Thanksgiving

This was our second Thanksgiving away from family. We were unsure what the celebration would be like since Thanksgiving is an American holiday, not observed here. But luckily, the Elders Quorum decided to plan a Thanskgiving retreat for anyone who wanted to come in our ward. They rented out cabins that the NATO base owns and we were able to stay in a cabin in Sirdal, a more mountainous area about an hour and a half away from Stavanger. It was SO much fun! 

Here is the little cabin we stayed in with another couple in our ward.

And this was the main gathering place where we ate Thanksgiving dinner.

It was cold when we arrived, but not snowy. However, we woke up to this beautiful layer of white.

After breakfast we wandered around the cabin area and got some gorgeous pictures. The air was so clean and crisp. It reminded me how much I LOVE being outdoors in the mountains. It was very peaceful. I was grateful we had even a short time to spend together in the serenity.

 All of the water had a thin layer of ice on the top. Barrett and Lily started throwing rocks and as you can see above some broke through and some just stuck, ha ha. They would try to break the bubbles like in the picture below.

Here's a short video.

After some socializing and naps we got to enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner :)

I got the recipe for a Czech apple cake from my landlady who is from the Czech Republic and decided to take this with us.

We've had fun swapping some recipes with all the holidays lately.

I decided to do a small Thanksgiving dinner on the actual Thanksgiving (we were in Sirdal the weekend before). I didn't buy turkey, but did brine a pork roast that turned out yummy. Almost traditional, ha ha...

And a little Thanksgiving activity we did with Lily.

And a picture to document our Thanksgiving!

Barrett also had a Thanksgiving meal at work, plus we were invited to one the following Sunday with some of Barrett's coworkers. (Which Lily and I ended up not going to due to missing the bus by literally 10 seconds as I was running to the bus. So frustrating! The annoyance of buses sometimes!) There are a lot of international people in Barrett's group so that dinner turned into a collection of turkey, stuffing, spinach lasagna, chicken curry, curry tomato soup, rolls, etc..... Kind of fun though. For not spending the holiday in America, we definitely got our fill of Thanksgiving, which helped to take away the homesickness, a little anyway.