Easter

Easter here is celebrated like Christmas... way over the top... and I don't mean aisles of plastics eggs and chocolate bunnies at the stores. As I write, music is blaring in our neighborhood.... like it has been since Thursday night. The big thing here is CAMPING... churches camp for Easter.... starting Friday all the way until Sunday morning, everyone camps out on the front lawn of the church. It's supposedly a time to study the Crucifixion story in depth and there's lots of activities planned.... but sounded like a great way to get malaria. :) Fortunately for us our church only allowed children older than 4th grade to camp, so we had to miss out! Saturday night most of the activities take place... people march down the main street of town singing and carrying the Cross all night and then at our church there was an Easter egg hunt (they don't have plastic eggs so only use hard-boiled)... the egg hunt was at 5 a.m. Sunday morning!

We decided to bite the bullet and spend this Easter with our local church. Kinda. I think we actually missed all the good stuff (like camping and parading through town)... but we did make it to Easter service there Sunday morning... which was kinda anti-climatic as everyone was exhausted from staying up all night! :) I had really wanted to celebrate Easter in English so VERY early we got up Sunday morning and lugged the boys up the hill to the international church to the sunrise service and breakfast. It was way fun, even though we got rained out and had to move indoors half-way through - still nice to sing in English and lots of yummy food. The boys were hard to wake up but lots of their friends were there and they thought it was great fun to have church outside so they did great.


We then went directly to our local church.... I had a bag packed with new trinkets and Easter eggs filled with snacks and coloring pages. They told us that the service (which started at seven) would last all morning followed by a luncheon! (Yes, crazy.) But it ended by 9:30 and there were just snacks.... dried green peas in warm milk (NASTY, but the boys LOVED it) and donuts. So we were home and in veg mode by 10:30. :) (Turns out the lunch is on Monday - on "Easter, Day 2" but I think just Brant will go to the service and then maybe the boys and I will go for lunch.)


I hadn't planned on doing anything after church because I wasn't sure how the morning would go and how tired and cranky we would all be from church stuff, so it was a nice surprise that things were calm and we had the day to veg. Unfortunately, I had planned on eating a big meal at the church, so lunch was quesadillas and carrot sticks.... not real Easter-ish but the only thing I could throw together. :) Sunday night we just did pizza (we had a couple cheese-stuffed crust Pizza Hut pizzas frozen) and a movie.

We also finished the "Resurrection Eggs" Sunday night - we did 6 Saturday night with the little boys and it was SO fun. They are all at ages now where they can talk and respond (though Ezra's still a bit on the spacey side!) and so it was fun to talk through the eggs together. It's also been really fun because we just did a unit on seasons in Elijah's schooling so we talked a lot about spring and how everything comes back to life after the winter and so it tied in nicely with Easter - Elijah's now got it firmly in his little mind that we are celebrating spring with the eggs and bunnies and that we have Easter at spring time because we celebrate Christ coming back to life on Easter and in spring things come back to life. So it's been a good way to avoid all the egg/bunny stuff directly on Easter.

One of my friends here in town has a "no eggs on Easter" policy - they do a big Easter egg hunt the day before, but then on Easter Sunday they don't do eggs. I thought it was a good idea and it worked really, really well for us this year. We had a huge Easter egg hunt Saturday with all the little MK's in town - there were about 30 kids 6 and under! The boys had a BLAST and even Ezra got several eggs and was SO excited. Everyone brought lots of fun treats like popcorn balls and cross shaped cookies, etc, so it was way fun for the boys and we just ate and they played with their friends.



Saturday night we dyed eggs... I had a kit from the States, but the boys found it and crushed all the little dye tablets together! So I dumped them all in one cup and we had one cup of nice purple/green/orange eggs... the rest of the cups I used food coloring and vinegar. :) Our eggs here are all brown, so they turn out really nice, dark jewel tone colored eggs...




We had planned to do just a family Easter egg hunt on Sunday, but in the boys' minds Saturday morning was "the Easter egg hunt" so we figured why overload them on egg hunts? We ended up putting eggs in their little Easter bags Brant's mom made them (so cute!) with lots of little treats and gave them to them this morning just as a present and they were thrilled.


