Settling In

I realize the point of a blog is to post things fairly often for people to follow and we're not exactly doing such a good job of this.  I guess I'm still a bit behind the times...I'm stuck on the old ideas of having to write something clever that has a point and is complete.  If I try to do that for every blog post...well, you see why I struggle to get one written often enough.  Anyway, I'm working on it.  In the meantime, I thought I'd just copy and paste an excerpt from an email I wrote to Dale's mom this morning.  It was meant to be a little newsy, so maybe it qualifies as good blog material, though it's not particularly witty or deep.  If nothing else, it may give you some idea of what we've been up to this past week!

"Caleb does seem to be doing better, by the way.  He took his last dose of the medicine yesterday morning.  Still has diarrhea, but only went twice yesterday, which was a lot better.  Also had a lot more energy and a better appetite.  After the diarrhea Sunday morning, Joel seemed to be fine again, so I guess it was nothing.  I just wasn't sure what to think when they both woke up with it that morning!  And Joel had it 3 times within a little under 2 hours, so it was a little concerning.  He still has some rather loose BMs, but he's going pretty regularly, too, and not complaining of any other symptoms, so I think he's probably fine.  Thank goodness!  I'll be glad when this is all over.  At the moment Joel has a fat lip as Caleb tried to "help mommy" last night by "making Joel stop playing with the light switch".  Joel was standing on the piano bench in order to reach the light switch, and Caleb pulled it out from under Joel, causing a fall that had Joel landing his mouth onto one of the legs of the bench.  If those two survive childhood being brothers and all...!

Julie started "school" with Thomas and Meya (Matt's younger sister who's staying with them) yesterday, so I guess I better start thinking about that soon, too.  We are all unpacked and pretty much all organized, too.  I think I'm pretty close to catching up on all my major cooking projects as well.  I always like to have certain things on hand (like the bread, granola, pancake mix, etc.).  I should be able to get into a routine now of doing that sort of thing on Saturday mornings anymore.  I talked to Julie yesterday and I think I will be taking over as guest house hostess and everything else I had been doing for the station on September 6th, so I have almost two weeks left.  I know the women at the church would like me to start coming back to choir and think about another Bible study.  We shall see.  The choir is not a bit deal since it only meets Sunday afternoons for a couple of hours.  For the Bible study, I am thinking of a new format that will place the women into small groups of 2-3.  Each will receive the materials I had been preparing for them ahead of time and they are two work together as a group to discuss, study, answer the questions.  The idea is to try and get them into accountability/discipleship groups and also to give them the opportunity to include or involve women who might not attend our church or who might not be able to read or write as well.  If I do this, then I would probably only meet with them twice a month to "teach" and wouldn't spend as much time going over the specific answers to their worksheets since they will hopefully have discussed this well amongst themselves.  We'll see what happens.  The other side benefit, of course, would be the fact that I wouldn't have to meet with them as often, though I expect I'd still have to put my fair share of time in preparing for each lesson.

We're ordering some of the materials for our kitchen project today, so hopefully they'll get here Thursday and we can have them start digging the foundations.  During rainy season it's always hard to get things out here, but I hate sitting around and waiting for things like this to start.  We've got a big pile of sand and a smaller pile of gravel sitting in front of our house now, though, so I guess that's progress.;)  I think the project may end up costing us double what Dale had hoped.  Not expensive by standards back home, but not exactly money we have sitting around.  Oh, well.  We'll see what happens.  We may just have to ride the account on red for a few months, or pull something out of our savings back home to cover it.  We've kinda set our hearts on it, so I guess we'll go through with it regardless.  Besides, it's one of the last major things we've been wanting to do to the house since our arrival in 2007 to make us feel fully settled.  The only other thing is a bathroom make over and that would actually be a smaller project and is not quite as bothersome as the kitchen has been.  I suppose, though, if we start having guests, we may have to think about doing it sooner...

Well, the boys seem to be awake now, so I should think about wrapping this up.  We unbunked their beds shortly after we got back.  Their room is tiny, so the only way we could get both beds to fit in the same room was to fit them in an L-shape.  It isn't exactly aesthetic, but it is a lot more practical.  I was thinking at the time that this might make it easier to work with Caleb on night-time potty training.  But it's also much easier to make their beds.  And now Joel can climb over into Caleb's bed and they have grand ol' times playing before they ever get out of bed in the mornings.  At the moment, I believe they must be playing with their stuffed monkeys because I'm hearing lots of monkey sounds.  It has been a bit surprising to watch Joel now that we've been back and to realize how much he grew up while we were home.  Of course we knew it, but it's most obvious here where he was still a non-talking "baby" who clung to mommy's skirt a lot and pretty much stayed in the house.  Now he wanders all over the station with Caleb and is learning all the proper greetings right alongside him.  People often ask, when I make postings on facebook regarding some of my crazy projects, what I do with the boys during those times.  I wonder if they remember how it used to be in the US back in the days when women were doing the same sorts of things, like I read in the old "pioneer" books.  And we don't even have winter here to interfere with that.  They can simply play outside to their heart's content...climbing the sand pile outside our dining room window, digging in the dirt with the plastic shovels we brought for them, playing soccer under the mango trees, chasing the cat or the chickens, and when they get tired of the outdoors, there's a room full of plenty of toys that entertain them plenty, too!

I gotta run now.  I started the oatmeal and am now just remembering it!;)  Some things never change!"

[caption id="attachment_659" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Joel loves cucumber salad!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_661" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Dale has spent some of his time the last couple of weeks trying to get a garden started for us."][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_660" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Tessa, Caleb, Joel and Thomas have great fun climbing the sand hill sitting in our front yard, waiting to be used in the kitchen expansion project."][/caption]