Nine years and couting!

We celebrated nine years of marriage last week on our trip. So thankful for Gappy watching the little boys so we could go out to the Hard Rock Cafe. Will not talk about the rain storm we got caught in that totally drenched us... one of those things that someday we'll look back on and laugh about... someday. :)

I love you, Babe, and am so thankful for nine years together.

Our trip

We got back 4 days ago from our vacation. We had a great time. I am so, so thankful to the Lord for a break and for a good time as a family. It's been hard to go from vacation to "normal life" again. Especially when vacation meant nice stores to shop at, cooler temperatures and showers with hot water... and "normal life" means cooking from scratch and cold bucket showers and constant battles for control of my kitchen against millions of bugs and geckos....

Will take a while to get all the pictures up, but here are a few to start....

Our first five nights we stayed at a small hotel right by the beach on the eastern side of the island. We basically just stayed at the hotel and swam and vegged. We had a "garden suite" which meant we had a walled courtyard with a lounging bed outside; a kitchen - that also was completely open to the outside and an open air bathroom... I didn't get pictures of it, but had white rocks with a huge rock bathtub - very modern and zen like - with a pond right behind it. Our bedroom was totally closed in (with AC!) and the boys did great all being in the same room. It was nice to have the courtyard and kitchen so Brant and I could hang out when the boys were sleeping.

We figured out really quickly it was easier to order room service (way cheap!) than leave the hotel to eat. Also, I went to a local grocery store and got lots of fun Western types food (like cheese and strawberries and spaghetti sauce in a jar!) and cooked some. Way easier on the boys than going to a fancy restaurant.


The hotel had great breakfasts and then we spent most mornings in the pool; which was cool with two levels (the upper level being really shallow with fun fountains and then flowing into the deeper part.)



We did venture out to do some shopping - which was fun for me but stressful with the little boys. We made up for it with treats.... like Cold Stone!!!!!!!!

One evening, we went to visit our good friends, who were also on vacation and staying at a hotel nearby. They had the coolest waterslide at their hotel. The boys - even Ezra - went down it multiple times with Brant.

The beach was pretty crummy right by our hotel, so we walked up the beach walk to a really fancy resort on the beach and spent the day there. Was a plus knowing the language as Brant could talk to the manager and get special permission. :) They had really cool pagoda type things that we hung out in and the boys loved playing in the sand.


On our way back to our hotel we saw a dead whale washed up on shore. Was kinda gross but cool for the boys to see how big they are. (Brant said he thought it was a baby sperm whale???)

One more

Ezra is a doll. Today he was helping Brant wash the car (to get it ready for Gappy coming!) and he really wanted to help with the hose, so Brant gave him a piece of hose - not connected to anything. He was perfectly happy to "fill" the bucket and carry his hose piece around. :)

I tried to get him to hold the hose for the picture... this is what he did. :)

Christmas fun

It has been two weeks since our brown eyed boy turned four, and we STILL don't have pictures. I am sorry... I was so prepped and ready for his little party - I took my camera and got to the party and realized my camera batteries had totally died. But Brant showed up with his brand new nifty phone with a camera and took pictures... which a month later, are still stuck on the phone/camera and we have no idea how to get them off! :(

So my boys love hats, and the popular hat of the season is you guessed it....



One fun thing we have done this season that might become a tradition in our family is doing a "thank you box." A week or two before Thanksgiving I was wanting to do something with the boys to help them realize how much they have to be thankful for. As I was thinking and praying about it, I realized I wanted them to be more than just "thankful" - we wanted them to realize that all the good things in their lives - whether packages from friends or fun treats for snack or new library books - are all gifts from God. Caleb had just learned James 1:17 in his Cubbies book and so we wrapped a gift box and each night we all say a "gift" God has given us that we are thankful for. Brant writes them down and the boys fold them up and put them in the box.It's easy to carry over into Christmas as gifts are very much on the mind. Here's a picture of our little box... it's a bit well-loved. :) But it's been really fun to see them think of things they are thankful for and to see them learning to thank God for all His "gifts."

Report Card

This week we are wrapping up our first semester home schooling. I am not planning on giving my 6 year old a report card by any stretch of the imagination; but I did think I would take a moment to evaluate how the semester went....

