Hurray for Hoe!

The most frequently asked question this past week has been: do you have turkeys in Singapore?

Answer: Singapore does not produce any food. Every single morsel of sustenance that goes into our mouths is shipped in from another country....including turkeys. Your average Thanksgiving turkey will set you back about $75. (However, I have seen some for close to $100).

Luckily our kind friends invited us for Thanksgiving dinner, insisting that they would be the only ones paying for the turkey. Our price of entry: a salad and a pie (sweet!) There were a total of five families in all (meaning there were sixteen kids running around the house having a great time). Our friends ordered their turkey from Mr. Hoe - who also provides the school lunches at SAS. Scary sounding...I know. But actually it was one of the best turkeys I have ever had in my life. I now have a strange sort of affinity towards Mr. Hoe and his magical touch with poultry. 

This was my very first Thanksgiving away from family. It was still a bit sad to be so far away from everyone this time of year - but the pain was eased quite a bit by the fact my family held a full-on Thanksgiving dinner this past July (Mom and Dad flew out and everything) and by the kindness and company of good friends. All in all, I have to say it was a great Thanksgiving.

However, Andrew told me on at least three occasions that he would not eat turkey because, "it looks weird and tastes gross." Sacrilege!!!! You cannot be my child!

Saturday we were invited to a Thanksgiving Break pool party for all the kids in our apartment complex. It was fun... until I got stuck in a conversation with an insanely intense dog lover. Now, I am a huge fan of dogs. However, I have no interest in spending (literally) forty minutes hearing about not only your dogs, but your siblings' as well; where they were born, when they were born, what they looked like, how they liked to be pet, what there favorite games were, how they died, which other dogs were present when they passed, on and on and on. (If I had a gun.....) I kept trying to veer the conversation towards other things, but it kept going back to the dumb dogs. She even missed a few major social clues that people were ready for a change of topic. For example, the girl next to us told a story about her brother being mauled and disfigured by a dog when they were both small children (she was a little over three and her brother was two). The dog lover responded, "Well, do you remember what your brother did to aggravate the dog. Because, you know, dogs don't just attack people!" That's right. Blame the two year old for having his ear ripped off! I think it was shortly after that comment that I realized this woman was officially nutty and left the conversation. 

As you may, or may have not known, this past Sunday with the fifth Sunday of the month. Translation: I was off duty for the third hour of church; meaning I only had to be in nursery for 40 minutes; meaning my chances of having a runny nose whipped on my clothes decreased by 55%; meaning I could wear an outfit that was NOT 70% polyester! Yes! I could wear tights....and "dry clean only"....and heels....and extra jewlery! I showed up to church feeling a bit more attractive than the usual dowdy, Nursery leader self that I normally am. As I was gracefully trotting up the stairs to get to the second story, I completely wiped out. 

There I was.....sprawled out on the the stairs, unable to move because my heels (which I am now no longer used to wearing) had turned sideways on my feet, and I was pinned down on my right side by my ginormous church activity bag (which I will now make the boys carry if they want it at church).  I also had a nasty secret revealed when my blouse came up just enough to reveal the fact that my panty hose went way higher than my skirt. So lesson learned. I am humbled. I should not care what I look like at church or I will be publicly humiliated. 

Oh......and I made another HUGE mistake at church when I kindly asked a woman if she was expecting.  In my defense, she had packed a lunch for herself and was eating spaghetti (at 10:45am) in the kitchen when I went in there to get water for the nursery kids - and I had just found out about three other women who just announced they were pregnant. So I got overly excited and tried to uncover another pregnancy before anyone else. Obviously she wasn't and I am pretty sure she was quite offended by my comment. I continued to reassure her it was because she brought food to eat during church. Isn't that something only pregnant people do?

Sunday = low point for me.