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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Thursday, November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

A few days ago, we worked on making thanksgiving turkeys (see photo above)- a craft project that I found here. When we had completed it, Will shouted out with glee: "Just like on the computer!" I asked the kids what things they were thankful for and Will came up with a whole list, which we filled up the fingers ('feathers') with. Annie only had about 5 words to offer me and then her attention span was all used up. But here at our house, we are very THANKFUL to GOD for so many wonderful gifts that He gives us.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Two years ago...

I love this picture- just a few days before Annie was born.
That first day with Annie.

Annie's first bath. It was WONDERFUL that my mom was here to help us with everything to to just be family with us for 4 weeks!
Pappa of two kids?! He's an excellent dad.

2

Guess who's TWO?
Annie threw off our celebration tradition by being in my bed when I woke up... and then she got up when I wanted to get up and get her cake... and so I tried to lay back down with her while Nate got Will up and they came with the cake and candles. We managed a couple of lousy, out-of-focus pictures because our camera lens is still broken- but this picture mostly worked from when she was unwrapping presents and munching on breakfast cake in the living room still in PJs:

Will was a great helper. He helped me wrap presents, helped me put candles in the cake, helped bring the cake out. He helped Annie unwrap presents (!) and blow out her candles (!)... he's a good helper.

She got a 'heart cake' because she is well loved. :)
(Will is showing off a ball that she got for her birthday.)
Will kissing Annie's head. Happy Birthday, Annie!
And last but not least- the present I made for Annie:


Matching dresses for her and her doll. The doll's dress fits great, but I have to make some adjustments on Annie's dress (but she DID wear it on her birthday- it just needs some hemming mainly). Since I wanted it to be a surprise, I didn't try it on her as I went along, but oh well. It was fun to do and she seemed to like it.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Celebrating Christmas

Yes, today is Annie's 2nd birthday!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNIE!!
(I'll post some pictures hopefully later today or tomorrow.)


But while the kids are napping and the house is quiet, I've been browsing around the internet and have found a wonderful blog with lots of thoughts and ideas on celebrating the Christmas season and wanted to share it here. It has a number of posts with many ideas of ways to keep Jesus Christ as the center of our celebrations throughout the Christmas season. I recommend it! :)

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Henna Hand


Yup, that's my hand. :) Last weekend a friend of mine threw a 'henna' party. Several of us got together and had our hands stained with henna/mendhi (sp?). (I'm not sure about the difference in those words). Now, a week later, the stain on mine is fading, probably because I do too much with my hands-smile. I think my kids were a little shocked to see my hand 'colored' (as they called it), and I have had to think carefully about my word choices in order to avoid their own experimentation of hand-coloring. (They're wondering about my 4 years of chirping out the theme: "We write on PAPER!!"- not on hands- not on walls- not on furniture - etc.)
It only took about 8 minutes to have done initially (the top picture), then about 2 hours to dry (hold still!!!) you peel off the dried bits (the other pictures you can see that part of it is peeled off) and your skin is stained an orange-brown, which usually wears off in about 2 weeks.
Indians use this type of decoration for all sorts of events and just for fun too (it's for making a woman more beautiful... I'm not sure I agree!!). It has a cooling effect (so my hand froze while it was drying), comes in several different colors, and is often put on backs/fronts of hands, tops/bottoms of feet, scalp, arms... my friend who threw the party got it done on her great big pregnant belly just for fun! :)

Friday, November 20, 2009

HALT!

good.bad.good.good. so-so.

That's how my days were this week.

The good days are days when I get things done, when I can hang out with people, clean my house, reach out to others, play with my kids, spend time with God, do something creative... the list goes on.

