Celebrating Five Years in America

F.G. and K.D. just celebrated their five-year anniversary of landing on American soil. The above photo shows how much they have changed physically, but they have grown in many other ways as well.

I sat down and chatted with both of them today about some of their early memories of the transition to America. K.D. remembers grabbing Little Foot’s hand when he got off the plane and not letting go for the rest of the day. Little Foot was a big comfort to K.D. when he first came and none of the warnings we heard about “virtual twinning” came true for us.

K.D. also remembers looking out the airplane window and thinking he saw moving bugs on the ground. He could not figure out why they were so “civilized,” moving along lines so neatly. It was not until the plane got close enough to the ground that he saw they were really cars.

F.G. remembers being brown in a largely white world. There were times when she just wanted to blend in and not be seen, but everybody noticed her.

When I asked them about the best things about living in America, here is what they said:

K.D.
-Pizza!
-Living in a house with a TV that shows American football.
-Being able to turn on a switch and have a light come on whenever you want.
-That the houses are not small.
-Not getting hit with a stick in school.

F.G.
-Having more food than she could normally get.
-Being able to go to school.
-Having parents that love you.
-Being able to sleep in a bed in a big room.
-Having more opportunities to play with friends.

There are things to be missed, however. They both miss friends and loved ones. F.G. also misses being able to walk to the market rather than having to take a car. K.D. misses roaming the streets with his friends. Sometimes he would find a coin, walk into a store, buy a piece of bread, and then take it home to share with his sister.

It was fun to reminisce about the “old” days with the two of them. I am looking forward to seeing what the next five years bring.

Reading in Bed

After a long week of work, I came home a little bit bedraggled tonight. After changing out of my work clothes, I plopped down on my bed and started reading a copy of Advanced Photography where I found a sweet article about painting with light. It was so good, in fact, that it motivated me to get off my duff and paint my own picture.

A special thanks to Miss Bookworm and Buddy who helped me with some of the logistics of the shot.

Life Together

Here is a photo from the last newsletter we sent out.  It has K.D. trying on bee keeper clothing, Miss Bookworm celebrating her 16th bday, Anna singing in a church event, CrazyMom on her laptop, Little Foot ice skating on a lake, F.G. doing homework, Ed playing indoor soccer, and Buddy ice fishing.  Lots of fun memories just from life happening.

Bagels in Africa

CrazyMom and I have a lot to do to prepare for the family move to Africa. When I got home from work today, I saw that CrazyMom had another checkmark done on her to-do list:

✓ Figure out how to have bagels for the family.

There cooling on the counter was a rack full of homemade bagels. The complicated process involved broiling, then boiling, and then some more baking. The results were great, however.

Now I just wonder if it will work in Africa when we are living at 7,500 feet . . .

Beep, Beep, Beep

To get the full effect of this post, please play this video every few seconds.

Microwave beeping


You may recall a post from September about CrazyMom’s difficulty with waiting 30 seconds for her coffee to heat in the microwave – or for the sink to fill with water. :-( She simply has too much to do.

Since that time we have purchased a new microwave (are you still playing the video?) in our efforts to prepare the house to sell. One of the features of this new microwave is that it beep, beep, beeps at you until you go and retrieve whatever is in it – like CrazyMom’s coffee.

30 seconds is still too long for CrazyMom to wait for her coffee to heat, but now people will bring her the warmed cup of coffee just so that they can stop the microwave from beep, beep, beeping.

All busy moms deserve to have others serve them every once in awhile and a beep, beep, beeping microwave is just the thing to help others remember to do it.

If you will excuse me now, I have to go deliver a warm cup of coffee . . .

Predicted Failure by My Kids

Lots of times I get home from work 15 min or so before a meal and I help myself to whatever is laying around.  It does not matter if it is cookies, chips, or carrots.

“Can I have one, too,” I then hear from a child when I am snitching.

“Nope.  It might spoil your appetite,” is my reply in accordance with CrazyMom’s rule of no snacks before a meal.

“But you are having one,” the child will protest even though they already know what I will say.

