My baby's growing up

There is a new baby in the neighborhood.  I showed you this picture back in August on the first day that I saw her.

She's not much bigger now.

The ladies and small children who pass her around don't protect her neck, so it's getting pretty strong, pretty fast.  They also hit her over and over again on her bottom (gingerly) saying, "Hit, hit, hit."

They start them young, and it continues on into the teenage years (and maybe further).

Children are always hitting each other and parents are always hitting children.

Just last night, we went to a house for tea and cookies, and one of the boys there hauled off and slapped his brother hard in the head, and everything went on as if nothing happened, while my children all looked at me wide-eyed and then started giggling under their breath.

When it comes to the neighbors, I think Keira likes some of the attention being off of her for a little while.

And then there's Kylie.

My baby, recently-turned 14 year old.

Time's flying.

In Africa, the kids started a tradition of sleeping all together the night before someone's birthday.

The tradition continued (sans Keira).

 Keira helped Dad and I wake up Kylie and the other two.  We played the Imperial music from "Star Wars," poked everyone with light sabers, and eventually got around to singing, "Happy Birthday" to Kylie.

Don't we look lovely?

We all made her cards, and even though the inside of Keira's card was cute, too, I thought I'd show you the back.  Karis translated it for her:

"Happy birthday to you!  You are the biggest person."

It made us all smile.

In the afternoon, some girls got together to play games and make desserts.  They had a good time.

For dinner, we went out to eat.  Kylie and I split a Hawaiian hamburger.  It was delicious!

Someone else (Kylie's mini-me) enjoyed her chicken and soda.

When we came back home, we invited a few families over for our traditional birthday dessert that Kylie made. 

There was hardly anything left when all was said and done.

Happy birthday, Kylie!

I hope you always know how much you are loved by your family and your Father.

Yes, Caleb, we can see you :)

Summertime

This is our church in Arua.  I think I've showed you pictures before, but I thought I would do it again.

Also, you should never complain about how hard the pews are where you go to church...ever ;)

The church is held in a secondary classroom on the second floor of a boarding school.  During the school term, a lot of students join us, but when this picture was taken, school was not in session.
To be fair, this is the beginning of the service, and people trickle in for the first hour, so the room does indeed fill up.  


AND, since you really never see pictures of us dressed up or looking nice, we decided to dress up for church one day and take pictures for you to show that we can still "clean up good."  But since we don't have a family photographer, we had to take them in shifts :)

Never underestimate the power of chalk.

The first week of school in August, they decided to do this in their free time.

Caleb, with his giraffe

The girls riding their camels.

One of Doug's jobs that he handles so graciously is the hair-cutting of the family.  He does his and Caleb's hair quite often, but this was the first time he had cut the girls'.

A lady from California came last December and cut mine, so as of now, I'm desperately in need of a trim.

So...our first week in Nairobi, I took the girls and myself to a real hair-cutting place!

We all got our hair washed and cut, but the price was a lot more than I'm used to, even for the States.

Kylie was worried about the money, but I told her that since we haven't paid for haircuts in 2 1/2 years, this was just the added price for all the missed ones. 






Kylie also got an interesting retainer this summer to spread her upper jaw apart, in hopes that the bottom jaw will follow suit.

Before, with spacers

After.  Interesting.

One of our special churches in the States had a baby shower for us over skype.  They gathered together and ate OUR favorite foods right in front of us and showed us what different people had bought.

It was a lot of fun laughing together as we watched them enjoy our party.

 

This is us watching them.

That about wraps up summer.

Now, for the baby story...