There are many titles I could have come up for this blog
post – “Catch Up,” “Update,” “Halloween and Beyond,” “What has happened to the
Elliotts?” The list could go on and on. I picked this.
It’s kind of lame. I know this, but I wasn’t thrilled with any of the
other prospects either, so this is where we will begin.
When we last met here on the blog I had just finished bragging about our mid-October trip to Aqaba – the Jordanian coast. That was a good time. Sun, Sand, Water, WARMTH…currently it is 35 degrees outside with approximately 6 inches of snow. I purposefully didn’t buy boots (for anyone in the family) on post-winter sales last year because I thought, “Why do that when they will just grow out of them and never wear them.” That decision is probably not going to get me nominated for the “Mom of the Year” award. Anyway I digress and I will get to the snow in a minute. First we need to talk about Halloween…(cue: spooky music and a fog machine.)
Spooktacular
Spooktacular is the yearly Halloween party that Samuel’s school, ACS, puts on for the entire school. I volunteered to be in charge of the games back in August. I was new and uncertain as to how I would make a name for myself. Many of you may know that my friend Jill and I have hosted the “Brookshire Kids Halloween Party” the past several years. She does crafts, I do games and we split the food. It’s a major neighborhood event and I am going to brag, it’s an AWESOME Halloween party for all! Anyway, I was feeling a little blue thinking that I wouldn’t be participating in the great party this year, so I raised my hand at the ACS meeting when the chair asked, “Can anyone do games for Spooktacular?”
Weeks later I had come up with 14 games and my dining room table was covered in Halloween game craftiness. I was ready, so were the kids and Bill…well he was along for the ride with hopefully a smile on his face.
Spooktacular was being held on November 1 – a Friday. The night before was the Embassy Halloween Trick or Treat party and I had earlier signed up the family to go on a group trip of olive picking on the Saturday after Spooktacular. It was a packed weekend.
Embassy Trick or Treating was very nice. The best part in this mom’s eyes was that the kids came home with just the right amount of candy – that’s code for NOT THAT MUCH! Beautiful! (although weeks after Halloween they were still going through their buckets and asking at breakfast if they could have a piece of candy. A mom’s worst nightmare! Seriously…do they think I will break down and say – “yup this morning eat all the candy you want?”
While at the Embassy for trick or treat there were rumors
swirling about an impending rainstorm.
Up until that point it had rained exactly twice since we had moved
here. Each time for about 30 seconds and
the sidewalk dried in less than a minute.
Personally I was thinking this “rainy season thing” wasn’t all that bad.
Friday morning I woke up, packed up the car with ladders and games and candy and all kinds of things that were going to make my games a huge success and off to school I went, leaving Bill with the kids. I worked all morning with other volunteers setting up games and decorations and such. I quickly realized that these ladies take this party seriously. It is a huge deal! Anyway around 1pm I was starving and pretty well organized so I came home and had some lunch and hung out with the family for a little. It was starting to get a little overcast but that had happened before, no big deal. I went back to school to tie more strings on donuts. (Yes, there was an “eat the donut from a string, no hands allowed” game.) And then it happened. At first I wasn’t really paying attention. I was trying strings – a job that required great concentration. Then I realized what it was…HAIL. Yup the sky decided to open up and it poured and poured and poured. All over everything. Thankfully my stuff was set up in the gym but the decorations were everywhere – outside and inside so the outside ones were taking a beating. It was kind of sad. It rained and hailed and the decision came that they had to cancel. No one was happy about that, least of all the many of kids at home tugging on their parents’ sleeves and asking if it was time to go to the party yet.
They rescheduled Spooktacular for the following afternoon. No problem – oh wait…we are going olive picking.
And no I wasn’t about to bail out of olive picking. It was my apple-picking substitute, we had to go! So we did both. We followed the bus to the olive grove so that we could leave early and get back in time for the start of Spooktacular. It was quite a day but it turned out to be a ton of fun.
