Celebrations!

Happy New Year 2013!  The holidays are over, but it feels like Thanksgiving around here with all the occasions we've had to celebrate.  In addition to Christmas and New Year's, we've had two other anniversaries this week.  Daniel turned one on the 27th!  We decided to forego the traditional first birthday gala with a complete meal in favor of a small party with just cake and tea.  Here, we can bill it as "American style."  :)  Daniel is quite an explorer, happily navigating the whole house (crawling or walking while pushing a stool ahead of him like a walker) and unpacking whatever he can find.  He loves to babble with extravagant gestures.  He says a few things that sound like English and one or two that sound like Nepali, but the only word we're sure he knows so far is "woof."  Here are a few pics of our sweet boy's first birthday.

And on the 31st, we marked 2 years since our arrival in South Asia.  It's one of those anniversaries you enjoy remembering partly out of the knowledge that you never have to relive that particular event again!  On the last day of 2010, exhausted, shell-shocked from 7 months in transition, and relieved to finally be here, we were greeted at the airport by kind co-workers who fed us American food and let us overnight at their home.  Their New Year's bonfire made our quest to stay awake until 8 PM much more pleasant.  So this year we celebrated with a bonfire small contained fire on our roof, and roasted a few Texas marshmallows for good measure.  As we're looking forward to a fresh start in the new year, we also enjoyed looking back at the Father's mercy in the intervening 2 years, all we've learned, all the kindness we've been shown, all the things we've come to love about our new home.  We feel very blessed!