The bad days... when I feel so lonely, discouraged, frustrated, unproductive... bad days. I don't know why I feel so lonely so often. Is it the mountain setting? or the fact that I've never lived near another mom-friend during my whole mom-experience? Is it that I have no real home anywhere- nowhere that I can go back to where I know many people and they know me well? My poor correspondence? What about choices- have they made us walk a lonely road? In any case, the more I think about it, I imagine that although I feel lonely, I'm most likely not alone in that! I imagine that there are many lonely people around me, or far away, but people I have known or interacted with in the past. Often when I'm lonely, God reminds me of this:

HALT!
Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

When I was in University, someone shared the HALT acronym with me, stating that when we're feeling those things, we are most vulnerable spiritually. It's like an alarm to me when I realize that I'm feeling any of those things (which is far too often!!!) , that I must stop whining about being hungry/angry/lonely/tired and focus on the One who offers to meet all my needs.

Philippians 4:19 "And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus."

All of them??????

All of them!

Isaiah 40:11 "He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young."

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Train Ticket Purchasing

Lately, I've been spending a good chunk of my spare time finding and buying train tickets for next month. Amazingly, we are able to do this online! (Until recently we had to send a detailed request to our travel office who sent 'a boy' to the railway booking office in town, and he would see what he could get for us.)

Even though we're very thankful that we can get the tickets online, the website is rather quirky - but you would have to do your own searches to fully understand what I mean when I say that!

A few funny things that I must mention anyway:

-the site regularly logs you out or changes your date details in the middle of searching for tickets, so PAY ATTENTION and DOUBLE CHECK everything! - and if you don't have your password memorized yet, you soon will!

-at 11:30 pm I was about to purchase my last ticket and instead a screen popped up saying that purchasing tickets can only be done between 5:00 am and 11:30 pm Indian Standard Time. ummm... we figure it's because each time I order a ticket, some poor chap in a run-down office has to manually scribble down my details on his list so that my ticket is officially reserved and at 11:30 pm he gets to go home. Ok, maybe not exactly like that, but, what a funny way to run an internet booking site!

-So the next day, when I was about to again try to purchase my last ticket, I now had a screen pop up that said that I was only permitted to make 10 transactions in a month, and I had now reached that limit, so would not be allowed to buy my last ticket. Hmmmph. Solution: set up another user name and buy the last ticket under that account! FINALLY DONE.

It could be very frustrating if you don't see the humor in the system. And in the end, we have to just remind ourselves that -hey, at least it works, and it IS less hassle than it used to be!

Friday, November 13, 2009

New/Not-New :)

NEW:
Helpful hands in the kitchen!


Too-big, shiny black, clickety-clackety shoes complete with bows!
NOT NEW:
Let's just say that the monkeys aren't the ONLY ones who tamper with the laundry...


Bad hair-days.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Growing up

Yesterday I got the kids weighed and measured.
At 3ft, 5 inches tall and 42 lbs, Will is a big boy.
Annie has only just reached 20 lbs and is 2ft, 7 inches tall. She has filled out a lot in the past few months, which makes her seem healthy, but she's still way below the average growth curve as she'll be 2 years old in a couple of weeks. I imagine that she's just petite and that's the way it is. :)

The best toys these days are:
-blunt kitchen knives to cut playdough with (ours have the same thickness for the handle and the blade!)
-playdough
-markers
-plastic people of various shapes and sizes, especially the duplo people and the favorites have hats and hair and can sit or stand - these are prized items at play time
-biggish vehicles that can be piled full of plastic people :)
-Sher Khan, the jungle book tiger (who is known as 'tiger' in Will's world of make-believe where he's a main character along with all the plastic people)
-Will's little blue monkey that keeps getting lost and Annie's two favorite dolls
-cricket bats and bowling pins that are both used primarily for banging on things to make a lot LOT of noise
-a bucket of water (but I rarely let them play with water because our water is a bit dangerous and it's messy and cold)
-a wet rag (Annie carries around a wet rag almost incessantly - she uses it to rub her chapped face, suck on, and wipe down furniture and tables)
-blankets
-backpacks (they've got 4 kid ones that they use all the time to tote toys around the house)
-keys... my keys.

