Şeker Bayramı

Şeker Bayramı literally means "sugar holiday" and it refers to the 3 day celebration following Ramadan. Lots of time is spent visiting friends and family during these days and a LOT of candy is given to the kids!

Our best friends always invite us to their village for the holiday and this year was no exception. You can read more about our last trip to the village by clicking here.

My pretty girl! I covered my head while we were in the village and Vienna wanted to be just like her mommy! I love this picture of my Nenna!

The best tomatoes EVER!

Joel and I could seriously eat these all day long! We're thankful that our friends let us pick a few kilos worth of tomatoes from their garden to satisfy our cravings.

Yohanis with one of his best friends

I.love.village.pants and the fact that I was given a pair to wear pretty much as soon as we arrived! Now I know why everyone in the village wears them  - they are SOOOO comfy!

Vienna loves her some cucumbers!

the village mosque

Sorry for the bad quality of the rest of these pictures, they were taken on Joel's cell phone

We went on a picnic one evening and had fun collecting these from the trees. They are very similar to cherries.

Joel took the big kids along with him and a couple of friends one afternoon to go fishing. It was quite the experience for Joel because our friends idea of "fishing" is jumping in the water and catching the fish with their bare hands. After I told my dad this he informed me that in the States this type of fishing is called noodling. You learn something new everyday! Anyway, our friend caught (noodled?) 4 fish and we ate them for dinner that night. The whole experience was one of the highlights of the trip for Yohanis and Colson. They had a blast!

Twists

My first attempt at twists on Yohanis.

For my first time, I don't think I did too bad!

Life with so many boys is SO weird, but oh so fun!

For the first year that Yohanis was home we kept his hair pretty short, because I just didn't have the time and energy to learn how to care for it properly. But that's no excuse and he has such beautiful, curly hair. He wanted to let it grow out and after I showed him some Youtube videos of kids with twists in their hair, he was sold. 

So yesterday we tried it for the first time. It took about an hour and a half but we did it in 15 minute chunks throughout the day. And Yohanis LOVED the finished product. He couldn't wait to show it off to Daddy when he got home. 

So that brings me to my questions for all you fellow adoptive mom bloggers. What hair care products do you use? What can't you live without? We've been using Aubrey's Honeysuckle Rose Conditioner (thanks, Staci, for mentioning it on your blog) and straight up coconut oil. But I can't find anything for Yohanis' hair here in Turkey, so I have to get products online and send them to my parents for them to ship over here in a package. 

So, tell me your hair care routine and what works for you! Educate me, please :)

Ramadan

Ramadan is in full swing over here. During Ramadan, Muslims must abstain from eating, drinking and having sex from sunrise to sunset.

It's very hard for our friends (and even dangerous) when Ramadan falls over the summer months because days are so long and so hot and going without food or even a sip of water is extremely difficult. It makes for some very irritable people by the end of the day :)

Ramadan is always fun for us because we receive many invitations from friends to join them for Iftar (Arabic word referring to the special evening meal when Muslims break their fast).

Iftar is often done in community with lots of friends gathering together to share this special meal. Many Muslims believe that feeding someone Iftar is a good deed that will be rewarded.

Tonight we went to our 3rd Iftar in just 4 days. I'm always thankful because Turkish food is AMAZING (not to mention, it's another meal I don't have to cook - yay!) and we enjoy being included in this special event even though we're not observing Ramadan.

It has been a lot of really late nights in a row though. Iftar is eaten at sunset, so right now that means about 8:30pm. Till we eat the delicious meal and dessert, followed by Turkish coffee and later çay, and of course chatting with our friends, it is always well past 11:30!

Our kids have been doing great with the late nights though and this morning they slept in till 10:45!

We feel so blessed to be welcomed into this special little community with open arms.

Even though we're foreigners who live lives so differently from them and we still struggle to communicate in Turkish we feel so loved and accepted. And I'm so thankful for that!