Olive Picking
We went to an olive grove north of Amman near Ajloun (which is known for its impressive 12th-century castle ruins, known now as Ajloun Castle.) You can tour the castle, which we haven’t done yet. We did, however, pass it. It was pretty cool to see.
As we approached the grove we followed the bus down a very narrow one lane road which had about a 10 foot drop on one side and was all downhill. Needless to say I think I held my breath for 10 minutes while we traveled on this “road.” I also told Samuel that he was never again allowed to say that we never go on adventures! He just laughed.
We arrived at the grove all in one piece and met the farmers. They are a family who are hired by the landowner to live on the grove and harvest the olives during harvest season (approximately September through November). They get paid in oil – as in olive oil. I have to be honest, I couldn’t tell you if that is a fair deal or not. I will say that I have had fresh olive oil produced here in Jordan and it is delicious. Olive oil is also one of the few things that is actually fairly cheap here in Jordan. So again, I’m not sure if the farmer is making out in this deal or not.
After the rain and hail of the previous evening, we ended up with a beautiful day on the hillsides of Ajloun. The grove itself is muddy and rocky and filled with olive trees, which are old and extremely hardy. Olive trees are a very drought, disease and fire resistant trees and can live for an extremely long time. There are dozens of ancient olive trees throughout Israel and Palestine whose ages have been estimated to be 1,600–2,000 years old. However, these estimates have not be confirmed by current scientific practices.
After a quick introduction to the farmers and their families, we got straight to work stripping an olive tree of its olives. How does one do that exactly? Well, you can shake it, rake it or just plain pick the olives off. Any method works as long as you get them on the tarp and eventually in the buckets. The kids had a great time with all of this and it really was a lovely day. The farmer and his family were delightful. They loved taking pictures of the kids and were interested in everyone’s name and age. After we finished picking about 3-4 trees, it was time for lunch.
The famer’s wife made a delicious homemade chicken and rice dish with cucumber, tomato and mint salad, and fresh sheep’s yogurt. Samuel declared it was the best food he had eaten since arriving in Jordan. (I tried not to be offended.) And the true test of the food was Mariel. She ate it all up! I think I may send her to that family at least once a week next year during the harvest.
After lunch we were taught the steps for preparation. You need to crack each of the olives open before putting them into a jar with water and letting them sit for a week. You have to do this first and then after a week you dump out the water and the olives, put them back into your jar with more water, salt and lemon juice and let the olives cure for a month. Then you can finally eat them! We just “opened” our olives up the other week and I have to say not being a big fan of olives, they are pretty good. Bill loves them.
After a twenty-minute delay behind a gigantic tour bus on the small one lane road through the small town that you HAD to go through in order to get back to the highway to Amman – we were on our way!
We made it back to Samuel’s school with 5 minutes to spare and we all had a great time. I think the games were a big success. Even Samuel said he really liked them and he is ALWAYS my toughest critic. So while it was a day later, Spooktacular and our first Halloween here in Amman was a hit.
Bill and I went on a tour of an olive oil production plan. It was really interesting to see how they crush their olives down and get that delicious golden liquid that we all love so much. Jordan is obviously not one of the top olive oil producers but our tour guide did say they rank about 9th globally for olive oil producers. The particular company that we went to, Terra Rosa, also no longer uses diesel to operate their facility, which is a huge deal – because we all know the price of fuel. They have developed a way to recycle the various parts of the olive that they don’t use and that in turn is used as fuel to run the plant. It was really cool, especially considering that the majority of this country doesn’t recycle a thing.
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving quickly approached. The Embassy planned a trip to Jerusalem and many of our friends were going on that, so while I was up for inviting and cooking for many at Thanksgiving, it was quickly becoming clear that it was just going to be us for Thanksgiving. We did invite our downstairs neighbor and her daughter to join us. Her husband was out of town, so we then became a group of six!