So that has been our Easter - a bit unconventional, but really fun. We were so dreading the whole weekend (thinking exhausted, sugared up kids, long church services) but the boys did really well and had a lot of fun with everything. Closing with our family picture from this year....


And just for fun... this was us at Easter last year....

Sunday

(It's actually Monday morning here, but we didn't have electricity last night.) :)

Sundays are NOT my favorite day. I think church was invented by people with no kids. :) We alternate between going to our local church which we walk to and the international church (in English!) held on the MK school campus. Yesterday was our week at our local church.... so I stuffed plastic cowboy toys, crayons, coloring books, snacks, "treats" (candy!), and water bottles in my purse.

No children's program at the local church. Services get long. :)

And I packed my fan.

No AC at the local church. It's hot. Very, very hot.

So hot in fact, that when Brant stood up to take Ezra to the back, I looked down on the wooden bench where he had been sitting and it was wet... had been sweating a TON. (But poor guy has to wear the culturally appropriate long sleeve polyester shirts!)

The little boys have learned the routine by now and they do pretty good. They color until after the morning prayer, when they can get their toys. Then they get snack at the end of the sermon (yes, church goes for another 45 minutes after the sermon is over!)

The hardest part is the prayer time. Culturally it's appropriate to pray very, very, very long prayers. We're talking "Bless the preschoolers. Keep them healthy so they can go to preschool and study well so they can do good in elementary school so they can do good in high school so they can get a good job and be rich when they grow up" type of prayers. Sorry if that seems sarcastic or ugly; I'm not trying to be negative. But it's not an exaggeration and it gets hard when you're trying to keep 3 little boys quiet and concentrate on a long, elaborate prayer in another language while fanning yourself and your kiddos! :)

We enjoy going to the international church as it's in English and it's so good to worship in our own language. (That's why we're here right - to teach other people to worship in their own language!) Plus it's AC'd and there's children's church... which only works for Elijah and Caleb as Ezra is terrified of the nursery.... so it's not exactly a walk in the park there either

Sunday lunch is ALWAYS "Sunday noodles" By the time we get home from church we are usually exhausted and on the cranky side... so I always fix the same quick meal - I boil egg noodles (like what you get in Top Ramen, but just the noodles, not the seasonings) They only take 3 minutes! Then I toss them in olive oil, add cut up chicken (which I usually have already cooked and leftover from a meal during the week) and dice a bunch of green onions and celery leaves (celery here is an herb - it's a small thin leaf thing - tastes exactly like celery but not the big thick stalks). Then we cover it with ground pepper and "sprinkle cheese" which is Kraft Parmesan, which we have sent over (thank you, Grandma!)

But wait, it gets better. Sunday afternoons we have our "team fellowship" ...which again was planned by people whose kids don't have to take naps! It usually starts at 4, so the kids get a short nap in and then we head over to it. It really is a fun time, but it just makes Sundays that much more exhausting. Plus we're always supposed to bring a snack to share... which meant I was always spending Sunday afternoons baking brownies until one Sunday I was sick and Brant made a quick batch of popcorn... and I've made popcorn ever since. It's actually a great snack to bring because everyone else makes brownies or something rich and sweet - so it gives people something to munch on that's not sweet and gives parents (like us!) something semi-healthy to give their kids after their tiny slice of brownie is gone. I tried bring carrots and dip one time... no one touched it. But the popcorn's always gone! :)

THEN we take Elijah to soccer... all the ex-pat little kids in town have soccer lessons/games/league on Sunday nights. It's the only night of the week it's offered, and he LOVES it and so it's kinda hard to not take him. He plays in the 5-7 year old group and one of the dads "coach" and they have little jerseys and basically learn some skills and play against each other (there's usually 10-12 kids playing). The little boys can't wait til they're old enough to play. Last night the whole time Brant and Elijah were gone Ezra kept saying "I go soc Mom? I go soc Mom?"

