15 for '15

So far...

1: very happy New Year's Day, mostly spent on a day-trip to Sioux Falls, seeing the third installation of the Hunger games (and being pleasantly surprised!) with Tessie and Isabel, lunching, shopping at Barnes & Noble and Target, and finally ending the day with a lovely get-together of many families at our friends the Gerdes' house.

Probably the only movie I've seen yet that beats its book.

2: new jobs—I'm back at British Council and will be starting on Monday with my friend Carrie's company, Locus English. I really truly loved teaching Kindergarten, but things didn't work out with the school. Hopefully I'll get another chance to teach little ones again in the future though, because it was so fulfilling and energizing. But for now I'm happy to be back at BC and to be starting something new!

3: times eating Dominos gluten-free pizza while at home over the holidays! A bit overkill maybe, but after never eating pizza for years and then this summer discovering their gluten-free crust and white sauce didn't upset my body too much, I couldn't get enough.

4: working days since I've gotten back from the US. After my Odyssey of a trip (see #7 below) they've been pretty rough. It's not that I'm suffering from jetlag, it's more like I'm suffering from my-body-has-no-idea-what-time-it-is.

5: seasons of Dr. Who that Othman has already powered through since lil sister Tessie turned him onto it during the last days of 2014 while I was in the US. Countless headshakes from myself since.

He likes these lil guys a bit too much and has taken to saying that a bit too much.

6: little five-year-old faces that I've been missing. Also 6 movies that I watched on my flights back to Casablanca, the highlights being a BBC miniseries of Death Comes to Pemberley (loved it) and this movie, recommended by my mother, and now that I've seen it, by me too! I loved all the different languages in it especially. It was light hearted and cute, and good family viewing.

7ty two: hours getting back to Casablanca from home. I'll let my Facebook status recap:

The 2 airlines I flew with got some nice long complaint emails.

8: family members I got to be with during the holidays, who I was so overjoyed to see and spend time with! It was truly the best of Christmases. I also got to spend time with one future family member, which brings me to:

9: months until lil brother Gus and the lovely Emily tie the knot!

10: days into January so far and I haven't had the time to take down the Christmas tree yet. Guess that's what happens when you arrive a day and half later than you were supposed to, after Christmas break.

11+: hours of Lord of the Rings—an extended edition marathon with sister Maria on New Years Eve (it counts as 2015 because we finished the five endings of the Return of the King in the new year). I had never watched them all back to back before, and it was absolutely fabulous reliving my teenage dorkdom. But our marathon probably wasn't the full 11 hours, since we fast forwarded most of the battle scenes....

12 cents plus one dollar: how much we paid for a beautiful, ripe pineapple earlier today, and then enjoyed for dessert. It was absolutely delicious, and oh so wonderfully cheap. Thanks Morocco.

13- 14: the ages of my students who absolutely astounded me today with their knowledge of world events as we brainstormed about 2014 in review (they got basically every big world event—if you haven't checked out an article about what an important year it was yet take a look at this one, and its top comment. This map is pretty cool too.) and made predictions for 2015. The predictions were all positive and uplifting, many were realistic, and they showed deep humanity and insight. From finding a vaccine for Ebola, to the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 and its survivors being found on an island, to new scientific breakthroughs about the Big Bang thanks to information received from Philae, to an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, to the completion of the periodic table of elements, their predictions made me feel better than I have in a long time about the up-and-coming generation.

15: pictures taken so far on my new smartphone that hubby gifted me for Christmas. I guess I've joined the ranks. But I do have to admit... it's been useful.

Here's hoping the rest of the year is as good as the highlights of these past 10 days, and that the lows don't stoop quite as low as that plane trip!

Happenings and gifts

I've been having such a lovely visit home these past two weeks... the four travel days are totally worth the time I'm to spending with my family!

Between stomping in the snow, antiquing and thrifting with my sisters, eating out at restaurants,

taking sister selfies,

doing wintry art projects,

shop shop shopping (which is an activity I'm not particularly fond of, but after many months in Morocco the US stores are such a nice change!), and eating my mom's homemade food, I received a package in the mail enclosing a late wedding gift! Our adorable flower girl's family apparently had never given us one, not that we had noticed, and sent it once they found out I was home for the holidays.

