Happy 2010!

Happy New Year. We are doing well. Ben took this picture of the kids and I before I took off to go to the states.. You can see how 'tall' I am. My New Year's Resolution (well, one of them anyway) is to come on here and update you more often.

Food

I like food. I hate to cook. Bad combo. As I type this, I'm cooking beans and rice with chapatis. We eat a lot of meatless dishes. Partly because meat is so expensive here and partly for health. I love to read about what others are cooking, sooo...
This is my new favorite blog to read.

A few weeks ago, it was this one. I'm knitting some socks, red, lacy ones. If they turn out, I'll post a picture. But, don't hold your breath.

Happy Spring...

Pictures for you. Here is a link to an album in Picasa.. sorry I'm so bad about this. Enjoy

Feb 2009 Wam and Bali

On our own

Ok. It has been 10 days that Mr. and Lu have been gone. I've decided to use everyone's nicknames given that this is public and all... hope you don't mind. I was shocked the other day to see a local person following my blog. I guess, since I made it inaccessible to search engines that it would remain family and friend only. I guessed wrong. We've been doing fine here, but are soooo ready for them to come HOME!

As I write this, I am being attacked by mosquitos who seem to come out of nowhere as soon as the sun goes down.. (usually around 6pm , but a little later right now as we are in our "summer"). Unfortunately, we missed the parital solar eclipse about a week and a half ago. It was to happen around our sunset. I was bummed, but not too bummed. I was a little nervous that the boy wouldn't be able to resist taking just a little peek. I had read on NASA's website how dangerous partial eclipses are to the naked eye and that the retinal damage is totally painless. Not a good combo with a 10 year old full of curiousity (and Carter blood), so maybe next time...

It is the rainy season, here. We have had a couple of real torrents recently. The kids enjoy the rain. :) I mean, "back home" it never rains this hard when it is warm outside. You can see our driveway after about 5 minutes of REAL rain.

We had an interesting experiment in astronomy the other day. Homeschool science experiments are always interesting when you live in a remote area. We were supposed to make a rocket out of a film canister (umm, nope) and alkaseltzer tablets... hmmm. Well, I headed to the pharmacy to look for something effervescent. I found something that sounded like alkaseltzer and airborne put together, so we gave it a try. I used the metal container that the giant tablets came in. We found, through trial and error, that we only needed a small portion of a tablet to make it work (and not have it explode sticky, fizzy juice all over the operator) and were moderately successful. Life sure is interesting.

New Hue

Now, what do you think? This image struck me as very Carter-ish. I don't know if you can see her new red hair. We dyed it the day after Christmas. We got two packages from Grandma in record time! One only took 11 days. We were so excited.

I spent the day today baking bread. Cinnamon Twist Bread, Date Nut Ring, Fry Bread... I'm not done. I need to make some regular bread. I think I should freeze some, so we don't all expand beyond our clothing. :)

Happy 2009!

New Year's Eve

Happy New Year to you! We are enjoying the festivities (very loud fireworks--Surprised their aren't more people here missing fingers from these big explosions) We had a BBQ tonight to celebrate and an outside movie. That is one blessing about living in the tropics, you can BBQ any time of the year.

We had fun making candies and cookies in preparation for Christmas. It is really loud here in Wamena at Christmas and New Years; much louder than Mulia was. There is a feeling of generousity when it comes to music. (Meaning, if I have speakers, you must want to share them, so I'll blast the music as loudly as possible. In that way, we can listen to several different types of music all at the same time. :)

I hope you have a blessed and safe New Year.

Isn't she lovely?

Isn't she a beaut? I love spiders. This one was in Singapore, but we have some lovely ones here, too. We just uploaded a bunch more photos from Singapore.




I'll add a few more and then, I gotta tell you about Hannah's new kitten... Just have to wait for Ben to get back with the camera. He's in a tribe, doing clinics and training for a few days.

Even though it is technically spring here, the weather is rainy and cooler, so it feels a lot like fall. This week, we have had so much pumpkin... Last night, I made pumpkin soup, then this morning we had a pumpkin sauce on our pancakes and I made a batch of pumpkin cookies... maybe I'm overdoing it.
No one is complaining , yet.