By the time Elijah and Brant get home and everyone eats and gets showers, it's usually almost 8 before we get the boys in bed. (Normal bedtime is 7!) So much for the day of rest!!!

Saturday

Saturday mornings before kids were always sleep in days. We don't get to do that much anymore. :) Nowadays we begin Saturdays early with hard boiled eggs and quick bread (pumpkin today!) for breakfast. Gives us a break from granola. :)

Then we usually try to do something productive like wash the car... but since our car is parked half a mile from our house at the moment, we opted to cut the little boys' hair today. :) Brant takes the two older boys to the barber and then to get a donut. I cut Ezra's hair here at home... it's very traumatic and usually requires a couple touch ups in the following days when he's calm and not screaming. :)

But mainly Saturdays are known as "Pool Day." As early as we can get it together we go to the pool here in town. It's usually really quiet in the mornings - people usually come in the afternoons so we're usually the only ones there and it's really nice and relaxing. The pool is totally NOT made for kids - it's over 3 feet deep at its shallowest, but Elijah has learned to swim in the last six months and we have lots of floaties, so it works. :) We don't have any other options. :)



We always take a picnic lunch and stay til about 1 or 1:30. We shower the boys at the pool so we can put them right down for naps when we get home.


Saturday night is "Movie Night." We don't let the kids watch a lot of TV... well, let me rephrase that.... we don't have TV channels... so they don't watch a lot of movies. :) But we always do a movie on Saturday nights... the kids LOVE it. We only watch "Family" movies... which usually means some full length Disney movie like "Cars" or "Nemo" ...I can't handle "Thomas" or "Bob the Builder" for movie night. :) And we always do popcorn and smoothies for dinner.... we used to order pizza but popcorn's cheaper. :) Brant makes the smoothies; he makes them really nice and thick and they taste like Jamba Juice, but healthier. :) He uses two whole pineapples (that Helen has already cut and frozen) and about 6-7 bananas (they are smaller than what you get in the States) and then about half a liter of passion fruit juice. (You can also use mango juice, but the passion fruit is more tart.) That's it; we don't add any sugar or yogurt or anything - just fruit and pure fruit juice - it makes a full blender of thick smoothie so we all get a lot. Occasionally we will get berries from some of the mountain areas and we'll throw those in - they make the smoothies nice and purple, but don't really add a lot of flavor. :) I always make the popcorn - I use a "Whirly Pop" hand crank- stove top popcorn popper that we got for Christmas and it is SO nice! Then I drizzle the popcorn with olive oil and this all natural popcorn seasoning that we bring over from the States by the pound. :) The boys think it's great that they get to eat popcorn for dinner. :) Ezra always cries when his smoothie runs out.

Friday

Friday mornings we do home school co-op with Rachel (my friend here in town) and her two little boys who are Elijah and Caleb's ages. We take turns - I teach history twice a month and she teaches science twice a month. The boys LOVE it. I've posted lots of pictures of the projects we've done, so I'm not going to post any today... especially since I was teaching today and my boys were grumpy and tired and it was hard enough to get through the lesson, let alone try to get pictures! :)

We usually do a short lesson and some type of craft/project/experiment and then have snack time. Then the boys get to play for an hour or so and Rachel and I sit and have coffee and chat. It works well for everyone involved. :) I've been using Sonlight's Kinder Core History program and it's gone really well - it's a brief overview of world history/civilizations, which as Rachel and I say should really be titled "How all the different people of the world fight and what type of weapons they use" because with 5 little boys, we aren't studying the different cultures' fashion and food! :):)

Friday nights are also really fun. During the school year the high schoolers at the MK school in town have "game night" where they play whatever season's sport is against a local team (they do volleyball, basketball and in-door soccer). Everyone from the community goes and each high school class takes turns serving a meal and selling it for cheap as a fundraiser for their class (costs about $10 for us all to eat!). My favorite nights are when the junior class serves French Dip sandwiches and Frappuccinos! In REAL Starbucks cups, no less.... (which you have to return and they re-wash and re-use!) The mom of one of the juniors is a coffee fanatic and has a huge fancy espresso machine (how she got it over here, I have no idea) and she taught the juniors how to make the drinks and they have flavored syrups according to the season and everything. The drinks are such a treat for me. :) The boys LOVE game night... they run around the school play ground with all their friends and we sit and watch the game and talk to friends and I always have to check that my yearbook students are taking pictures of the game. :) I have actually never taken any pictures of us at a game night... I probably should do that some time as it's one of the highlights of our week.

