We got away for a couple of nights earlier this week to a little beach town outside our city. It was great getting away for a little peace and quiet. We had a lot of fun. The main reason we picked the hotel that we did was because it had an indoor swimming pool. Here's a picture of it. 
For those of you who know the saga of the blanket, we finally cut it in two. It started this morning when we were getting ready to leave the house and Zeke was wanting to take his blanket with him. Dan went with him and got one of his smaller blankets out of his bedroom. Zeke looked at Dan, handed him the blanket, and pointed to the big blanket on the bed. Tami said, "Do you want to cut it?" Dan said, "I guess so," and half an hour later, we had two blankets, the smaller of which was patched enough to make it through the day trip. Zeke was really happy to have a smaller version of his previously ginormous blanket. He was walking around the apartment smiling and rubbing it on his face.
When we got back, Dan went to a store near our apartment and got a big needle and some thick thread to sew it up well. Zeke didn't want to wait on Dan to finish, but he eventually did, and though it's no professional stitch job, we think it'll hold it together through the washing machine.
Afterward, Dan and Zeke each had their own blanket, but Zeke didn't particularly want to share. We're working on that.
Dan has really enjoyed watching all the tournament
games online, thanks to CBSSportsline.com. It's worked out well, too, though, because most of the games have been on in the middle of the night here, so he's been able to watch a 
lot of them. It will be nice, however, to get back to 7-8 hours of sleep a night. 
So, we haven't established Easter traditions in our family yet because Dan was gone on Easter last year and the year before, we can't remember what we did. We did get up and go to the sunrise service at our church. Other than that, we didn't really have plans, so we looked on the internet and found out that apparently you're supposed to eat lamb on Easter, so we went and got some lamb chops and ate them with roasted potatoes and zucchini. We decided it was a very good tradition and one we'll likely repeat next year.
"What's that on your peanut butter sandwich?" you ask. Why, it's strawberry jelly, of course! Yeah, we recently found out that if you don't want to pay $7 or so for a jar of strawberry jelly, it comes with real whole strawberries (not even pieces). However, since we learned this, we've found a strawberry marmelade that looks promising, though we haven't tried it yet. Highlights from this picture: First, you can get pretty good peanut butter here. Second, you can get sliced bread here. (This is actually very special thing in many parts of the world.) Third, and possibly the most exciting, you can get bugles here!
click here.
So, even from the other side of the world, Dan's blood runs blue and he couldn't be more excited for the Tigers.
At one point, Dan was feeding the cats and Tami was taking pictures; they looked down to see Zeke holding a bowl of milk that someone had left for the cats. We think we got to him before he drank any, but he did have some running down the front of his coat. Some things are better left unknown!
Oh, Dan says he hasn't put on that much weight, in case you were wondering; he's just got a fleece on under his sweatshirt. 
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
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.
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.
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!)
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.