I guess this post is probably not more interesting than my last one. Oh well. I think it's such a precious gift to watch my kids grow up and become who they are.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Psalm 23

Click HERE to listen to 4-year-old Will recite Psalm 23.

nothing new

I don't have much to write about and no pictures to post since our nice camera lens broke a month ago. I miss pictures. I'm not very good at figuring out what to write on here and I'd rather have pictures tell stories instead. Maybe a list will do for today.

-Will can now recite Psalm 23 - he includes a few comical errors from time to time, but his pronunciation and intonation are adorable and it's rewarding to have completed this 6-week project. Quite a feat for a 4-year-old.

-On Sunday we made wordless books for our little family 'church' time. I let the kids use staplers for the first time and they loved that! Will mostly understood the story too, I think.

-Will often says things like: "When I die, I will see God." and "Let's pray I'm gonna die in Korea"- he has a fascination with death and soaks up Bible stories and knowledge about God like a sponge. I am amazed at his interest and understanding. And Korea is all he knows besides India-smile (although sometimes if you ask him where he's from, he'll say Canada because we have friends who talk about Canada).

-Will now colors things in! It was an exciting breakthrough when he figured out that it's not so bad to stick with a project and color the whole thing in instead of giving up after a minute of trying.

- Annie likes to use markers - but her marker usually ends up on her cheeks, chin, clothes, walls, chairs... you name it. She also likes keys and changes her clothes about 50 times a day (usually putting on other people's clothes instead of her own).

-My most recent declaration about Naptime: "Naptime is for sleeping. And being quiet. And leaving people alone!!!" - I stated this to my almost 2-year-old who insists on getting out of her bed as soon as I leave her room every nap and bedtime. Replacing her every 5 minutes makes MY 'naptimes' very exhausting.

Perhaps that's enough for now. I'll try to think of something interesting to write about next time.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

the single-mom life

I have a ton of respect for the many single parents out there - but I don't EVER want to be a single mom.
That said, this week was a tiny bit like being a single-mom for me since my dear husband was out backpacking for 8 days with students. I have had a very busy, quite productive week.

1. lousy meals! wai-wai (like raman noodles), packaged soup mix, rice and dal every lunch (much to Will's dismay), leftovers for supper (much to Annie's dismay), breakfasts of cornflakes... but I managed to serve lots of ice-cream to make up for it.

2. lists! I'm learning that I get much more done when I write a list. So I did. I managed to:
  • make numbers 6-9 for Will to color in
  • bake muffins before Bible Study on Tuesday
  • knit a bit on my snowman
  • write a newsletter that might get sent soon
  • move all my email addresses to my gmail account so I can start using that
  • make and purchase a photobook of our best India pictures
  • email my sister-in-law on her birthday
  • wash a sweater that's been sitting in a pile for months
  • wash and fold lots of laundry
  • bake pumpkin bread and remember to give some away and eat the rest!
  • drop off my computer (but unfortunately I forgot to pick it up- at least Nate's is around)
  • give Will all his meds
  • pay my househelper (only a few days late)
  • finish a batik that's been sitting around for a year
  • order groceries
  • order firewood (finally!)
  • go to the clay center with my kids
  • join the pre-schoolers on a day trip in town
  • bleach some table cloths
  • wash Annie's nasty babydoll, which now looks good as new!
  • lots of other odds and ends that I don't remember right now including keeping my kids alive and mostly well :)

3. Much un-finished. I did NOT manage to work on Annie's quilt or any other sewing projects, but that's ok - I got lots of other things done that needed my attention.

4. Anxiously waiting... By the second or third day, we were ALL ready for Nate to return. "BAPPA?", Annie squaks frequently. When I had run-ins with Will (usually over rice and dal), he'd sob: "I want my Pappa!" And it's too quiet and lonely here when my honey is gone- especially at night. But we made it.

5. Last comment before I get lunch for my kids. Nate called me (NO WAY! HE NEVER CALLS! - WHAT A GREAT SURPRISE!!!) last night to say he'd finished his hike and would be back tonight after a long long drive. He said it went well and he sounded like he had enjoyed it overall. What a great husband! I'm SO thankful he'll be coming home soon to end my 'single-mom-stint'. Hats off to all who do this regularly.