Thursday

Thursday is my laundry day. Helen does all the towels and sheets on Wednesdays, but I wash all our clothes myself on Thursdays... if the weather is good and I think the laundry will dry.... and if we have electricity and I can run the washer... sometimes I have to wash on Fridays. :)

Washing machines are a TAD different here. We have a "twin tub" - meaning one tub is for washing and the other tub is for wringing. It's semi-automatic - meaning, it will do the actual agitating and spinning, but I have to do everything else.

I fill the wash tub with a hose - add the clothes and then turn the dial to "wash." When it's finished washing, then I drain all the water and move all the clothes to wringing tub; spin them out; turn the hose back on to rinse them; then spin them out to "dry" them as much as possible before hanging them on the line.


It takes a LOT of time.

I usually do 3-4 loads a week and if I get laundry started the second I wake up - before I even say good morning to anyone, I could be done by one in the afternoon... which on a hot day, still gives it enough time to dry before dark.

But I am very thankful to Brant's aunt Pat - who took one look at my sorry excuse for a washer and promptly went out and bought me an extra Christmas present - a new washer! The washer that I had been using came with the house - our neighbors told me that the family who originally rented the house had bought it when they moved in - nine years ago! The thing had held up surprisingly well, but it was small and it leaked and it lacked several really nice features.... basically it got the job done but was a pain in rear end. :)

My new washer is WONDERFUL! It has knobs where I can set "soak" cycles and vary the agitating speed from "gentle" to "normal" to "strong." And it can rinse and wring at the same time. I know, I know you are not impressed. But you've gotta remember this is not America and it's been over two years since I've even seen an automatic washing machine! (Well, I guess I've seen some in magazines.... I dream about them - such wonders that you can just throw the clothes in and come back 45 minutes later and they're done!) :)


The best thing about my new washer is that the tubs are HUGE. I can wash twice as much at one time as I could with my other washer (which is good as little boy clothes keep getting bigger and adding to more laundry!) That, combined with the nifty "rinse and wring" cycle at the same time and it saves me a couple hours each week.... which means I can be lazy and start at nine and still be done before one... or I can get my act together and have everything done by ten in the morning and have the rest of the day to lay around and eat bon-bons. :)

Wednesday

Wednesday is the day Helen comes. Helen is my house-helper - I guess in America you would say "maid" but the literal translation is house helper here, so that's what we say. :)

Please don't freak out that I have house help. Some people think "I can't afford house help, you shouldn't be able to either." Other people think "If you can afford to have house help, then you're probably paying them horribly unethical wages." So, in defense of myself, we would never be able to afford house help in America, and I don't expect to have a maid for the rest of my life. Yes, we do pay her a ridiculously low amount, which makes it possible for us to have house help, BUT we pay her above "minimum wage" she would get working elsewhere. If we were to pay her way more, then we would mess with the economy and her ability/desire to work for a "normal" wage once we're out of the picture. So we try to look for other ways to "help" without paying her - we feed her when she's working; we give her money for medicine if she or anyone in her family is sick, and we look for other ways to help her and her family out - nice Christmas toys for the kids, extra bags of rice and oil just as a "bonus" - in other words, she gets lots of perks.

The culture here is set up much more as a caste system than in America and if we didn't employ house help, we would look really stingy to the locals - meaning we aren't willing to support the local economy and hire local people. I didn't really understand that until we were living on our previous island and I visited the home of our first house helper - she basically lived in a dirt shack with her drunk husband and two little kids. Her job working for us was the first work either she or her husband had had in over a year - and us paying enough for them to eat every month plus paying her girls' school fees, made a huge difference in her life. What would she have done, uneducated, with no training, had someone "rich and white" not asked her to come and fold their clothes and wash dishes?

