Our friend John came over yesterday with some beautiful gifts his wife sent to our children from Afghanistan. Elora and Oliver both received a full outfit of the hand made traditional formal clothes from Afghanistan. John said he wore an outfit similar to Oliver’s for his wedding, but they can also be work for celebrations, birthdays, or other special days.
Elora and Oliver were so excited. Oliver spent the whole time calling himself “Prince Ollie A Baba” and calling Elora “Princess”. He is into Aladdin right now, and apparently these clothes remind him of the movie.
John trying to show Elora how to wear the shawl. The decorations on Elora’s outfit include real mirrors and little bells embroidered onto the fabric, making the dress and shawl very heavy – but fun too because Elora jingles when she moves! You can’t really see, but there are also cute pants that go under the dress which also have embroidery at the ankles. Elora loves her new clothes and is so excited to wear them on her birthday (even though that is months away, she asked John if her birthday would be a good day to wear her “princess clothes”).
The clothes were all handmade in Afghanistan, and John’s wife did some of the sewing herself. We are hoping she will get to come to Austria with their children soon, John hasn’t seen his family in a few years now. We are really hoping to meet them before it is time for us to return to the US.
Oliver is such a little ham, he knows when he is wearing special clothes and gets very excited to go look in the mirror and show off for the camera and everyone in the room. If you look closer at the white shirt you can see the lovely embroidery on the front. The outfit came with fancy shoes too (that Elora thinks are girl shoes because they have silver sparkles to match the vest…) We haven’t gotten Oliver to try the shoes yet, but Elora tried them on and thinks they are very pretty. Thanks again to John for these beautiful gifts!
