Weird week

I know it's been a while since I've blogged. The demands of three little boys (one who is home schooling, one who is out growing his afternoon naps, and one who is learning the meaning of the word "obey" and NOT liking it one bit) and the demands of the keeping the house in decent order (aka no dead lizards lying around - thank you, Brant!) and keeping food on the table were a bit much this week.... especially since the power company has decided to take a vacation or go on strike or turn the control of the city's electricity over to the school kids.... or whatever they were doing this week while the electricity has been off.

Our electricity here is HORRIBLE. Some months it seems like the people at the electric company have it together and our electricity is fairly consistent. This has not been one of those months and this week has been the worst we have had it in a loooong time..... so it has been a long, hot, unproductive week. To make matters worse, the electricity has gone off every night this week at least once or twice... last night we kinda gave up counting after the fourth or fifth time. The problem with electricity going off at night is that the difference between the light from our outside security lights and the white noise (and cool breeze!) from our fans running and complete and utter darkness and silence is HUGE and it wakes ALL five of us up every time the power goes out at night.... with the little boys screaming in terror most nights. We do have an emergency battery-operated light that automatically comes on when the power goes out, but the power was out so often and for such long stretches this week that several nights this week the battery died before the power came back on.... so Brant resorted to turning on a bright flashlight and leaving it on all night to give the boys a bit of light. (That was my "bright" idea at 3 a.m. one morning!) :)

Anyways, we've all been really tired and grouchy this week. It's been unusually warm here and so we're sweating because of the heat and because of the lack of fans running while the power's out!

Also grouchy because we got the little boys their immunizations on Monday and they were not happy about that one bit!

But we've had fun.... we had several friends "pop" over on Valentine's Day to deliver cards; we baby-sat some friends' kids; we grilled yummy import sausages from V-day (my gift to Brant - I think the first time we've had sausage in almost two years?) and we've been studying the pioneers and cowboys and Indians in school this week, and the boys love it. To help combat our total exhaustion and achiness that comes from not sleeping at night, Brant and I have been doing this really intense work-out aerobic and strength video this week.... it's become quite the family affair each morning and is a riot to see the little boys try to "exercise" along with us. :)

So here are a few pics from the week....

This was today when Elijah's little friend was over to play and do "history class" with us. The boys were so filthy playing outside that I had them sit down by the washing machine outside and detached the hose to rinse them off before they went inside to make their construction paper tee pees and build log cabins out of Lincoln Logs. :)


Yesterday afternoon a street seller came to our neighborhood selling "whistle cakes." We rarely buy food off the street, but these are fun - little "cakes" of rice, brown sugar, coconut and "pandang" - not sure what the English word is, but it's a green leaf that they use here in cakes.... anyways, the guy stuffs the mixture in a piece of bamboo then rams the bamboo onto a spout over a big pot of boiling water (on the back of his cart!) and the steam cooks the cake. When he's not cooking any cakes, the steam just releases, hence the "whistle" and the name of the cakes. :) And, yes, Caleb is still in his pajamas at 4 in the afternoon.... I told you it has been one of those weeks.


I know this is blurry, but it's the best picture I could get of all 3 of them.... another day when we were so tired we stayed in PJ's all day, the boys had fun wearing Brant's shirts all around the house....


So you can be praying the electricity stays on tonight so we can all get some sleep! :)