As you all know I love to cook and after all these years I still have yet to make my own turkey! And you know what, I am still ok with that. At the suggestion of my very smart husband, we decided to order the smallest bird we could find from a local meat market and they cooked it for us as well! Perfect, because it left me the use of the oven to make sides, which quite frankly is my favorite part anyway. Well and pie too, of course. I should mention that Samuel pretty much made both pies this year – pumpkin and apple. They were both delicious.
Everything turned out fantastically well and it was a nice little Thanksgiving with some beautiful new friends. We Skyped and Facetimed with the family back home which made it even better.
Black Friday
When we last met here on the blog I had just finished bragging about our mid-October trip to Aqaba – the Jordanian coast. That was a good time. Sun, Sand, Water, WARMTH…currently it is 35 degrees outside with approximately 6 inches of snow. I purposefully didn’t buy boots (for anyone in the family) on post-winter sales last year because I thought, “Why do that when they will just grow out of them and never wear them.” That decision is probably not going to get me nominated for the “Mom of the Year” award. Anyway I digress and I will get to the snow in a minute. First we need to talk about Halloween…(cue: spooky music and a fog machine.)
Spooktacular
Spooktacular is the yearly Halloween party that Samuel’s school, ACS, puts on for the entire school. I volunteered to be in charge of the games back in August. I was new and uncertain as to how I would make a name for myself. Many of you may know that my friend Jill and I have hosted the “Brookshire Kids Halloween Party” the past several years. She does crafts, I do games and we split the food. It’s a major neighborhood event and I am going to brag, it’s an AWESOME Halloween party for all! Anyway, I was feeling a little blue thinking that I wouldn’t be participating in the great party this year, so I raised my hand at the ACS meeting when the chair asked, “Can anyone do games for Spooktacular?”
Weeks later I had come up with 14 games and my dining room table was covered in Halloween game craftiness. I was ready, so were the kids and Bill…well he was along for the ride with hopefully a smile on his face.
Spooktacular was being held on November 1 – a Friday. The night before was the Embassy Halloween Trick or Treat party and I had earlier signed up the family to go on a group trip of olive picking on the Saturday after Spooktacular. It was a packed weekend.
Embassy Trick or Treating was very nice. The best part in this mom’s eyes was that the kids came home with just the right amount of candy – that’s code for NOT THAT MUCH! Beautiful! (although weeks after Halloween they were still going through their buckets and asking at breakfast if they could have a piece of candy. A mom’s worst nightmare! Seriously…do they think I will break down and say – “yup this morning eat all the candy you want?”
Jango Fett and Wonder Woman
Friday morning I woke up, packed up the car with ladders and games and candy and all kinds of things that were going to make my games a huge success and off to school I went, leaving Bill with the kids. I worked all morning with other volunteers setting up games and decorations and such. I quickly realized that these ladies take this party seriously. It is a huge deal! Anyway around 1pm I was starving and pretty well organized so I came home and had some lunch and hung out with the family for a little. It was starting to get a little overcast but that had happened before, no big deal. I went back to school to tie more strings on donuts. (Yes, there was an “eat the donut from a string, no hands allowed” game.) And then it happened. At first I wasn’t really paying attention. I was trying strings – a job that required great concentration. Then I realized what it was…HAIL. Yup the sky decided to open up and it poured and poured and poured. All over everything. Thankfully my stuff was set up in the gym but the decorations were everywhere – outside and inside so the outside ones were taking a beating. It was kind of sad. It rained and hailed and the decision came that they had to cancel. No one was happy about that, least of all the many of kids at home tugging on their parents’ sleeves and asking if it was time to go to the party yet.
They rescheduled Spooktacular for the following afternoon. No problem – oh wait…we are going olive picking.
And no I wasn’t about to bail out of olive picking. It was my apple-picking substitute, we had to go! So we did both. We followed the bus to the olive grove so that we could leave early and get back in time for the start of Spooktacular. It was quite a day but it turned out to be a ton of fun.