Little Marguerite is the daughter of very good family friends!

These kitchen towels are very high quality and soft and are adorably hand embroidered by said flower girl's mom, and I absolutely love them!! 

They're all wonderful, and I can't wait to use them, but I think this one is my favorite.

They also gifted us this ceramic cicada which is from her dad's region in southern France and which we thought was just too fun.

I also got a late Christmas gift from a sister who was annoyed at my constantly using her waterbottle...

and have continued to add to my turtle collection!!

It's been a good trip so far!!

Snow!

While en route home last week I realized that the last time I was around snow was in 2010. Arriving in South Dakota I was disappointed to see there wasn't much snow on the ground. I've been hoping for it to snow... wanting to enjoy the silence it envelops the world in, the crunch of it under my boots, and the beauty it lends to the dead, yellowed grass. So when it snowed the other day, and on top of that the sun came out for the first time since I had arrived, I was pretty happy. As soon as I woke up and came downstairs I grabbed my camera and stepped out the front door to take these:

Then the chill got to me so I stepped inside, and continued taking pictures indoors.

It might be cold but it sure is pretty out!

Christmas morning at the Braga-Henebry's

We already had had a bunch of presents under the tree... but Santa still makes a stop at this house despite our lack of little kids!

Sisters in the early morning. We had to do presents earlier than usual because my brother Gus and his fiancée Emily had to drive down to Kansas City to spend the rest of the holiday with her family. 

Present time! We had a first round of gifts from littlest sisters Maria and Tessie. All the gifts were either adorably homemade, or from one of the town's many, amazing antique shops. I took shots of some of the impressive art Maria gave out.

After that, I gave out the gifts Othman and I had ordered for the family from fair trade site Seven Hopes United (having had a good experience when they were one of our wedding registries)... before I knew I was coming! Mom and dad got a serving dish handmade and painted in Mexico,

and each sibling (and one future sibling) got hand painted cups from India that I thought were just lovely.

Othman and I also gifted a book to Emily and Gus that we've benefited from in our relationship.

Gifts from Othman's family in Morocco were next! Maria and Isabel got some cookbooks which they're looking forward to using...

and Tessie got some stationary which she thought was just too cute.

Mom got a beautiful shirt from Marrakech,

and she and dad are enjoying the beautiful coffee table book full of photographs of Morocco,

and the boys are loving the entire KILO of chocolate!

Patrick's gifts to the family were an Apple TV (whose use he had to explain to us of course),

and official World Cup Brazil jerseys for the girls! Also, not pictured, is a stylus and corresponding iPad app for the artists of the family to make spectacular illustrations. More on that in a future post.

Then came Santa's presents, including some great piano music and composition book for the pianists Maria and Isabel, lots of arty things for Tessie and others, and some things made by mom or coming from her travels... because as she explained to us when we were younger (to explain the wrapping paper we helped make with potato stamps), busy busy Santa employs moms as his helpers.

The future-weds got some crocheted pot holders and a door mat made from Gus's old tee-shirts. 

Patrick got a Lonely Planet stickerbook to prepare him for his upcoming (and slightly insane) vacation to Antarctica...

and Tessie fangirled over an ultimate Percy Jackson guide.

Maria rejoiced over a thermos cup that wouldn't get polluted by old coffee taste...

and Emily fell in love with a scarf mom crocheted for her!

I got no less than THREE additions to our turtle collection, including this adorable handfelted one mom got on the streets of Santa Fe,

and Isabel loved the plaid dress Gus and Emily gifted her!

There were many more gifts given and received throughout the morning, but the greatest gift of all was both the joy of giving to our loved ones, and the presence of ALL the siblings at a Christmas for the first time in many years! After coming home from church on Christmas Eve we all sat around our dining table to eat some desserts (and maybe drink some wine and port) before heading to bed. Mom gave a toast to the love between family members and suggested that we all follow with our own toasts. We ended up making two trips around the table toasting to each other, to absent loved ones, to the trials and triumphs of the year past, and to our love for each other which has morphed and changed over the years but has never waned. It truly was a very, very merry Christmas.