The Holiday Season

Thursday we combined our Thanksgiving celebrations with Christmas celebrations since Binod will be back in Nepal for Christmas. Sue, Amy, Binod, and I went to Chatsworth. This is the house of the Duke of Devonshire. Its most recent claim to fame is its feature role as Mr. Darcy’s house in the latest rendition of “Pride and Prejudice” with Keira Knightly.
They have recently just decorated the house for Christmas with each room being decorated all in a certain color. The house on it’s own is splendid, but with the Christmas decorations makes the house even more magical!
We returned in the early afternoon to continue our cooking extravaganza for our Thanksgiving feast that night. While things were baking we also watched “Wallace and Grommet” and played Scrabble. I was very impressed with how well Binod played Scrabble considering English isn’t his first language. I don’t know that I would have been so successful playing in German!
For dinner Amy and I had Mick, Sue, Tammy, Binod, Lisa, Jo and Naomi over. We invited about 15-20 more from church and work for dessert. It was great to have so many people come celebrate the holiday with us. However, it did get confusing celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas in one day!
For dinner we served a traditional meal with turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, corn, green bean casserole, salad, and dinner roles. For dessert we made 2 pecan pies, 2 pumpkin pies, apple crisp, apple bars, zucchini bread, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, and peanut butter cookies. Sue also made mulled wine for everybody.
I was very happy that so many people came and the food turned out so well. It made the holiday much better than I had expected. But I did realize that there actually is “No place like home for holidays”. But I also realized that I have been very blessed to be placed in such a supportive environment for my year abroad. It made being away from family on Thanksgiving better than I could have anticipated!