Detta är Dagen

This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

-Psalm 118:24


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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

food, glorious food...

...no matter what it looks like!
We bought some mustard in Korea this summer. Real, American mustard, and it's been sitting in our fridge staring at us for months now. We admitted the other day that we both seem to drool at the sight of it, but can't think of much that we could eat it with except... maybe hotdogs! So Nate brought me some sausages that resemble hotdogs quite well and I baked some buns to put them in. I was so excited about this meal that I asked Nate to take a picture:

- He didn't think anyone would be very impressed - but we were very excited for this rare meal:

MMMMMMmmmmmm! WHAT A TREAT! First time having hotdogs in India - it was wonderful - so wonderful that I think we'll do it a few more times before we leave!
Another meal that has become a favorite for me is the basic Indian meal of rice and dal (lentils) with a side scoop of 'pickle'. I learned to make it myself last year and now cook it up every other day or so and eat the leftovers in between. It's Annie's favorite meal- the only thing we could get her to eat for a number of months, and it's grown on me too. Pickle has got to be one of the nastiest-looking things out there. They make it of lots of different things, but our favorite is Lime pickle. It's Lime pieces fermented in mustard oil with lots of chili and salt. Doesn't it sound delicious????!!! I didn't dare try it for our first three years here, and like the character in Green Eggs and Ham, once I finally got up the nerve to try it, I found that I LOVE it! I plan to bring some back for my dad to try someday- he'd like it too, I'm sure.
-my lunch plate almost every day-

Sunday, December 13, 2009

P.S.

P.S.
-I have been informed by my family that the kids are not riding a horse, but a TIGER in a picture a couple of posts back.

- I have included my own responses to some of the comments I received in the comments section of the post on Babies and Thoughts - I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion! Thanks also for all the other comments you readers send me- I really appreciate hearing from you.

-My MARBLE countertop in the kitchen... one of the many things I will miss someday when we move away from here. I forgot to include this in my list of things I love in my previous post.

- Happy Santa Lucia Day today! Later, I'll post a couple of pictures about our morning celebration.

-Last but not least!!
Click on this link to go to our friends' blog. They have posted a short video clip in which you can see how Will drums everytime we sing any song. :) Enjoy!

Thursday, December 10, 2009

List 2

A couple of months ago, I wrote a list about the things I will NOT miss when we leave from here.

But there are many many things that I LOVE about living here. Here's what I can think of at the moment:
  1. good fruit and vegetables all year around and great variety too
  2. not owning a vehicle- just walking everywhere or taking a taxi/bus/train sometimes
  3. living on the side of the mountain
  4. not being able to see anyone else's house from our house - we're surrounded by trees
  5. heating our house with a wood-stove
  6. living in a cottage with a name :)
  7. being close enough to school that I can visit whenever I want
  8. having spent almost 4 years here, so we have made good friends and are able to reach out
  9. my kitchen - it's a little small, but a nice square, so I have everything in my reach and cooking and baking is fun
  10. I have learned to cook some Indian food and have learned to love eating some of it too
  11. chai!
  12. cool weather all year long- never too hot, but almost always nice, and sometimes cold enough for snow. (I can still hang my laundry outside to dry now in December.)
  13. Monsoon. I love monsoon. I will miss monsoon.
  14. tin roofs
  15. pine martins along the hillside above our yard
  16. our house - I LOVE our house! - it's really old with crooked walls and cracked ceilings, but it's just perfect for us
  17. hiking - everywhere you go is a hike - there's no way around it, but there's nothing like walking on a narrow path along the side of a steep mountain
  18. the spinner on my washing machine (I'll try to take a picture of it sometime to show how it works on here)
  19. wearing sarees and salwar kamises (dressing Indian-style)
  20. being able to attend concerts, recitals, plays and presentations
  21. helping with after-school clubs and encouraging students and staff in their Faith in God as I have opportunity
  22. being welcome to bring my kids to the school library, playground, and even pre-school class from time to time
  23. that the leaves never fully fall off the trees, but instead leaves fall off as new ones grow in - it's neat!
  24. Fellowshipping with staff once a week and hillside women once a week - this has been so refreshing for me
  25. buying rice, flour, lentils, sugar - you name it - from big sacks in a shop in town
  26. long saturday strolls with my family all the way through the bazaar and back (and dates with my honey walking miles and miles and miles together as we headed out to our favorite restaurant for dinner so many times)
  27. viewing the snow peaks from the top of our mountain, and the sprawling city in the valley 6000 feet below us from our yard.
  28. Calling up a shop in town, reading out my grocery list, and having food delivered to my house
  29. making homemade yoghurt, homemade bread, homemade EVERYTHING - I am SO thankful that I have learned how to cook and bake from scratch scratch scratch! I love it (though it's a lot of work!)
  30. being able to be creative here- sewing, knitting, quilting, singing, playing guitar, piano, cello, writing songs - I've enjoyed being creative
  31. time with my kids. I'm glad I had some time to try teaching out, but I am loving having all the day long with my kids for the past couple of years.