I was a bit nervous schooling Elijah - he's very strong-willed and stubborn; but he loves to learn (notice I did not say he loves to do his schoolwork!) Overall I would say it went way better than I thought it would. :)

We start each day with math.... mostly because the math curriculum we are using (Saxon 1) is totally manipulatives based and so the little boys can play with the manipulatives while I teach Elijah his lesson. I love the curriculum... he is learning a ton almost effortlessly and the manipulatives are great - they change each day, so it really works to keep the little boys occupied and gives Elijah something new to "play" with each day.

My one complaint with Saxon is the worksheets are a bit much.... he has to do 3-4 a day most days. Granted, he's doing the first grade program in kinder (the real kinder program is entirely manipulatives based with no writing whatsoever; I thought that was a bit too easy) So I've made him just do one worksheet a day and occasionally throw in an extra. He still seems to be getting the concepts well enough. His issue is it just takes him SO long to complete one little worksheet - he's so easily distracted. "Hey Mom, look at how I drew the dot on the 'i' in my name. It looks like a snowball. Hey, next time we go to America can we play in the snow? How come it doesn't snow here?" and so on and so on and so on.....

I don't have any pictures of his language arts curriculum, but we're doing Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. I really like it - very basic, easy; again, almost effortless to teach. There's lots of coloring and cutting and gluing each lesson, so Elijah likes that. He finished all the alphabet letters, which was a bit of a review for him; and then just finished the semester with learned CVC words for all the short vowels - so he can read about 50-100 little words. When I told him the other day he was doing such a great job reading, his response was "Mom, the words I read are just 3 letters and really easy. I can't read big kid words yet."

Elijah does his reading worksheets in the afternoon when the little boys are napping. Then I read with him from a chapter book - we're working through the Sonlight curriculum's "Read Aloud" book list for kinder. He LOVES it; definitely the best part of the day. We've read several really fun books, including 3 Boxcar Children books, a fun one called "My Father's Dragon" and are currently reading "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" :)

For social studies and science, we met with another family here in town who has two little boys Elijah and Caleb's ages. I taught social studies once a week; my friend Rachel taught science on the opposing weeks. We used Sonlight's K social studies program and the boys LOVED it. We covered ancient world history - a bit heavy sounding for kindergarten, but the books were great and each week we did a project covering the people we were studying; most of our lessons revolved around weapons and ships and warfare... you could say it was an "Intro to World Cultures for Little Boys Interested in Fighting" :)

Here the boys are wearing their Egyptian collars and eating their snack from a reed basket.

For Roman day we baked "Roman Bread Pudding" and ate laying down on pillows.

Rachel did a lesson on magnets and we got a Magic School Bus book on electricity, so Brant and the boys spent one evening making electrical experiments, which they thought was so cool.

Then we went and saw baby chicks.... the ex-pat doctor here in town is doing a chicken/egg social development project and had dozens of baby chicks in incubators in her living room. :) We were hoping to see them hatch out of their eggs, but it takes hours for one little chick to poke his way out of an egg.... not exactly a thriller for the little boys. :) They loved holding the baby chicks, especially Ezra.

Our other "class" we're doing is the national language class... I set up that all four little boys (mine and Rachel's) go to the big MK school once a week to learn language with the elementary foreign language teacher. The teacher is a young guy just out of college and he's really good... he definitely has his hands full with our four active little boys, but the boys are learning quite a bit - family terms, foods, animals, colors and numbers. It's fun to see them getting more comfortable using the language.

Final pic - at the MK school here in town, one of the high school classes put on a "costume ball" for the elementary classes back in November. They invited all the elementary aged kids - not just students at the school, so Elijah was THRILLED he was able to go..... He was a pirate - he and Brant worked together all morning before the party to make his sword - and he did not whack anyone with it at the party. :) It was his first "big kid" party, and I was a bit nervous how he would do just being dropped off, but he did great and loved it... they broke the kids up into groups by grade and Elijah knows all the other kindergartners, so he had a ton of fun. Plus, some of my students were his group leaders, so I told them to keep an eye for Elijah or they wouldn't pass my class. :) They played games in the gym then went to the MPR and watch short cartoons and had snacks. He had a blast. Caleb was so disappointed he wasn't allowed to go, but we explained that it was a privilege Elijah got for working so hard on his worksheets everyday and doing such a good job on school.

So, overall, was a great first semester. The other day Elijah turned to me while we were reading and said "Mom, I love school."

Spinach stromboli

So going to post a recipe. I made this the other night; got the recipe out of Real Simple, which the I think is the best magazine ever. The boys gobbled it down; then they asked for leftovers the next day at lunch (there were none). Then they asked me to cook it for dinner the next night.

