Happy New Year! Wow the last month has just flown! so, here I am as I hope to catch you all up to speed. :-)
We started December still in the two rooms at the school house and moved into the house we're renting on Steve's birthday. it was a little crazy, but we managed to move in and cook a birthday dinner. Steve wanted fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I did pretty well with the masked potatoes but the fried chicken.... well it need to cook more. Hey! not that i don't know how to cook it, mind you, i ended up buying chicken godzilla and could barely fit three legs in my frying pan (a large one at that!). And for dessert, ice cream cake. Ok, that really was the best part! :-) When you only have a two burner stove top you begin to get creative. i tried my hand at pitas today, hoping to add that to my repertoire of stove top cooking, but alas it was not to be. I couldn't get the silly things to puff up so that you could actually stuff them afterwards, but i have digressed haven't I?
back to December. Moving in has been so good! The boys have their own bedroom, the girls have their own bedroom, Nancy has her own bedroom, and we have ours. WOO HOO! And we have two bathrooms, which makes for faster bath times. The water here is not as good as it was at the school/church building. We are not on the main water supply like the school building is. So, the water tends to be more off than on here. So, when the water comes on, there is a rush of excitement to get the washer going and take a "real" shower instead of bucket baths, and fill the water barrels that we now have in the house. We have a water barrel in the kitchen and one in the kids' bathroom area. We have yet to get one for our bathroom, but we will. Just waiting for our favorite discount store to get restocked so we can buy one. :-) Oh, yes, we do have a well. but it is really like the jack and jill kind of well without the convenience of the handy dandy pully to help pull up the bucket. we have a nylon rope and the equivalent of a five pound bucket at the end of it which Steve pulls up approximately 42 feet to fill the buckets that Corban brings into the house to fill the water barrels when their empty. it does seem to happen that as soon as the barrels get filled that our water comes on. C'est la vie!
Soon after we moved in the Harmattan came. The Harmattan is when trade winds blow over the Sahara. It gets very dry and dusty during this time, but the HUGE benefit is that it cools way down at night. Way down into the low 60s! It was even supposed to get down in the upper 50s, but it either didn't happen or we weren't here when it did. We had to switch our 5 speed ceiling fan from the highest 5 down to 2, just so we wouldn't get too cool. :-) Indie has been wearing her long john jammies. Another great thing about the dry season is that our clothes dry super fast on the clothesline, sometimes within the time that it takes to do another load (water permitting).
Corban and Jachin and even Montana some have been working on a treehouse in an avocado tree in the yard. Jachin is out in it most days, and i figure by the time he's ten, it will be a full blown house as he keeps making improvements on it daily. He's currently working on a telephone for it. Maybe we will put a swing in a different avocado tree too. So, of the trees in my yard, I have three avocado trees, a lemon tree, an orange tree, a mango tree, a moringa tree, and 6-8 palm trees (the palm fruit kind), and a papaya tree. Avocados are on the trees now, maybe we will have some ripe very soon. The mango tree is blossoming so hoping by march we have some of those. we have already taken three big bunches of palm fruit off of two trees. We made soup with some and gave the rest away as we don't have a way to keep it. We have a very sizable yard, which has been so great! The kids have been running around and playing quite a bit. this is especially nice because when you live in a walled compound you could feel a bit closed in, but the yard helps tremendously. We even played a game of family football last night. it was quite hilarious! :-D
Our porch has become the best place to hang out. I am there right now as I type. :-) We eat out here, skype out here, do our Bible reading and prayer time out here. It is really great having it screened in so that we can just hang out here at anytime. In the mornings, it is really nice to come out here with a hot cup of coffee while it is still pretty cool and enjoy the coolness. And it's probably about the only time, when drinking a hot cup of anything sounds appealing.
We started our new year off with a meeting out at the treehouse. We talked about what kind of things we'd like to accomplish this year. Mainly we talked about Bible reading plans. Steve and I are going to read the Old Testament once and the New Testament three times this year. Montana is going to read the whole Bible, Corban is going to read about half of the Old and all of the New Testament, Jachin is going to read the New Testament, and Indie is going to have a story read to her each day from her beginner Bible. We're also going to be working on memorizing Psalm 119 (we may take more than a year to do that, though, as the kids still have their school memory work too).
Now you know a little bit about our new place. I have a couple of things I'd like to ask. The very first being is that we would love to host you! Who would like to come for a visit???? :-) We have lots of space now, and would love to see some of you while you get to visit the Saints and work here. The second thing is that we are all missing many of you. Would you consider emailing, facebook messaging, or skyping with us? My kids especially would love to hear from or "see" some of their friends. My kids would love to skype! Please message me so that we can set up a time to do that. Since we are several hours ahead of you, if we could set up an appointment I think we can make it happen that way.
We sure do love you all!
we'll come visit! :) Seriously!
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