Olive Picking
We went to an olive grove north of Amman near Ajloun (which is known for its impressive 12th-century castle ruins, known now as Ajloun Castle.) You can tour the castle, which we haven’t done yet. We did, however, pass it. It was pretty cool to see.
As we approached the grove we followed the bus down a very narrow one lane road which had about a 10 foot drop on one side and was all downhill. Needless to say I think I held my breath for 10 minutes while we traveled on this “road.” I also told Samuel that he was never again allowed to say that we never go on adventures! He just laughed.
We arrived at the grove all in one piece and met the farmers. They are a family who are hired by the landowner to live on the grove and harvest the olives during harvest season (approximately September through November). They get paid in oil – as in olive oil. I have to be honest, I couldn’t tell you if that is a fair deal or not. I will say that I have had fresh olive oil produced here in Jordan and it is delicious. Olive oil is also one of the few things that is actually fairly cheap here in Jordan. So again, I’m not sure if the farmer is making out in this deal or not.
After the rain and hail of the previous evening, we ended up with a beautiful day on the hillsides of Ajloun. The grove itself is muddy and rocky and filled with olive trees, which are old and extremely hardy. Olive trees are a very drought, disease and fire resistant trees and can live for an extremely long time. There are dozens of ancient olive trees throughout Israel and Palestine whose ages have been estimated to be 1,600–2,000 years old. However, these estimates have not be confirmed by current scientific practices.
After a quick introduction to the farmers and their families, we got straight to work stripping an olive tree of its olives. How does one do that exactly? Well, you can shake it, rake it or just plain pick the olives off. Any method works as long as you get them on the tarp and eventually in the buckets. The kids had a great time with all of this and it really was a lovely day. The farmer and his family were delightful. They loved taking pictures of the kids and were interested in everyone’s name and age. After we finished picking about 3-4 trees, it was time for lunch.
The famer’s wife made a delicious homemade chicken and rice dish with cucumber, tomato and mint salad, and fresh sheep’s yogurt. Samuel declared it was the best food he had eaten since arriving in Jordan. (I tried not to be offended.) And the true test of the food was Mariel. She ate it all up! I think I may send her to that family at least once a week next year during the harvest.
After lunch we were taught the steps for preparation. You need to crack each of the olives open before putting them into a jar with water and letting them sit for a week. You have to do this first and then after a week you dump out the water and the olives, put them back into your jar with more water, salt and lemon juice and let the olives cure for a month. Then you can finally eat them! We just “opened” our olives up the other week and I have to say not being a big fan of olives, they are pretty good. Bill loves them.
Pocket full of olives!
Mariel loved being on that ladder
And of course, Samuel never wanted to get off of the ladder.
I think I said something really funny and it made Bill laugh. Oh alright, that is probably not even close to being right, but I thought I would try.
The view from the grove.
Mariel learning how to smash the olives.
After picking and eating, each family
got to take home two jars of olives, which is a lot for this family. However, Spooktacular was calling and off the
Elliotts had to go. It was time to get
back into the Halloween spirit.After a twenty-minute delay behind a gigantic tour bus on the small one lane road through the small town that you HAD to go through in order to get back to the highway to Amman – we were on our way!
We made it back to Samuel’s school with 5 minutes to spare and we all had a great time. I think the games were a big success. Even Samuel said he really liked them and he is ALWAYS my toughest critic. So while it was a day later, Spooktacular and our first Halloween here in Amman was a hit.
The "Guts" Game
Zombie Walk
Can you put ten spider rings on a straw in less than a minute?
No Hands Allowed - eat a donut from a string.
Where's the pumpkin?
And that, my friends, was our
October. Thankfully November was a bit
quieter.