So, I like living here for so many reasons! I'd better stop now before I make Nate sign another contract! :) In reality, I have come to see that there is good and bad in every place. We're ready to enjoy different things and deal with different issues -smile. Getting excited to see what God has for us after this, but I'll definitely miss some things about this place. And if I start to think it's too wonderful here, I'll just have to click on this link!

So, what's GREAT about where you live?

We're in the market for a new place to live, you know...

HOME! and count-downs

Pappa's Home!
We're all so happy to have him back after a long week without him. The kids asked him immediately to play hide-and-seek and ride him like a horse (pictured above) - which, of course, he did. Now he's grading stacks and stacks of exams and he hopes to wrap up his duties for the semester in the next couple of days. That will make us 7/8 done with our semesters at WS !!!

And we're counting down now:
-6 months till we visit the US
-16 days till my sister arrives
-15 days till Christmas
-7 days till Nate's sister and family arrive

YAY!!

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Lessons from potty-training

I have a 2-year-old who is potty-trained during the day (give or take a few accidents). She is very independent (as many girls are, I hear) and likes to get up quietly at naptime (after I've put her in a diaper and tucked her in her bed) and open the door to the bathroom and undress herself because she needs to go potty. This is very frustrating for me because by the time she finally gets to the toilet, she has already wet her diaper and since she can't get her diaper off on her own yet, I still have to come in and change it... again. Why didn't she just go two minutes ago when she was on the toilet?! The same scenario happens at night, too - every night, and every naptime... almost funny, but it gets old.

This afternoon it happened again and I ran to help her, hoping to get her to the toilet before she wet yet another diaper (because yes indeed, I'm tired of washing diapers all the time after 4 years of it!). I picked her up and in a yet-again-disappointed and exasperated tone, heard myself say to her: "You need to CALL me to come and help you instead of trying to do it yourself! Then you wouldn't make such a mess all the time. You need to say, 'Mamma! I need to go potty.'" Of course she repeated what I told her to say in the sweetest little voice as if practicing for next time. --And it was as if God whispered His truth to me right then. I realized that the scene is a perfect picture of how I am with my Father in Heaven. I take things into my own hands and speak too soon or try to do things my way in life and He's just longing for me to CALL to him FIRST so that He can COME and HELP me! Then I wouldn't make such a mess or have to do things all by myself.

Father, Help me!

Monday, December 7, 2009

Babies and thoughts

Well I'm back home after a long excursion down the mountain and back up again this evening to see my friends and their brand new baby! In the past three days I've held two newborns- even got to change one's poopy diaper and yes, he did pee all over as I did it... brought me right back to my own son's first months of life. :)

Today I was reminded several times of how blessed I have been. I am blessed to be a mother. Contrary to my many many years of thinking, not just any woman is given that gift. And I am a mother of two kids- a boy and a girl. Wow, what a gift, God. It's just gifts, see?

It was sometime during University that I began to learn of some couples I knew who 'could never have children'. It was also about that time that friends started to get married and other friends were planning out their lives. I didn't know any married friends who had kids (unless I'm forgetting someone at the moment) and many of them said things like, "yeah, we'll have kids someday"- in such a definite, decided manner, that I wanted to scream out to them- "By the way, YOU'RE not the one who decides that - God is!" - But I didn't. Instead, God began to sand away some of my rough edges about this issue, so that I was hurled into a search for truth by a challenge from my fiance: "What does God say about kids???" Guess what? Everything God says about kids is that they are His best blessing- the biggest gift He can give people for their lives to be wonderful here on Earth. He commands people to have kids. He tells them to MULTIPLY, bear children... GOD LOVES KIDS, and He designed marriage to result in giving birth to kids. Check out His Word yourself if you haven't yet on this topic (and if you find something other than that theme, let me know- I am always longing for Truth!)

