November, Part 2 | All About Thankful

I love Thanksgiving and the focus on gratitude.  We wove it into several activities in the days leading up to Thanksgiving!

At the Hope Center we played a game where drawing a certain-colored bead required you to respond with a certain question thing for which you were grateful. 

Then we did the Thankful Tree craft project... I love this printout and the water color/collage look of the leaves.

Nathan made pumpkin bars to share!  The Albanian language has one word for all types of gourds and that is what we translate as "pumpkin".  Since most gourds/squash are used in savory dishes, the thought of using pumpkin in a dessert usually requires a bit of courage to sample at first.

It is much colder now!  My used dishwater is still steaming after morning dishes...

For girls night we repeated the Thankful Tree craft...

For English conversation group we found these great BINGO cards to teach some new vocabulary.

We had a good-size crew turn out for our first class!

November 28 was Albania's 105th Independence Day!  The Boulevardi is always festooned in red and black for the occasion.

Thanksgiving was a "regular" day here but we pushed "pause" for a few hours and enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving lunch at the Stephen Center restaurant (founded by American missionaries over twenty years ago).

Reni devised his own way to eat pumpkin pie!

We were joined by Pam, but I forgot to get a table shot!  This is us on the street walking back to where we parked the van. 

Thursday evening back in the village we Skyped with family in America.

In Metalle we shared the story of the raising of Jairus' daughter.  Once again the internet provided a wonderful craft idea the kids were really excited about!  And bonus -- we spread it out over multiple weeks!

Wanting to spread out the Christmas activities, we hosted our homeschool group for a Christmas party the last Sunday afternoon of November.  In typical fall fashion, it rained and the power went out during singing Christmas carols.

Thankfully, we are blessed with a generator and back came the lights!

We made Christmas cookies up in advance and had a cookie decorating activity for the kids.  It was a hit!