots, and stuffing, and cranberry jelly, and cheese cake thanks to Breanna. It was so good, I love ham and mashed potatoes.

After that, we opened our presents; we did a gift exchange. My camera was too slow to catch Cherie hugging the little puppy I gave her, she loves “boof boof”s as she calls them. This was her second puppy for the evening, but she still was excited.

Here is a picture of Michael and I, we may look a little weird, but that is us! The other is all of us playing Apples to Apples, someone just brought the game down recently.

Now, let me think….one of those days in there…. oh yeah, the Sunday in between, the church here had a “fet”. They make food for everyone who comes to church that Sunday. The ladies responsible for cooking the food asked if Anita and I would help cook, and we convinced Breanna and Rhoda to come along. They made 7 huge kettles of rice and beans, 3 kettles of fried beef chunks, and macaroni and potato salad, and a few other specialty items for the Pastors. It was a lot of fun to help them cook, very meager utensils (just a couple long-handled spoons and only 1 very dull knife), but very enjoyable. After the service all the other “blans” came down and we dished up the food into styrofoam plates. I think there was over 300 people fed. For the first time since they have been doing the “fet”, there was plenty of food for everyone. The food was good, but after cooking everything in oil all morning, my hunger for that particular food was kind of dulled. Here are some pictures. The girls are sorting the hacked up chunks of beef in preparation for frying.