The best part is that it's really healthy and you can get copious amounts of spinach down even the pickiest eater.... it's also really fast and easy, which is a must in the land of no dishwashers and baking everything from scratch.

What you need....
- Pizza dough.... I make my own because the nearest TJ's is 12,000 miles away. You can use frozen dough that is thawed or buy fresh that comes in one pound bags.
- Sliced lunch meat.... I think the magazine calls for salami. We use ham slices - really yum. Any kind of sliced meat would work, I think. I used only 4 big slices per Stromboli, but sliced lunch meat is very hard to get here and very expensive.
- Spinach.... raw, a whole bunch (maybe a bag in the land of bagged, washed spinach?)
- Cheese.... I used grated cheddar because that's all I had. I think the recipe called for something more fancy like provolone or swiss. The cheddar was yummy.

What you do....
Roll out the pizza dough til it's big and rectangular like if you were going to make a big pizza in a cookie sheet. I always use whole wheat dough. :)
Lay the ham directly on top of the dough - no sauce, no nothing. Again, I just laid 4 pieces down the middle (length wise, so there would be some in every cut slice) but you could easily cover the whole dough with meat.
Then put the spinach on top of the meat.... you don't need to cut it or anything, but it does need to be dry if you washed it. I used probably 5-6 big handfuls and covered the whole surface of the dough. It will be really high and fluffy, but will cook down to nothing.
Layer the cheese on top - how much ever you want to use. I liked the grated cheese because it fell into the spinach nicely.
Then you roll the dough so you have a nice long, fat dough log with layers of meat, cheese and spinach.
I brushed mine with olive oil and sprinkled the top with Parmesan cheese (the kind in the green bottle) and corn meal... adds a yummy touch. :)
It needs to be placed on a greased cookie sheet.... we ate two whole ones; I placed them side by side on the same cookie sheet.
Cook for 25 minutes-ish at 350 til the crust is hard and golden-ish (mine didn't get real golden).

Then just cut in slices. I served it with sweet potato fries and the treasured pomegranate, so we had a really healthy, colorful dinner. :)

NOW we have 3 kids

This afternoon I told Ezra "It's almost time for a nap" and he resounded promptly with a very loud, clear "NO" after which he threw the toy in his hand across the room and sat down on the ground and curled up into a little ball....

Oh, the fun begins again.


****
I will post pictures soon of Caleb's birthday and any decent Thanksgiving ones I can find (we had a great Thanksgiving, but the pics didn't turn out great). I tried posting a really fun video of Caleb singing Happy Birthday to himself... but after 4 hours and not even half-way done uploading the video, I gave up. Sorry to all the grandmas out there... the rest of you probably don't care. :)

In other big news, we found pomegranates at the store today!!!!!!! I'm telling you, grocery shopping is like a treasure hunt here. You never known what will be at the store. I bought one and we all split it tonight. Was definitely not the best pomegranate I have ever had, but it was pretty good, and the boys loved it. The trick with buying really fun, unusual stuf like that is that you don't know if you should buy lots because the chances are good you'll never see it again, or save your money as it won't be good to begin with... Last summer we found real American peaches... I bought two and they were to die for - really good - not just "because we live in a third world country" good. :) A few months after that I found some again (granted, not from America) and bought 5 and we threw every single one of them away - were so nasty and green inside you couldn't even cut them. So, we were content with our one pomegranate and know it might be another year and a half before we have another one!

Thankful

Things I am thankful for this year....

That we can afford medicine for our kids when they're sick; that we can afford to eat meat everyday and that we have a well with clean water... living in our new neighborhood with the harsh poverty all around us has made me realize how many "necessities" we have which are really "luxuries" that our neighbors can't afford.

That the boys are growing bigger... life is getting a tad bit easier as they get more independent and it's so much fun to see their little personalities coming out.

That I am not pregnant or nursing a baby for the first Thanksgiving in 6 years!!!

For air conditioning in our bedroom! I love all the windows and how breezy and cool our house stays even in the heat, but nothing beats AC in the afternoons when I can get the boys down for a nap and I can have a cool place to read my Bible, write letters, and fold laundry.

For Ezra and his red hair. I love his red hair. I also love how he is learning to talk and how he blows me kisses and says "bye ma" whenever he leaves my sight.

