A Roma band at our house

This past weekend was the Orthodox Easter here in Macedonia. This picture shows Sawyer with our neighbor, Eli, cracking eggs. Many people have given us hard boiled eggs dyed red. I was reading online (http://faq.macedonia.org/religion/religious.holidays.html#veligden) that the red color symbolises the coming happiness in the resurrection. I thank my God for the resurrection of Jesus Christ! I'm humming the song now - Oh the wonderful cross- "all who gather here by grace draw near and bless your name"...
Even though the majority of the Roma people living here in Skopje are Muslim, some groups of Roma go door to door playing music for Easter to earn a little money. On Monday, Pepi, my language helper, and I were right in the middle of studying when I heard this loud band playing down the street. A few minutes later they were playing at our home! The band sounded incredible as you will hear in the video clip!

Resurrection Eggs

Thank you UBC ladies for sending me the Resurrection Eggs! Both my friend and I were able to use them to share the Easter story.

a crane? a dinosaur? oh...a lamb!

This afternoon we had an interesting time at the butcher shop. The three of us were walking around the green market and made our way to our favorite butcher shop. Sawyer and I always wait outside the store on Eric because I don't do well in a small shop with raw meat surrounding me (especially now that I'm pregnant!). So Sawyer and I were waiting outside the shop but we couldn't help noticing through the windows a large abundance of some fresh meat hanging from the ceiling. I couldn't identify the animal right off. It's not a familiar animal that we are use to seeing in the butcher shop. I was wondering..."Is it a crane?". It looked like some sort of bird staring back at me with it's eyes and teeth still intact. There were so many hanging right in the front window. I turned Sawyer's stroller away from the shop so that he and I could look at something else but the meat shop across the alley also had these mysterious animals hanging up in their store for sale. Sawyer pointed to the animals hanging and said "Dinosaur"! The head and teeth really did look like those flying dinosaurs! Well they ended up being lamb. Neither Sawyer or I had made good guesses, ha! My neighbor just told me that lamb is what is cooked for Easter and the Orthodox Easter will be this Sunday. Goes to show you just never know what you'll see around here:). Each day truly is an adventure!

Our Baby at 12 1/2 weeks

Here's our baby at 12 1/2 weeks. Double click on the pictures to make them larger. Look closely to where the arrows are pointing...it might be a boy:) I think the cutest one is of the baby sucking his thumb or fist (picture 3).

April Fools Day

Here in Macedonia April 1st is called "The Day of the Joke". Children dress up in costumes. Sawyer was a bumblebee since he loves that song "I'm bringing home a baby bumblebee".

Eric had a joke played on him today. It was pretty funny! Another American friend living here called him and told him about the new Burger King in our city. Eric believed him and got excited for a few minutes before he realized it wasn't true!:) Of course I would love for Burger King to come here--better yet, Chick-Fil-A or Arby's!