New best friends

Ellie has learned how to "smile" for the camara. That goofy grin isn't mine, right? It must be Jason's :) Ellie now does everything with her baby or her doggie. She sleeps with her doggie and sometimes brings him out to play. Her baby (which we took the voice box out of!) gets fed and gets drinks from Ellie. It's a little sad that she doesn't have human playmates yet, so she has to create her own. Hey, at least she has imagination!!

Our new favorite treat is popcorn that we make on the stove. Ellie loves the "noisy popcorn" and laughs as it pops. I don't butter it, so it is a healthy and fun snack.

On Thursday (tomorrow) the Fulbright office is having a Thanksgiving potluck. I can't wait to eat turkey!! It won't be the same as being with all of you, but at least we are able to celebrate (that means stuff ourselves)! We're going to start making Christmas decorations soon; Ellie and I went out yesterday to collect pinecones.

Stomach flu :(

Things are okay with us; Jason just got over the stomach flu. He was totally out of it for a couple days, but we're hoping that Ellie and I didn't catch it. If we don't have any symptoms yet, and he's been over it for a day, we shouldn't get it, right??? I really hope not; Ellie barfing is the worst. I hope Jason doesn't catch anything else from his classmates! It's kind of funny; Jason stayed home from school yesterday to recuperate, but it turned out that it was a holiday and there were no classes anyway. I'm trying to explain to him that now he can stay home today too since he was willing to miss a day, but he's not convinced. Oh well.

We had a major plumbing problem last week, a flood! Not just any flood, but a flood of sewer water. Some pipes or something were blocked and whenever we used a lot of water it would seep up out of the drain in the floor of our "laundry room." I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but we hadn't met our landlords yet because they've been out of the country. Well, they returned last week, and I guess their water is connected to ours, so when they used their water, our office completely flooded. Luckily they are really nice and took care of it right away, but I was left to clean up the disaster area. (Well, I left a little for Jason.) It was disgusting, but at least it shouldn't happen again.

I wasn't able to sign up for the next session of Arabic classes, so I guess I'll have to wait until January. Oh well, it saves us some money, and it's nice to be home at night.

Ellie loves to watch this (and I admit, I do too. I'm a little embarrassed)

Backstreet Boys singing with Elmo

Ellie coloring