So we have house help.

Anyways, I digress. Helen only comes once a week - on Wednesdays. I'm trying to manage as much of the workload of life here without help, so that I'm ready if we ever get to a place where we can't have help, but it is SO nice to have some help. Mainly what Helen does is wash dishes, mop, wash dishes, wash the sheets and towels, and wash more dishes. :) On Wednesdays, because she's here, I bake. and bake. and bake. and bake....

On a typical Wednesday I will make granola, quick breaks, yogurt, iced tea, and whatever else I need for the week. Then I just throw all the dishes in the sink and Helen stands there and washes them - SUCH a blessing! Today I spent all day mashing and bagging the pumpkin from yesterday. Last week I juiced 20 lemons to make lemonade concentrate. I ALWAYS make granola... there are very few breakfast options and of the few packages cereals available, all of the first ingredients are "sugar" or "chocolate." :) So we (and all the other ex-pats in town) eat TONS of granola. It's always a good topic of conversation between women here - the latest granola recipe and granola making techniques. :) I've seen some good recipes on the Internet - but they usually are way too small for our family - we go through about 18 cups of oatmeal for granola in a week. (So good care package idea for us is some kind of fun dried fruits or nuts that will make the granola more interesting - we only get raisins and peanuts here).

You can pray for us as oatmeal has been out at the grocery stores here in town for over a month and my emergency stash is gone... so getting REALLY creative with the breakfasts, but at least I didn't have to make granola today. :)

My other favorite thing Helen does each week is cut pineapples.

I hate cutting pineapple.

I REALLY hate cutting pineapple.

I'm not sure why.... the pineapples here are way better than anything you get in America, but the pokey-thorn things on them cut my fingers every time. Plus you have to cut them in this special spiral shape to get all the deep thorns out. I don't have the patience for it. So I always have 2-3 ripe pineapples on hand on Wednesdays for Helen to cut and then we freeze the chunks for smoothies.


I also have her cut up veggies for Wednesday night's dinner - she will dice carrots and green beans and whatever else, so it's so nice to have one dinner a week that is fast and easy to throw together.

Wow, this is a long post, sorry!

Wednesday afternoons I go up to the MK school to teach/supervise the yearbook students. I didn't go today as all the high schoolers are in the mountains for two weeks doing their "practical anthropology" unit. :)

Also Wednesday afternoons I take the boys to "Bible class" in the neighborhood. One of our neighbors teaches it and she and I have become friends. Her theology's a BIT off, but the boys don't understand much... they just like going for the snack - which is almost always hot sweet tea and way too many cookies. :) Here are a few pics of when it was our turn to host the class....



By the time we get home from Bible class at 6 pm, I'm thankful for all the prepped veggies. We almost always do stir fry or some type of fried rice dish on Wednesdays. So if you're every wondering what we eat for dinner on Wednesday night, now you know. :)

Tuesday

Tuesday is my stay at home and pick up the house from the craziness of the weekend and Monday. :) I usually don't leave the house all day - like today, I didn't even walk outside the door. So nice!!!

I try to do some kind of craft/project/etc with the boys on Tuesdays. Today was cooking all the pumpkins I got from a friend and freezing all the puree for future use. The boys love roasted pumpkin seeds, and they do a pretty good job at picking all the seeds out of the pulp. We got a ton of seeds this time, which was good, as last time I forgot about them and burned them and we didn't get any. :(

I also try to get in some good school time with Elijah; which means the little boys sit and color. Ezra loves to color. He'll ask me "I draw Mom?"


