Camp Out
This week the girls and I spent a night in our (2-man) tent. Despite the fact that it was crowded, all three of us made it through the night. Before “lights-out” we spent some time reading books together. Lucy actually said, “This is a fun night” at one point which, of course, made the hassle worth it. The girls wiggled and giggled for quite a while after their official bed time, but were asleep by 8:30 and they didn’t wake up until...
Neighborhood Fun
We have neighbors, but no streets. Can we call that a neighborhood? Regardless, here are some of the things we've done for fun over the last few weeks
Fruit
We eat a lot of yummy fruit here in PNG. There are amazing bananas, pineapples and papayas. We also get strawberries and mulberries. In Mibu they had wonderful oranges. A couple of our favorite fruits are new to us here though. Lucy in particular has developed a fondness for diwai tomatoes and sugar fruit/passion fruit. The “diwai tomato,” or “tree tomato,” is the reddish one on the left. You eat it by peeling off the skin...
Beating the Heat
I can’t speak for Elizabeth on this particular point, but I’m missing winter in South Carolina. I’m jealous as I see folks on facebook in jeans and coats. While it doesn’t get outrageously hot here outside, our house reaches 90 degrees for about five hours every afternoon thanks to the tin roof and lack of insulation. The kids don’t seem to mind so much, though, ever since we got our...
My Book
I made this book in school with Mommy. The one wearing the red dress is my mommy. The one wearing the blue shirt is my daddy. The one wearing the pink dress and is littler than the other one that is wearing the pink dress is Lucy. And the pink dress that is older than the little one wearing the pink dress is me. And the green blanket is Everett. This is my Family. My mother has a purse. My mother is sitting in a chair. My father is standing up and he’s trying to...
Valentine’s Ball
Friday the Junior class of the missionary-kid high school had a Valentine’s dinner (as a fund raiser.) The invitation said families were welcome so we decided to take the whole gang. I guess when you don’t have a dish washer and the restaurant selection in town isn’t that great, an event like this sounds pretty good. Beforehand my excitement level was only medium at best, but then Elizabeth decided we should tell the girls that we would all be going...
Foreign Christmas
There were a couple of things about our Christmas day that made us aware we were in PNG. First, while we were enjoying our Christmas morning breakfast of cinnamon rolls, breakfast casserole, fresh fruit and freshly squeezed OJ (thanks to my house helper…I’ll write more about her soon) a woman showed up at our door to sell us oranges and some other produce. That doesn’t usually happen at the US. Later, as we were finishing up dessert after Christmas...
Merry Christmas!
It was quite a merry Christmas here on the other side of the world! Its weird to think that we are finishing up Christmas day and most of you have not yet begun. I hope it is a great day for all of you! Christmas was a little more low key here, but it was merry none the less! We had a nice time as a family on Christmas Eve eating party food for supper and drinking hot cocoa while Daddy told the Christmas story before bed. Then this morning the girls woke up bright and...
Breaking News…
We’ll be back with more about the funeral, but we had to share our breaking news! We got a kitty! Meet Aurora: We have been having a rat problem so we thought a cat might help with that. It turns out one of the local guys who works here on our base had some kittens for sale, so we went ahead and bought one! We surprised the girls and took them with us to his house to pick one out after lunch today. The girls are SO excited about their new baby. We...
3 Little Indians
There are 4 new families here doing orientation and Pidgin study. All of us are always trying to get in hours learning Pidgin and most of us have 2 official language sessions per week. In order to have a time when we can focus exclusively on language learning, the Walkers and we switch off babysitting during one of our sessions per week. Every Monday I keep the Walkers’ 2 kids and every Tuesday they keep our kids. Katie and I both do some kind of school...
Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! It doesn’t feel like thanksgiving here, but we had a good day. It sure did make us miss our families though! A lot of you have asked us if we were going to celebrate or what we were going to do to celebrate, so I thought you might like to see what our day was like! We got up, did a load of laundry, and had pecan rolls for breakfast. After breakfast Joseph walked over to our local pastor’s house to buy chickens from his...
Second Hand Shopping
Before coming to PNG I corresponded with a couple of ladies who already lived here about what to bring. One thing I specifically asked was what kind of clothes to bring and what I could get in the country. They told me that I would be able to buy clothes here at second hand stores. I was an avid Goodwill shopper in the US, but I have to admit I wondered what they could possibly sell at second hand stores here! Well, it turns out they get clothes from Australia and...
Happy Halloween
We tried to pretend it was fall here so we could enjoy Halloween. Elizabeth made carmel corn and pumpkin muffins and God sent us a cool wind that almost made us think it could be fall. We haven’t seen a single “real” pumpkin here, but we did get a couple of small green ones. The girls enjoyed drawing faces on them for me to carve. Everett preferred to pose like a jack-o-latern. You’ll notice that Belle included cheeks on her pumpkin which...
Belle lainim tok pisin
We haven’t been trying to actively teach our kids Pidgin, but every once in a while we ask them to say a Pidgin phrase or something. Lucy usually obliges, but Belle never does. She has never seemed at all interested when we encourage her, so it has surprised us when something Pidgin comes out of Belle! Today she drew me a picture with some writing on it. I could tell that it said “Belle and Lucy”, but I couldn’t tell what the other words...
Everett’s First Haircut
It was time. My boy needed a haircut. He probably could have used one before his birthday, but I just couldn’t do it before he was one. Here’s the mullet he was rocking a few days ago: then snip… snip… snip… a new big boy...
Everett is ONE!
Today our baby turned one. I really cannot believe it. This year has gone by so fast! He is such a fun little boy! He loves balls, loves to climb on things, loves his sisters and loves to squeal at the table when he runs out of food. We are so enjoying getting to know more of his little personality the older he gets! We celebrated Everett today with a little party for some of our friends here. Happy birthday to our big boy! Starting the day with birthday...
Happy Fall Y’all
So its October. But here it still feels like August. That’s weird. I didn’t realize how weird it would be to not have seasons. I know that its October, but it doesn’t FEEL like October. It still looks and feels just like it did when we arrived here in August, so I really feel like no time has passed at all. I had no idea my inner clock was so seasonal! I’m afraid I will never be able to remember when things happened with no...
Follow Us!