For Helen - LIFESAVER! Helen is a national lady who comes every Wednesday and mops the floors, washes sheets and towels, cuts the pineapples, and gives me one day a week where I don't have to do dishes!

For Rachel - Rachel is my friend I home school with; she and her husband are with a different organization than we are and do totally different type of work. She is my first "friend" that I've had outside our organization in the last 3+ years we have been here, and it's such a blessing to have a friend.

For Caleb and his brown eyes. My only little boy with brown eyes and they just sparkle when he's telling me a "joke" or when he gets excited about something. I also love how he asks me to rock him in the rocking chair when he's having a rough day and just leans back on my shoulder and sucks his thumb.

For the Internet! I am so thankful for how easy it is to stay in touch with our family and friends back in the States. Not sure I could have survived 50 years ago where the only communication was by letter. Also really thankful I can check Black Friday ads, read friends' blogs and just keep up on American life and culture a bit.

For our new house in America! Can't wait to see it... someday. :) Also thankful for my dad and my brother's roles in the whole house buying process... couldn't have gotten the house without their help.

For Elijah and his sharp mind. I love the millions of questions he asks each day. I love how he is so eager to please us and how (most times!) he is so gentle and careful with his little brothers.

For tickets to go on vacation in less than 3 weeks!!!!!!!!! So ready for a break and a chance to see some civilization. It's been over a year and a half not leaving the island; no break of any kind... so very ready!

For the sometimes difficult and frustrating things that we experience as a result of living over here - has given me a chance to see God's grace and His gentleness in such a deep way that I never saw before. So thankful for all the Lord has, and is, teaching me.

For my sweet husband... I am so blessed to have him. In the past week, he has called when he was out working to tell me that a chip seller was headed down our road, so that I could buy really yummy homemade chips; he has let me sleep in when I have had a rough night; and he got up early on Thanksgiving morning to find the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (from last year) on YouTube and downloaded it so we could all watch the parade this morning!

Kite flying

These are pretty old, but we just downloaded them off the big camera. We took the boys up the hill a couple months ago (maybe September?) to fly their kites.

Elijah did really well and managed to get his off the ground a couple times.

Gotta love the band-aid. The kid goes through band-aids like water.

Caleb gave up pretty quickly and found a much more interesting stick.

Pre-walking Ezra... just watching all the action.

We were up on top of the hill where the international school is. It's a great place to walk; has a beautiful view of the whole town.

The boys only party

Sorry these are late in getting posted. We were so swamped in September and October and have spent the last two weeks trying to catch up on all the life stuff that didn't happen during those two months. Brant's actually had several orders these past few days, so he's been busier than we thought he would be.... anyways, slowly getting back to a normal speed of life.

So, Elijah's birthday fell during our conference; I knew we would be wiped out after, so we went for a real simple birthday party this year... for lack of a better theme we made it a "Boys Only" party. :) He had a couple friends over, we played a few games and then they all watched old Tom and Jerry cartoons (which our boys LOVE) and had smoothies, popcorn and cupcakes. Then we sent them home. :) Very easy. Happy 6 year old little boy. :)

For the cupcakes, months ago, Elijah saw a picture in one of my fancy home decorating magazines of cupcakes with huge globs of white frosting with a single candy corn on top... and he HAD to have cupcakes like that. Thankfully Nanny sent candy corn in a recent package so we were all set. Then I saw a post on my favorite recipe blog for "candy corn" cupcakes where you actually dye the cake batter. I got a GREAT white cake recipe off the website (my b-day cake was only so-so, so was on the hunt for a new basic cake recipe) After making the batter, we separated it into 3 bowls and used the food dye (the kind in the little tubs, not your basic food coloring) and dyed the batter. Then you just layer the colors - they don't mix or anything - and bake. The result was pretty cool!



One of the boys' favorite "games" is pretending to be dogs or cats and eating their snack on the floor. :) So we had a "dog race" where the boys raced across the floor and had to finish their "dog food" (peanuts, raisins and marshmallows - thanks, Grandma!) Ezra even joined in, though he just sat there and stuffed it in with his fat grubby hands. :) We can't get marshmallows here and it was so funny to see the boys with the marshmallows - they didn't know what they were and Ezra wouldn't touch them!


Then we watched the movie and ate!


We do smoothies every Saturday night... basic recipe - 2 whole pineapple, cut up and frozen; 6-7 bananas; half a liter of guava juice. Simple, but tastes really good. :) Ezra is a huge smoothie fan.

