Happy New Year!?

We were at a mall yesterday after a doctor's appointment (see Zeke's Blog) and we saw this really big Christmas display with the giant pieces of candy (which Zeke, at one point, looked after longingly), a little gingerbread house, Christmas trees, snowmen, snow, candy canes and much more. Also, along the bottom, it read, 'Mutlu Yıllar,' which loosely means 'Happy New Year!' Anyway, we'd mentioned this in a previous blog, but we thought we'd share again and show a couple of
pictures of it.

We also found this scary Santa Claus mask in the local grocery store, where, upon taking the picture, we were told by a security guard that we shouldn't have. Ah, the bliss of international ignorance. Dan did see him laughing as Tami was taking the picture. We didn't take anymore, though.

Well, all that to say, Happy New Year to you all! May it be a good one and may all your resolutions come to fruition. :)

Quite a Spread...

Well, we had quite a meal for Christmas dinner. We were having friends over, so we roasted a stuffed chicken with some more chicken and stuffing on the side. We made macaroni and cheese, green bean casserole, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy and apple pie. Our friends brought cheesecake, broccoli cheese casserole, and rolls. Here's a picture of our table minus the dessert and bread...

Oh yeah, there were only four adults and three small children. Needless to say, we'll be eating leftovers for awhile.

Double Date...

So, going on dates in our city is a bit different from going in the states. We got a sitter for Zeke and agreed to take him there, b/c they were making cookies all day and they had a cat to play with, so we figured he would have a lot more fun there than here. And he did. He wasn't ready to go home when we came back to get him. Anyway, I digress.
To get to the sitter's house, we took a tram from our apartment to a hub near us, where we got on a metro and went to where the sitter's house is. From the sitter's house, we took a bus to another hub, where we took a form of transportation called a "tunnel," which really resembles an underground trolley. The tunnel brought us to a place near the restaurant where we met a couple of friends and had a really enjoyable time of grown-up conversation.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree...

So, we didn't think we would find very much Christmas stuff here since they don't celebrate it, but it turns out they use all the American traditional Christmas stuff (like the tree and Santa Clause) for New Year Celebrations. Anyway, it's a bit odd to us, but it helped us get a tree. Can you pick out Zeke's bigwheel tricycle thing? (Shh! Don't tell him!)

Anyway, our apartment has come together quite a bit and the "after" pictures are now up. If you want to see them, click here. We hope you enjoy them.

Merry Christmas to all of you! We miss you lots.

Funny Cheetos...

Looks like any other bag of puffy Cheetos, right? Well, that's what we thought, too, when Tami brought them home from the store the other day. Never mind, we didn't know at the time what "FINDIKLI" meant that was written on the upper left hand corner of the bag. We didn't pay close attention to the picture, either. But, as we opened the bag and the aroma of fresh peanut butter filled the air, we looked again at the picture and realized that it was a peanut! Well, Dan figured you should never turn your nose up at something until you've tried it, so he did. And the result...he says they really left a lot to be desired. Anyway, Zeke likes them and he's slowly eating them for us. Perhaps he'll grow up to be like a good friend of ours who swears that peanut butter and Velveeta cheese is the best combination since burgers and fries.