!Yo Diggity!

I have been away from home before on Thanksgiving but have never been overseas for it. I must say that I had two, very wonderful oversea’s Thanksgiving experiences!

The first I celebrated prior to the Thanksgiving date, last Sunday at the Davis’s. Mike and Brandi and myself would be the only American’s to attend. It was cool to get to share our traditions with these guys. The food was actually really excellent - you’d be surprised how hard it is to find the ‘normal’ Thanksgiving dishes - or even the ingredients to make the traditional stuff. Mike and Brandi really did a good job though - the food was excellent! They even found a whole turkey to roast! (A whole turkey is not normally sold in Budapest - Mike found one at a market - carried a 34 pound turkey home in his backpack!! haha). Even I managed to chip in with the dish you all know and love: Green Bean Casserole! I couldn’t find cream of mushroom soup or french friend onions so I had to make due… a dried package of soup and I even fried my own onions!! A little more work than usual, but it turned out real good!

Here’s the spread we had: turkey, mashed potates, home made noodles, stuffing, green beans, sweet potates - YUM!!!

We had a family from Ireland with us, a guy from Portual and a women from Finland joining us. So Mike was explaining some of the dishes.

Here’s the Thanksgiving crew…. errr… some of them at least. We gathered around the computer to see if we could get some of the game scores at least.

I’ve always got to post a ‘cheese shot’ - if not me, someone else! This is Ritva (from Finland) and Fiona’s (from Ireland) youngest daughter.

My second Thanksgiving came on the actual day of Thanksgiving. My friend Sasha from Houston was to arrive at noon and then the Seely’s had invited out to their house for the meal. Sasha made it in almost on time and Tom came to pick us up to head out to the feast. It was really a fabulous day - again, we had all the traditional stuff - a bit more work- but the food was just perfect. Valerie had the house and table decked out with the fall/Thanksgiving garb…

And we all sat around grazing throughout the day….

There were about 20 of us there… three families (11 kids total) and Zsu-Zsa (Valerie’s friend and Hungarian teacher) and Sasha and I.

Valerie even had place settings for each of us - SO CUTE!!

Here’s Valerie workin’ hard to the get the food in order.

And SOMEONE jumped into the shot!

Poor Kirby had a case of pink eye…. looks more like red eye in this photo. haha

Oh man, it was just such a great Thanksgiving day! I felt right at home!! I really am blessed here in Hungary… just goes to show you that God’s with us everywhere we could possibly be!! See… right at home with the girls cleanin’ up the mess!

AND to top off a PERFECT day, I got home that night and checked the mail… in the box was this:

My sweet, sweet friend Debbie from Amboy, Indiana had her family make and send me a Thanksgiving wish that arrived perfectly on the day!! What a cute idea!! Just about brought me to tears… happy tears of course!

And that was it for the day… topped it off at home by jumping into my new favorite Dever Bronco’s sweatshirt (thanks to Mr. Kuklis) and Sasha and I hit the hay. Off to Rome tomorrow… so rest is needed!