Chocolate fun

This afternoon it was cool and rainy - *almost* felt like Austin in the winter. The boys were pretty grumpy though, and I was too, so I decided to forget my to-do list and pull out one of those "been wanting to do forever but never have the time" type of projects... making dark chocolate covered coffee beans.

I am very much a dark chocolate person and my stash has been a tad low lately, so I pulled out my prized dark chocolate baking bar from a package... from a LONG time ago and found Brant's stash of unground coffee beans. Coffee grows here like weeds, so nice coffee beans are cheap and easy to find.

The whole process was a lot of fun - you just melt the chocolate in a double boiler, stir in the beans, and then lay them out to dry... except that at room temperature here chocolate only exsists in liquid form :) so we put them straight into the freezer. They turned out pretty good, though I admit they don't taste quite as good as the ones you get from the store. But I'll take what I can get. :)

I let the boys lick the pan. I'm pretty paranoid about letting them lick any kind of batter with eggs in it here in the land of bird flu, so it's a rare treat for them, and I figured dark chocolate is *supposed* to be healthy. :) They had a ball. I don't have any pictures of Ezra, but I dipped my fingers in the chocolate and then let him lick them... except he didn't quite get the concept and bit them. :)

The only downside to the whole process was that I sampled way more than I should have and it looks like I'm going to be awake for a LONG time tonight!

Turning six

Elijah turned six on Tuesday. It was a bit low key; not only because our regional conference was in full swing, which meant LOOOOONG days, but also because Caleb and Brant had nasty colds and had been up most of the night before.

Our conference days ran 8 am - 8:30 pm, so trying to figure out some way to celebrate Elijah's b-day without baking cake for 100+ people was a bit of a challenge. I ended up going with a coffee cake; which we ate for breakfast, complete with 6 candles. This was the first year we didn't get him a "number candle" and he was a bit upset at first, but then he realized 6 little fires on his cake were more fun to blow out. :)

We let him open one present in the morning - drawing books from my mom which he LOVED.

When we came back to the house after lunch so the little boys could nap, we let him open another present or two.... hence he's not wearing pajamas. :)

Then, because Caleb and Brant were feeling crummy, we ended up leaving right after dinner and skipped the evening meetings. Everyone got another piece of coffee cake and then opened the rest of the presents.... including an erector set from Grandma, which he also loved!


Elijah really wanted to have a birthday party, but with conference being this week, I knew we wouldn't have the energy or time to do anything big. So we decided to have a "boys only" party (isn't that a great theme?!? couldn't come up with anything else, but he loves it) and invite just a couple of his friends.... they are going to have smoothies and popcorn and watch a movie. :):) Stay tuned for pics!

How a mom celebrates

Last week I celebrated the 10th anniversary of my being able to legally buy alcohol in the United States. It was not quite the same celebration it was 10 years ago... marriage, 3 kids and a move across the world changes lots of things. (Though to be fair, for my 21st, I was in a cave camping out in Israel!)

We had originally lined up a baby-sitter, and Brant, despite his crazy busyness, was going to take the day off. But our baby-sitter got malaria and so EVERYONE took Mommy on a date. :):) It was a really fun day.

Flowers Brant got me... I was QUITE impressed... no florist shops here. He went on a tip from a friend and went to this lady's house and she cut these out of her yard and arranged them for him. :)

The highlight of the day.... we went to Pizza Hut for lunch. I LOVE pizza and Pizza Hut is the latest and greatest thing to hit our island... got here about 6 months ago in the big city about 45 minutes from us. It's very fancy.... quite easily the nicest place to eat on the island. :) The highlight of the boys' day was us letting them get an ice cream that you get to put all the toppings on... yes, in my old age, I have gotten soft on them eating sugar! (Not really... we regretted it all day as they were on definite sugar buzz!)

After a day of "shopping" (meaning we went to the import grocery store where I got a very fancy box of green mint tea that is SO good) and pizza, we came home and had "birthday dinner" - popcorn and smoothies. The trouble with living in a 3rd world country is take out options are few and a bit sketchy... so if I wanted a nice dinner I was going to have to cook it myself. Hence, we had popcorn and smoothies. :)

Ezra reached the popcorn bowl himself and was quite proud of himself.

No bakeries or box cake mixes: I made my own cake. It was a deal though, as Brant did all the dishes. (Note to self: pack lots of cake mixes next furlough!)

And of course, the boys had to have their candles too! :)