Turkey Road Trip: Part 7

Our next adventure was exploring Kaymakli - a huge underground city. There are 36 underground cities (probably many more undiscovered) in Cappadocia. Kaymakli is the largest - it has 8 floors below the ground, but only 4 are open to the public.

It was refreshing being underground as it was much, much cooler! The kids were actually telling us they were cold (note Yohanis in this picture)

To protect themselves from religious persecution, early Christians built these underground cities.

This is a ventilation shaft that goes down 80 meters

 Kaymakli included a stable for the animals(1st floor), a church (2nd floor), many living areas, food storage rooms, wineries and a kitchen(3rd floor). Archeologists believe that up to 3500 people could have resided here.

If you're claustrophobic, this is definitely not the place to visit. It was full of so many narrow tunnels that you had to crouch down to go through. You could easily get lost if there weren't arrows telling you which way to go.

I can't imagine what living underground must have been like. Crazy to think about!

Kaymakli was definitely a family favorite. Colson especially had a blast navigating us around by following the blue arrows. We walked through it all two times and that still wasn't enough for him.

On our last evening we walked around the town marveling at all the beautiful homes carved out of rock.

 

A pretty sweet hotel

Love it!

View from the top. Breathtaking!

I can't get over how tall Yohanis looks in the picture!

Us with Vienna - post meltdown

And that, my friends, brings us to the end of our amazing trip. We had so much fun!

A few last thoughts:

1. Camping is totally the way to go! Well, that or staying with friends like we did for two nights in Ankara. It's so cheap to camp and the kids loved it. Vienna actually told me her favorite part of our trip was sleeping in the tent. We also cooked most of our own meals with two little propane burners that we brought along rather than eating out a lot. It is a lot of work to set up/take down tents and to prepare and cook meals while traveling, but it was worth it.


2. Traveling over Ramadan is not always a great idea. We completely weren't thinking when we planned this trip and it ended up falling right over the beginning of Ramadan. One afternoon we drove to Kayseri (the farthest east that we went) and it seemed like the whole city was keeping the fast. It seriously took us about a half hour of driving around (and this is a pretty big city) before we could find a place to eat lunch that was actually open. We ended up going to a big mall and finding the food court. There were only two other people there. So much for being culturally sensitive! Major fail!


3. Getting out and doing things is so much easier now that we have 3 1/2 years of Turkish under our belts. It was so much fun to be at all these touristy places and be able to surprise the locals with our Turkish. We also didn't get ripped off - knowing the language and culture when you're traveling in another country is so invaluable! Having four children helps a lot too, Turks are suckers for cute kids :)

4. I do have to brag on my kids a little bit. They were AMAZING little travelers. They did so well on the long rides in the van, sleeping in tents, doing lots of walking and enduring lots of long, hot days (and remember Isaiah had the chicken pox?). Traveling with small children is no easy task, but after this last trip I have great confidence that I can do pretty much anything ;)


And now back to your regularly scheduled program . . .  aka real life :)

Turkey Road Trip: Part 6

Mornings in Cappadocia were so amazing. We were always up at sunrise (sleeping in a tent isn't always a great night of sleep - ha!) but it was so worth it to see the hot air balloons taking off every morning. We could even hear the whoosh of the flame shooting up into the balloons as they would rise into the air. 

So beautiful!

Cappadocia is famous for it's pottery. It was a neat experience to watch a potter work.

Joel even got to try it out! Joel is an incredibly gifted potter and it was so cool for him to be able to throw pottery in Cappadocia!

So incredible, isn't it?

Here we go again :)

Much better! I'm pretty sure I had to bribe them with gum or something for this picture! Too bad Isaiah isn't looking.

Yohanis took this one. I like it.

Beautiful view of Göreme, Cappadocia

Pretty girl

Mr. Pox

This picture sums up our kids pretty well. Isaiah cries a lot, Yohanis and Colson try anything to make him happy (even though it usually makes it worse) and Vienna just likes to look pretty.

Obligatory van picture