Bill and I went on a tour of an olive oil production plan. It was really interesting to see how they crush their olives down and get that delicious golden liquid that we all love so much. Jordan is obviously not one of the top olive oil producers but our tour guide did say they rank about 9th globally for olive oil producers. The particular company that we went to, Terra Rosa, also no longer uses diesel to operate their facility, which is a huge deal – because we all know the price of fuel. They have developed a way to recycle the various parts of the olive that they don’t use and that in turn is used as fuel to run the plant. It was really cool, especially considering that the majority of this country doesn’t recycle a thing.
Loading the olives
Washing the olives
Grinding the olives
Filling the tanks with olive oil
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving quickly approached. The Embassy planned a trip to Jerusalem and many of our friends were going on that, so while I was up for inviting and cooking for many at Thanksgiving, it was quickly becoming clear that it was just going to be us for Thanksgiving. We did invite our downstairs neighbor and her daughter to join us. Her husband was out of town, so we then became a group of six!
As you all know I love to cook and after all these years I still have yet to make my own turkey! And you know what, I am still ok with that. At the suggestion of my very smart husband, we decided to order the smallest bird we could find from a local meat market and they cooked it for us as well! Perfect, because it left me the use of the oven to make sides, which quite frankly is my favorite part anyway. Well and pie too, of course. I should mention that Samuel pretty much made both pies this year – pumpkin and apple. They were both delicious.
Everything turned out fantastically well and it was a nice little Thanksgiving with some beautiful new friends. We Skyped and Facetimed with the family back home which made it even better.
Black Friday
I have never been one to go out on
Black Friday and shop for Christmas. I
am not a “crowds” person and quite frankly I like a good sale but not at the
expense of my sleep. So this is an
American tradition I didn’t miss.
Instead, we went and got ourselves a Christmas tree!
This year is a first for me – as in my first FAKE tree. I have ALWAYS had a REAL Christmas tree. It’s tradition for my family. But when you move to a country that is water poor, not known for their evergreens and overwhelming Muslim, live Christmas trees are just not something you are going to see at the side of the road.
Since fake has never been on my radar, I had never even thought about buying a fake tree last year and shipping it over. So I had been concerned for weeks that we might not be able to put up a tree this year. And I was getting some grief about it from Miss M. She was pretty insistent that we needed a tree. I didn’t disagree with her, I just wasn’t sure what we were going to find. Luckily, our neighborhood French-owned Carrefour (kind of the French Walmart equivalent) came to our rescue. It’s a scrawny, very fake looking tree – but with lights and all of our ornaments it turned out pretty well! The kids had a blast, like they do every year, decorating it. And I had fun moving all the ugly ornaments to the back when they weren’t looking, just like my mom always did!
Since the decoration of the tree, we
have been busy getting ready for Christmas, making sure we did our shopping
early. Actually it’s the first year I
was done with my Christmas shopping for the kids before Thanksgiving. I was just too afraid of delayed mail. While it isn’t overly Christmasy here in
Amman, we do run into some decorations and things here and there and of course,
our house is Christmas central. We have
carols playing all the time, we have watched Rudolph, Frosty and Prep &
Landing more times than I should admit and we take time each night to read some
scripture in order to remind ourselves of the true meaning of this miraculous
season.
All this is to say that the Elliotts are READY. And this year we are spending Christmas in a very special place. Come Thursday we are headed to SOUTH AFRICA! That’s right, people, we are headed south. As I look out my window at the white stuff on the ground, I am getting more and more excited by the minute.
Bill has a colleague, more importantly a very good friend of ours, who is posted in Pretoria. We have talked about trying to visit him since we found out 2 years ago that he would be there while we were here. He mentioned that Christmas was a great time to come. That was all I needed.
We leave Thursday and come back New Years Eve. We are starting off with a safari at Kololo Game Reserve, heading back to Uncle Jarrod’s house for Samuel’s birthday and Christmas and then the day after we are off to Capetown for a few days. My list of must-sees includes, lions, rhinos, vineyards, and beach. Samuel’s includes lions, feeding a lion and petting a lion! Mariel really wants to see a rhino and Daddy says he is looking forward to seeing the kids with the lions, but I think secretly he can’t wait to get to one of those South African vineyards as much as me!