“Yeah, but I am dad.”

Even though I have lots of years of proof that snitching before a meal will clearly not spoil my appetite, this is one of those awkward do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do type of moments, so I made a New Year’s resolution to stop snitching - sort of.

Clearly my children do not think I will be able to do this because they have seen me standing in the pantry eating potato chips too many times.  As evidence of their prediction of my failure, I submit this photo.  When the chips got laid out today for lunch, I saw this written on one of the bags.

They are right, of course.  In fact, they know that my New Year’s resolution is not to stop snitching, but only to stop snitching in front of them.

Packing Christmas Away

After 19 Christmas celebrations together, CrazyMom and I did something different. We purged and packed the decorations rather than simply putting them away.

Lord willing, we will be celebrating Christmas next year in Kenya. To prepare for this, we gathered up all of our Christmas decorations from around the house and laid them out on the table and kitchen counters. The nine of us stood around and decided what to get rid of, what to put into long-term storage, and what we would take with us to Kenya.

The special Christmas box that will go to Kenya with us.

We started the process with about 10 boxes of stuff. Way too much for any home, to be sure, but there has never been any real motivation to purge. We got rid of half of the stuff and ended up with four boxes for long-term storage and one precious box to take with us.

I was really proud of the kids and how willing they were to throw things out. As you can imagine, with 9 people in the family somebody wants just about every item. Yet, people willingly parted with lots of decorations. When the sentimental ties were strong, however, we found a place for the item in a box that will still be a part of our family.

There will be many more good-byes in the coming months and hopefully they will go as well as today.

By the way, if anybody is looking to acquire some Christmas decorations . . .

Two Hands

I make plenty of mistakes - like saying that my oldest girls did not sound very good when they were playing the piano with injured hands. (You can see that post here.) They sound great now and we enjoyed the Christmas season more because of the music they were able to add to our home.

Way to go girls!



P.S. In case you missed it, both of the girls injured a hand playing soccer. This prevented Miss Bookworm from playing the violin and Ed from playing the piano. But they each had a hand to contribute to playing the piano together.

Thanksgiving Thoughts

[Note: This article was from our November newsletter that we sent out. I meant to post it at Thanksgiving, but I forgot. You can see the whole newsletter here.]

“But I want hot peppers without olives,” one of the kids complained as they surveyed the four different kinds of pizza CrazyMom had made for dinner. This provided a great opportunity to have the kids remember all of the times they had eaten pizza when there was only one option – and they were perfectly happy. “Somehow, having options breeds discontentment,” I was telling them. When our silly discontentment is brought to our attention, however, it is not that hard to make the shift to being thankful.

This is the essence of Thanksgiving for me – taking the time to set aside my silly discontentedness and refocus on what I have to be thankful for – a loving God, my family, clean water, health care, ample food, and a heated home as winter sets in.

And as often happens when we reflect anew on God’s goodness in our lives, our attention somehow shifts off of us and onto others. So as we all rejoice in Him this Thanksgiving, may God grant us renewed strength to minister to those He has brought our way in life.

Public Bathrooms

The sign I dream of.

Knock, knock, knock.

“You have got to be kidding,” I thought.

I had just stepped out of the shower when someone knocked on the bathroom door.

Now, I only spend 15-20 minutes a day in the master bathroom, which is less than 1.5% of the day. Since my children spend even less time in the master bath than I do, one might think that we never cross paths there.

And yet somehow the probability of someone knocking on the bath door (or just coming in) during the 1.5% of the day that I am there is nearly 100%.

Even on a day like today when I was taking a shower during an off-peak time. It was well after the morning rush hour of teeth brushing and it was not even during the evening rush hour with the kids’ showers.

How in the world does someone need to come into the master bath at 11:15am on a Saturday morning?

“Who is it?” I asked with poorly veiled irritation.

“It is Anna,” came the reply. “I need to empty the trash.”

I can’t wait until we get to Kenya where we will have half of the bathrooms that we have now.  I guess I will just have to go with this sign on my bathroom door.