PICTURES! :)

Will examines the fish drying on the side of the road.

Yay for 3AC train seats!

(These seats come with 'high tea'--mmmm!)

Resting in Hampi on the bank of the river.

Will riding an elephant sculpted in about 1500 AD.

Hampi ruins

Back in Goa - we rented bikes for a day and we all enjoyed doing something different.

Every day looked about like this...

Ahhh... riding like royalty in class 2AC!! 30 hours but the seats came with blankets, pillows, sheets, a curtained compartment just for us, and not only 'high tea', but also 3 meals each day and several other snacks and tea times. By the time we staggered up our mountain at the end of our trip, we felt like we had lived on the train for a month, but pictures remind us that we DID spend some time on the ground, and I'm sure that in a few days, we'll forget all the travel and will remember how great all the time was down south in the sun, with friends, with our family, soaking up a few weeks off of our mountain.

It's good to be back home and I'll write more later, and will post more pictures on fb since it's easier to post them there.

a glimpse

heading home

It's pretty daunting to think of trying to catch up on about six weeks of absence. We've left the beach and are at our friends' house enjoying the peace and quiet of being in their home and spending time with them. I've cleared out my email inbox so that I won't get any more system administrator emails telling me my mailbox is over its size limit, and I've briefly updated my facebook status to mention to far away friends that I'm still alive... and I took a few minutes to check on my nieces and see how big they've grown since I last saw their pictures (thanks to my sister-in-laws' blogs!).
Now the time has come for me to scrawl a note here to say that someday I'll try to post some pictures and maybe write about our travels... sounds like a nice idea anyway. But all the 'catching up' has me proper knackered (sp?) as they say in England.
Here's a start, though, since I'm already logged in and writing (I'm still in lazy vacation mode I guess):

Will has been doing well- no seizures in a month. Annie is walking a lot now, but she looks so funny since she's just so tiny- doesn't seem like a baby her size should be able to just walk wherever she wants to. Both kids really enjoyed the sand, and Will really enjoyed walking in the waves, although neither of them wanted to go in the water past their knees. We were appalled to realize that Will learned how to smoke this holiday- a couple of days ago he was playing in the sand and I looked down to see that he had found a cigarette butt in the sand and he had it between his fingers and was moving it away from his mouth like he'd smoked all his life... hmmm. We stressed that this was yucky, but the fact remains... Will has evidently learned a lot from the hippies around us during the past few weeks.

For my birthday, we took a touristy trip for a few days to a ruined city that was neat to see. We walked a lot all through the ruins and the kids were good travelers for the most part. Annie still spends a considerable amount of time screaming at us, especially in the middle of the night. Most nights I was concerned that someone was going to come and kick us out of the guest house we were in. It didn't help that both kids have been sick with sore stomachs and colds. At least Annie's been eating better and gained some weight, so maybe she'll be a happier child when she gets over her cold.
Nate has been such good company all this time. I think he enjoyed a break from life on our mountain, but I know he'll enjoy getting back home. He likes the cold. He'll miss the bananas down here, though, and eating fried mackerel at a beach shack while sipping down an ice cold maaza (mango juice) from a glass bottle. (He told me it tastes better from a glass bottle than from a plastic one- for the record...)

As for me, I did not finish my cross-stitch that I've been working on for 2 years, but I DID read a whole book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is an amazing feat for me- I was trying to remember the last book I read from cover to cover... it was a very short book which I read while Nate was in singapore 18 months ago. The book I just read is Philip Yancy's "What's So Amazing About Grace?". I found it very helpful and so humbling. Grace. I'm pretty sure that my 'world' would be completely changed if I lived a gracious life. So these days I'm trying to remember grace, longing to truly walk as Jesus walked.

I've been soaking up the heat throughout this month, but it will be nice to be a cold again, I think, and to have fires in our woodstove and sip tea and wear warm clothes. We're looking forward to getting home in a few days. Then I'll try to work on getting some pictures up here for any curious parties (my mother for instance-smile!)
Until then... I'd better go and check if my children are up from their naps yet.

quick post from the beach

Just a note to say that all is well and we're enjoying warm weather for a few weeks of vacation. We've done some touristy things, lots of sitting at the beach, and we've enjoyed the company of some friends immensely. They're leaving today and we'll be on our own with no one to entertain the kids for the next few weeks. We'll be taking a trip to a ruined city for a few days over my birthday, so that will be a nice thing to do and then will be back here for another week before ending our trip with another visit to a family we spent christmas with two years ago. It's been really relaxing and the kids have warmed up to life at the beach. Annie doesn't scream anymore when we set her in the sand, and Will loves to run into the waves as they crash at his feet. Ok, I'm out of time here and probably won't post again until we're back on the mountain.