I promise to try posting at least once while we are there. But rest assured, there will be pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Get ready.
So there you have it. I am all caught up. Oh wait…the snow, I almost forgot.
It started on Wednesday with rain, rain and more rain. Then yesterday it turned to slushy snow and then eventually real snow. The weather actually got so bad that we had to cancel Samuel’s birthday party last night. The main issue is there just isn’t anywhere for the rain and water to go. There really isn’t any such thing as “storm drains” here and plows – well no there are no plows either. But don’t be too disappointed. The sun came out today and I am hopeful that we will be able to pull off the party tomorrow as we have now planned.
We hope that you are all enjoying this Christmas season. We wish you all the merriest and happiest of Christmases and hope that 2014 brings you nothing but joy and goodwill.
Love to all,
J in Jordan
This year is a first for me – as in my first FAKE tree. I have ALWAYS had a REAL Christmas tree. It’s tradition for my family. But when you move to a country that is water poor, not known for their evergreens and overwhelming Muslim, live Christmas trees are just not something you are going to see at the side of the road.
Since fake has never been on my radar, I had never even thought about buying a fake tree last year and shipping it over. So I had been concerned for weeks that we might not be able to put up a tree this year. And I was getting some grief about it from Miss M. She was pretty insistent that we needed a tree. I didn’t disagree with her, I just wasn’t sure what we were going to find. Luckily, our neighborhood French-owned Carrefour (kind of the French Walmart equivalent) came to our rescue. It’s a scrawny, very fake looking tree – but with lights and all of our ornaments it turned out pretty well! The kids had a blast, like they do every year, decorating it. And I had fun moving all the ugly ornaments to the back when they weren’t looking, just like my mom always did!
All this is to say that the Elliotts are READY. And this year we are spending Christmas in a very special place. Come Thursday we are headed to SOUTH AFRICA! That’s right, people, we are headed south. As I look out my window at the white stuff on the ground, I am getting more and more excited by the minute.
Bill has a colleague, more importantly a very good friend of ours, who is posted in Pretoria. We have talked about trying to visit him since we found out 2 years ago that he would be there while we were here. He mentioned that Christmas was a great time to come. That was all I needed.
We leave Thursday and come back New Years Eve. We are starting off with a safari at Kololo Game Reserve, heading back to Uncle Jarrod’s house for Samuel’s birthday and Christmas and then the day after we are off to Capetown for a few days. My list of must-sees includes, lions, rhinos, vineyards, and beach. Samuel’s includes lions, feeding a lion and petting a lion! Mariel really wants to see a rhino and Daddy says he is looking forward to seeing the kids with the lions, but I think secretly he can’t wait to get to one of those South African vineyards as much as me!
I promise to try posting at least once while we are there. But rest assured, there will be pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. Get ready.
So there you have it. I am all caught up. Oh wait…the snow, I almost forgot.
It started on Wednesday with rain, rain and more rain. Then yesterday it turned to slushy snow and then eventually real snow. The weather actually got so bad that we had to cancel Samuel’s birthday party last night. The main issue is there just isn’t anywhere for the rain and water to go. There really isn’t any such thing as “storm drains” here and plows – well no there are no plows either. But don’t be too disappointed. The sun came out today and I am hopeful that we will be able to pull off the party tomorrow as we have now planned.
He couldn't be happier!
She couldn't either!
The view up our street.
He's all smiles because he is about to peg his sister with a snowball!
We hope that you are all enjoying this Christmas season. We wish you all the merriest and happiest of Christmases and hope that 2014 brings you nothing but joy and goodwill.
I love those giggles.
A Very Merry Christmas from our family to yours!
Love to all,
J in Jordan