But it's not just that easy, see. From my own observations, it seems that many people seem to decide to have kids in order to spice up their lives, do something different, collect another item that they don't have yet (a kid), or live on through their children. But I don't believe that God gives kids so that we can have the perfect life we design for ourselves. Instead He gives them- or withholds them- so that we can have the perfect life that He designs for us - that draws us closest to Him and shapes us most like Himself.

How awesome to me is the story of some of our friends who longed for children for several years and realized that they couldn't have their own kids. So they decided to pursue adoption. After a long process (as all adoptions I have heard about are), they finally welcomed an adopted baby boy into their home and the next month they learned that they were pregnant as well. They now say that they KNOW that God wanted them to have that boy in their home or He would have let them get pregnant sooner. They would not have carried through with the adoption if their own daughter had come earlier - after all, who wanders around with two kids who are only 9 months apart?!. Isn't God amazing? And His timing incredible?

During a conversation today, I was reminded again of how difficult it can be for some women to get pregnant and how they come to long for that stage of life. Long so much that they try everything- even artificial processes - and it made my heart sad. Sad for them. Sad that we people are so often driven to our own devices to get what we want. Does it make God sad to see us so desperate for what He has not given us?

And as I held those two newborns in my arms during the past couple of days, I was also reminded about how hard it can be for women to give birth. I have been blessed with relatively easy pregnancies and deliveries. But the difficulty of bearing children is also a great reminder to us of why Jesus came. Genesis 3:16 says it straight up: "To the woman he said, 'I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children..." So all the hard things that are wrapped up in having kids like the few I've mentioned, just go back to some poor choices in the beginning of the World. Sadly- I still make poor choices that have repercussions on my life.

I said I was thankful that I have a boy and a girl. I'm thankful because I think that those who want a baby are curious about what it is to have a son and a daughter. Well, it's not to my credit or my husband's credit, but to God's credit alone that He has given us the gift of one of each. Thank you, God. (By the way, I would have been thrilled if we had been given two of one 'kind', but still always curious what it would be like, I'm sure.) At the foundation of my gratitude and awe of God- lies a trust that I long for all people to know, and I long to know more fully. My husband and I have trusted that God will plan our lives for us and give us what is His best for our lives. We trust that He'll show us the next step, even if He rarely shows the whole path ahead. We trusted Him that He would give us children in His good time (and His timing has been so good- I must add here that even the miscarriages we have had proved to be blessings in ways I couldn't have planned!). Now we're trusting Him that He'll take us where He wants us to go next year and always, that He'll give us whatever children He wants us to have - in His good time. I feel peaceful and so thankful that our lives are in His good Shepherd hands.

Thank you, God, for new babies and all of Your goodness that they remind me of.

Saturday, December 5, 2009

ramblings

I'm passing the days as a 'single mom' yet again and faring quite well so far. I just got word that my friend (pictured below in the last post) just had her baby this morning, so when the kids get up, we're going to hike over to the hospital (about a 30 minute walk across the mountainside) to see the new baby girl!!! YAY! I was SURE it was going to be a boy- funny how we really have NO idea about things like this, yet God has known since before time began.

So where has my man gone this time? To a maths conference. (It's always "maths" here in India.) I have heard from him that he's doing fine and is enjoying staying with some of our friends there. It sounded like the conference is going well and his presentation on technology in the classroom (actually I don't know what his topic was exactly) seemed to impress everyone. I'm really glad that he had this chance to go and experience a conference here and share some of what he's been working on with others who might find it helpful and useful. Too bad he's away for a week, but we're about half-way done with that time now!

During the past few days we've spent quite a bit of time with people, which is a lot of fun for me. We've had people over almost every night and been a part of some after-school activities a couple of afternoons this week. We made it down to the clay center to play with clay for awhile, and over to our (at that time) pregnant friend's house one morning, and now we'll probably spend the next couple of days going to visit them a bit and cleaning up the house for Nate's return. We'll probably attend some of the Christmas activities at the school too, which should be fun. You see, we're keeping busy and having fun, even though the kids keep asking if we'll see Pappa when we get home, or when he's coming home, or if he's at work... only a few more days!

Well, that's enough rambling for now, I suppose. No pictures to share since I don't have the camera here. Maybe I'll take some time in the next few days to try to write on some topics I've been thinking to 'journal' about on here.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Pictures


Last weekend Will and Annie helped their Pappa get some pine and cedar branches for decorating our house.




Then we set up our Christmas tree and the kids decorated it.



They loved doing it!


Annie got to put the star on top.



And here you can see the dresses I made for Annie and her doll for her birthday.



Here are the kids with a good friend of ours who is just waiting waiting waiting for her baby to arrive - any day now!