A December to Remember

As expats we always lived partially packed. Every school break, long week end or holiday we were usually off on a journey. It was an adventurous time and as we look back at framed photographs and ticket stubs, we are glad we took advantage of our relative mobility.


This year (although we ARE traveling), it was wonderful to have a more relaxed approach to advent/pre-Christmas season. We cut down our own tree, we decorated The Bungalow, and unearthed long lost Christmas decor that was holed away in the old cellar canning closet while we galavanted around Asia.






We made our goal of one advent candle lit meal a week. (Once it was even twice!) The Three helped with the advent readings, savored the milk chocolates behind each numbered door on their calendars, and sang "loud and clear for all to hear" at their Christmas programs.

They enjoyed the animated Advent calendar Auntie Sharron sent, and their daily Christmas email from the Canadian grands. They went with the even blonder Johnson's for Breakfast with Santa ...



When we return from six sunny days in the Caymans they will still have 10 days of school vacay remaining. Our first Christmas back & it's a December to remember!


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Hotel Pics {Just Like P Dub!}

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Let the holiday begin ...

It's been a big day ... Sunday School, Ferguson Family Christmas, the Sunday School Christmas program ... Then home to tidy up the last minute loose ends, tuck final items into our well traveled cases and head for the airport hotel.

We schlepped along a humidifier for 贝贝's pesky winter croup, and two liters of ice mountain (to avoid paying the hefty $5 a bottle hotel price!)

The girlies are tickled with the turn down chocolates and San Pel for a bedtime snack. I'm thrilled with the high thread count sheets and the fluffy hotel robe. Mr Johnson awaits his room service burger while watching football ... Our holiday is already begun and we haven't even hit the airport.

Tomorrow we bundle in layers that we will gradually pull off as we head South ...

Christmas in the Caymans ... Here we come!

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Thankful for Friendships

One year after leaving China. Six years after leaving The Midwest {and coming back again} we can spin the garage sale globe in the living room, or log into our Skype account and see places and faces of people we know and love all over the world.

Our last 18 months have been a rocky business of uncertainty and transition. Readers here probably tire of hearing of it ... but through it all there have been friendships. Some friendships for the moments, but some are proving friendships for a lifetime. And it's not just Mr Johnson and I with these connections. The girlies too have emails rolling in and out on a regular basis to places in other time zones and on the other side of the international date line.

This week I am again mindful of just how many sweet souls we have relationships with around the globe: my friend in Australia, who tells in her witty six page Christmas rant of geckos in her dishwasher and a possible python in her ceiling; my friend in Michigan who will in the coming year, re-live her expat gig in China for two months -- this time as a homeschooling mum; my Korean friend I recently connected with on FB (she is still in QD and finally procured a VPN, and I although I oft have a love-hate relationship with the FaceBook, I love that it offers me connections like this one, and has recently added, thanks to the services of BING, the ability to offer on the page translation ... most of which are far from accurate ... but offer me a window into my friend's Korean life too!)

And it's not just international friendships.

There are friends we have found with great staying power in this part of the world too. Friends who have been patient with us on this journey, and thoughtful along this year of transition.

This time of year as the mailbox in front of The Bungalow (the vintage spray painted one that sits on precarious/jaunty angle) fills with glossy Christmas photos and sometimes even newsy notes from more local friends, we are again overwhelmed with the blessings of friendships. We are rich this season in friends. And for that we are extremely thankful.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

Chorus.-For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

O Christmas Tree

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Garlic and the Grinch

We've loved selecting our own fresh tree this year, bringing it home and decorating it and the rest of The Bungalow. We've sat down together as a fam and signed Christmas letters. We've promised to eat at least one meal a week in the dining room with only Christmas lights and candles (and to also light our advent candles then).

We've loved watching Christmas specials already airing on TV ... Rudolph (can I confess this is my least favorite Christmas classic?), Shrek the Halls, and The Grinch. I love, love, love Dr Seuss. I love his description of one who's heart is "two sizes too small"! (What adult and kid cannot relate to such an apt description of a fun-sucker?)

But, Mr Geisel, as my dear childhood bookshelf favorite, and an author I've passed on to my children ... I take issue with one lyric that for what ever reason has only caught my attention this week. In You're a Mean One Mr Grinch you describe with your wonderful Seusical style just how mean that old grinch really is.

I'm with you every line until the one that reads:

You've got garlic in your soul

Dr Suess and my readers, I love garlic.

Just last month I tucked 20 or so garlic cloves into the earth in my garden, where they will sleep through the long winter and erupt in the spring, and then be ready to be harvested as mature bulbs sometime after Independence Day.

I think having 'garlic in your soul' is a complement. Garlic is very dear to my heart! (And good for your heart too!) The strong, true flavor of garlic in a Mediterranean or Italian dish is what makes it. It is the distinction (along with ginger) of great Chinese cuisine. In fact, garlic is a pretty critical ingredient to most world cuisines, except perhaps in the 1957 kitchens of America at the time How the Grinch Stole Christmas was first published by Random House (the same year that Redbook also picked it up and no doubt published it along side ads for Jello molds and recipes for green bean casserole.)

And so, Dr Seuss I forgive you for your garlic comment. I will put it in cultural and historical context and hope that if there was a 2011 update, something truly unpleasant would stand in for garlic.

This Christmas season,

May you all have garlic in your souls,

(and in your recipes!)

You’re a mean one Mr. Grinch

You really are a heel.

You're as cuddly as a cactus,

And as charming as an eel,

Mr. Grinch!

You're a bad banana,

With a greasy black peel!

You're a monster, Mr. Grinch!

Your heart's an empty hole.

Your brain is full of spiders.

You've got garlic in your soul,

Mr. Grinch!

I wouldn't touch you

With a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole!

Teaching a New Dog Old Tricks

Remember that puppins we brought home from Amish country last August? She's pushing 50# and still has a way to go in her puppy stage. Fifty pounds of puppy is a daunting deal.

This fall I enrolled Xiao Shan in obedience training. For eight Tuesdays I attended the hour long class with a teacher we know, love and respect. Towards the end of the session our instructor announced to the class this disclaimer, "I just want you to know that Jen has three well behaved children at home, so it's interesting to see this situation."

小山 the Wonderdog, despite her lumbering and oft un-cooperativeness is fun to be around. Her Berner smile is infectious, and the way she cocks her head when you talk to her gives the impression of a wisdom she usually seems to lack.

Lou, our instructor, suggested we harness some of her energy. And we did. Quite literally. Last weekend, using a dog harness Mr Johnson and MGJ strapped a bunch of trimmed branches for her to pull back to our burn pile. She was so determined and proud of herself. And completely exhausted at the end of her branch pulling.

The Bernese Mountain Dog is an alpine mountain dog with an ancient lineage. According to the AKC the Berner breed has "long been at home on the farms in the midland of Switzerland. One of the four varieties of Swiss Mountain Dogs, the Bernese known in its native land as the Berner Sennenhund. These dogs worked as drovers and draft dogs as well as watchdogs in the farmyards mainly in the Canton of Berne."