There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

After two years away from home for the holidays, it's wonderful to be back (even if it's a little too cold for my taste). We celebrated an epic Thanksgiving as always with M's family, and I can hardly wait for Christmas to come. (The day after Thanksgiving, I typically start blasting Christmas music right through the rest of December.) Unfortunately, our seasonal decorations including our Christmas tree and ornaments did not make the cut for our UAB (unaccompanied air baggage, that part of our worldly possessions that we get to use while we're in long-term training), so they were thrown in HHE (household effects, shipped to a warehouse in Europe to wait until our next move).

Thankfully, though, all was not lost as an activity came along that gave me the perfect excuse to inject a little holiday cheer into our home: a live wreath-making! We took live wintry tree branches, leaves, and more and attached them by hand to a wire frame to make wreaths. I brought along my wonderful friends K (from high school), T (former roommate), and M (colleague and mentor from Nairobi who's also currently doing language training), and it was a blast. I will admit, M and T finished way before K and I did. We are such perfectionists sometimes! At least there were tasty treats and good company to enjoy in the meantime. As you can see from the first photo of this post, we somehow made four very different wreaths even though we all drew from the same pool of materials and attached them to the same frame. Cool, isn't it?

They had decorated the church room we used in such a lovely way. K and I were thrilled to see some camel silhouettes on the wall and knew we had to take a picture as a tribute to an inside joke about camels we've had going since we took French class together in high school. Talk about a long-running gag (not to mention a long and beautiful friendship)!

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you've never tried making a live wreath before, I highly recommend it, but especially if you can do it with a bunch of friends! Feel free to let me know in the comments what you do to get in the holiday spirit at home or abroad.