"This is the wurst Thanksgiving Ever"

Not really. Well yes, really the actual day of was a very bad day. A day involving mean spirited colleagues, human vomit stinkiness in Marjane, evil students, mid terms, sounding like fun? So when you take that and compare it to what I knew I was missing out on last Thursday in the US, you have a heavy hearted Carrie. But I managed to suck it up and cook a Thanksgiving dinner anyways. On Satrday. Which we can add to the list of things I like about living in Morocco, you can cook thanksgiving whenever the hell you want to.

Other things on that list: 

The immense skylines
Palm tree and mosque dotted horizons
The grill yards on the side of the road
mint tea
tagines
the multi-linguistic environment
and the fact that you can pay for near about anything which equals: "anything is possible in Al Maghrib"

Anyways, Thanksgiving! I had over some friends yesterday, Sunday, to pig out on all the homemade classics: sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, stuffing, gravy, (chicken a la marrocaine) and pumpkin pie.

It is good for the spirit to socialize and be merry like that. It reminds one that there is more to life than work, house, robot, ahhh!!!!

Also, Youssef and I finally got to go out on a date. A date that was suppossed to be for his birthday but wherein I dragged him to a way fancier place that he wanted to go to and ordered drinks and food that I then could not finish because I was having stomach issues that were leaving me well, nauseuous. Now...doesn't that sound romantic? I guess I owe him one. We are just trying to get through the winter!

No fun till winter!

So the days after Thanksgiving officially mark the most nostalgic time of the year for me. I have my pathetic xmas tree, and I think I will spend a bit of energy this year trying to get it a little less pathetic looking. Last year I had my mother and sister and niece and brother in law so the tree looked just perfect and everything felt very xmas like. This year...not so much. But there is still time to get into it.

I still have a lot of posts to get caught up on like the slaughtering of the lamb and the making of the baby beds...All in due time, all in due time.

xoxo
Carrie

A Photo Response

This is a photo response to this: http://feeduscheap.blogspot.com/2010/11/basic-vegetable-soup.html

On a quite Saturday morning, in the Moroccan countryside...

While babies were sleeping behind closed doors...

While vegetables were rotting in the fridge...

And more vegetables were growing in the garden...

 There was a girl from Atlanta, very far from home, thinking about that simple vegetable soup recipe she read about on feeduscheap.blogspot.com

 And so she started cooking...

And the aroma started to fill the house...

All the while looking at this from her kitchen window:

And then the babies woke up and the camera batteries died and all hell broke loose!

BUT the soup was excellent! The veggies I had on hand were: carrots, zucchhinni, tomatoes, fennel and green peppers. It was divine. I ended up combining it with a pot of navy beans and adding tumeric, paprika, and cumin. My husband came home and made a ground beef topper and we shredded cheddar on it.

Voila CHILI! 

Bonus shot = My olive tree:

Has it gotten any better yet?

Not really. Maybe. Kind of? Nah. It still sucks. If the girls need at least two weeks to adjust to the daycare and the move, we are obviously going to need that long as well. I am so tired that I am serisouly struggling with trying to make anything brilliant or even interesting. Our lives right now involve work work and more work. Work at the office, work in the car and work at home. And to answer your question...the home work is the hardest, the longest, the most back breakingest of them all.

BUT we did manage the follwoing moments this weekend:
a long walk along the shoreline with the girls in the stroller
a leisurley cafe beer at a beachfront restaurant
the girls beds are put together
the girls clothes are unpacked and sorted
all of our work clothes are washed and dry
I made home-made chocolate chip cookies
and roasted garlic with tomatoes and onions
and fruit salad

The daily torture routine of two full time working parents with twin babies

Mae: Day one

So…we have started the, what feels like a marathon, daily task of getting the girls and ourselves out the door and into the city by 7am routine. 
 

Day one = wrinkled pants disaster day, with neither mom or dad being able to do any work due to the stress of the morning (and the uncertainty of the impending evening)

Day two = things were going a lot smoother until I fell flat on my face scraping both knees while closing the courtyard door. (so I can say day 2 actually involved blood)

Oh wait, I forgot Night one wherein Sophia woke up and puked all over me and the bed and herself!

One sweet thing about day two’s fall…Youssef took the blame for it. Even though he was not there when it happenned. He actually said, “It is all my fault you fell I am so sorry, you can totally just blame me” and for some reason it actually helped me a little to, you know, stop crying.

We will get better at this. We are sure of it. We are so sure that we actually took out meat from the freezer this morning so that it can defrost which means that we are planning on making dinner in more than one pot tonight. That is a major feat around ours lately as evenings involve (and must involve) the following:

cleaning babies, undressing babies, re-dressing babies for bed, unpacking bags, re-packing bags, more bags for lunch plus my lunch, taking my shower (“can you ask your mom and Souad to wash the girls tomorrow Youssef, I think it has been a few days since they had a bath”), ironing clothes plus don’t forget to get the clothes off the line plus is it normal to have this much to do plus is it normal to drag two babies out of the house at 6:45am and not bring them back to that house until 7pm?  

And I haven’t even mentioned the grandma’s house then work then grandma’s house then daycare then work then daycare then home portion of my day!