Caleb also has started going to Cubbies on Tuesdays (was Thursday til the semester changed - which here is in February). He didn't go today as he's sick. (Malaria) :(:( But this is a pic from a couple weeks ago. He LOVES Cubbies. We just do it with one other family here in town who has a little boy Caleb's age, so it's only the two little boys, but he just loves it. My friend who leads it really wanted Caleb to participate (so her son would have a fellow Cubbie), but I told her I couldn't handle one more thing on my plate, so she teaches all the classes and does games and crafts at her house and I provide "snack" - which is very important when you are 4. :)


Our final Tuesday event is that Brant has started tutoring one of the little local boys. His mom is a friend of mine and she has been really worried about his test scores, so Brant tutors him on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. It's been one of those experiences that makes Brant want to bang his head against a wall. :) Teaching methods here are SO different than they are in America and kids are taught never to question their teacher... it brings shame on the teacher if a student says he doesn't understand or asks a question regarding a lesson. So when Brant asks "Do you understand.... (he's working on fractions now) the kid always says "Yes, yes" and when we talk to his mom she always says "Oh he understands everything" even though the poor kid couldn't tell the different between a half and a fourth if his life depended on it. So you can pray for Brant on Tuesdays! :)

Monday

The boys are at the age where they are always asking "What day is it?" followed by "What do we do on ________?" Our lives are pretty scheduled out, so I thought it would be fun to go through each day of the week and chronicle our lives at this stage. It means I will *try* to post every day this week. :) We'll see.....

Monday's are my busy day out. The boys go to language class in the morning at the MK school here in town. The lower elementary language teacher works with them and their friend. They love it and have learned quite a bit. Here they are learning clothing terms....



Then we hit the grocery store - me dragging all 3 boys. It involves lots of stares and cheek pinching (people can't resist how white Ezra's skin is, and the chubby just adds to it.) It's a tad stressful for them, but they do a good job and we usually get a treat if we all survive. :) I order all of my meat for a month's worth of meals at the beginning of the month, and usually get a lot of my fresh stuff from our veggie guy who comes every morning, so grocery shopping is usually dry goods and lunch stuff and import fresh stuff like apples, oranges and bell peppers. I've said it before, but grocery shopping here is a like treasure hunting - you never know what you will or won't find. The past few weeks there hasn't been any oatmeal (bad - I need it to make granola) or toilet paper (REALLY bad). On a good week, I find about 75% of what is on my list, so I have to plan "If I can find it..." type of meals and have back up plans. :) And I usually stock up when I find something... but we are down to the emergency stock of toilet paper, so praying some more comes in soon!

We usually get home about noon, which means quick lunch and then I have to soak all my veggies and fruits.... I use some type of purple iodine solution that is available here. It's about a two hour process to get everything cleaned and prepped for the week, so I do that while the boys nap/rest.

Brant usually gets home between 4:30 and 5 and Monday's are one of the few quiet evenings at home, so we try to enjoy them together as a family.

The Wild

They are paving the road into our neighborhood... which is a whole blog post in itself with all the craziness that entails. :) But the long and short of it is, we have not been able to park our car in our carport for over two weeks now... which means, long hot walks to where ever our car is parked. Since last Monday they have closed the road altogether and created an "alternative road" which means that they hacked out a bunch of forest and now we go traipsing through the jungle to the main road in town and cross it to get to our church where our car is parked at the pastor's house. It's less than half a mile, but adds considerably to any trip we take away from the house... so we've been staying home a lot. :)

Last week Brant had somewhere to be and the boys had co-op, so it was up to ME to get them carted through the jungle. I was a bit nervous, but decided to make it an adventure, so I told the boys we were going to "The Wild" (they are big fans of the movie "Madagascar") :) It was an adventure and we had fun "exploring" and they did great and we got to our car and I was just praising the Lord... and then the boys were SO upset...

We didn't see any lions.

:)

I took these pictures today when Brant went out with me.... we had to take Caleb to the clinic as he's been sick the past couple days and the boys had language class. It wasn't quite as dramatic as they had cut the brush back even more than they had before, but it was still an adventure.





It's really not a bad walk early in the morning, but when you get home at noon and have to haul groceries (like today!) and hot, tired little boys are hungry, it's a bit of a challenge. I've gotten to where I buy cold juice boxes for them while I'm out so they'll have something to drink on the walk. Very much looking forward to having the whole project done - they tell us it will be another two weeks!!!