Victory Hill

My dad got to come with us as well to help pass out backpacks to these kids.  They were all definitely pretty excited!

Birthday Party

Yes we are getting old!  But never too old to have a party with a fun cake made by my friend and decorated by me!

The table is ready for our guests.

Can you guess how old I am?  That's last year's 28 candles with one more extra!

So thankful to have these wonderful friends with me for the special celebration.

Many people wrote me words of encouragement and blessed me with thoughtful gifts.

And then we got to speak with a good friend over skype who lives in Florida.

The kids had fun too.

And after it was all over we were all quite happy and worn out.

Lunch with a friend

We are thankful for the wonderful hospitality that our lawyer friend always shows to us whenever we visit her.  We pray for healing for her eyes.

End of Summer Fun

Well I know that summer has been over for quite a while but I wanted to share these pictures with you all.  We went to visit our duck again and her new owners has bought her five babies to look after.  It was so cute to see them following after her in a line and eating whenever she ate.

I don't know how many of you know these guys but they are Dupont and Dupond (in Turkish) who are funny characters in the TinTin books that I used to read when I was a kid.  I've read several here in Turkish too and they are just as fun.

And a fun day at the mall wouldn't be complete without a delicious waffle with chocolate sauce, fruit, and whip cream on top.  But now we have our own waffle machine at home, thanks so my mom's early birthday present, so we can enjoy this wonderfulness more often!

Getting ready for winter by preparing green beans to be cooked, bagged and frozen for quick and easy meals.  We also prepared tomatoes in jars, green peppers and fried eggplant.

Pickling

 Here we are washing and stabbing the veggies to get them ready for pickling.

 I love how pretty they look in the big jars.  We pickled small melons, cucumbers, some other type of light green cucumber-like thing, and green tomatoes.

 Our friend from Victory Hill came over to help us get the ingredients right since it was our first time doing it.  It was a good time to get to chat with her a bit more.

You add rock salt, garlic, vinegar and water and then wait for several weeks for them to turn.  It will be fun to see how they turn out.