Porches are for People

Blog Post About May 2021

Our front porch area doesn't have a ton of room for activities to take place, but Keira does manage to go around in circles on her scooter, Doug grills some amazing meals for us, and visitors greet us at our gate.

Sometimes a beggar knocks asking for money; sometimes our neighbors bring over some of their food to share with us; sometimes a man representing the water company or the generator comes by asking for payment (there is no mail system here - it's door-to-door); and sometimes a salesman will try to sell books, soap, beauty products, etc. (remember door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen)??

Anyway, one night, daughters, nieces and cousins from a house down the street came knocking for Keira. 

The girls don't know English except a few phrases: 

How are you?

What's your name?

Where's Keira?

Most of the time, during the day, my answer is, "Keira la muxtapa" (She's at school), but this night, she went out to see them, and they were so excited. 

May 27, 2021

It makes me very aware that I have never seen any of these girls in a school uniform, and I have never seen any of them coming from or going to a school. 

I don't know how they are educated or even if they are, but it is a good conversation topic for Keira and I about how appreciative we should be that she is allowed an education.

It's the little things.

One day, Caleb was washing the porch for us, and he and Keira decided to play in the water after the porch was clean.

I don't know how Keira's knees could handle it, but she would run and slide across the tile. Ouch!

Caleb would spray her as she went, and she loved it. 

I stopped cutting up a watermelon to video her, and then they both wanted watermelon.

Caleb suggested I video Keira in slow-motion sliding across the tile, eating her watermelon.

I took some still shots to show you, but the video is so much better (and I have no idea what Caleb's hands are doing). Maybe he's praying she didn't get hurt as she slid into the wall each time.

I wish you could see the videos :)

May 29, 2021

I like that they find fun things to do even though we don't have a yard or grass.

Life is what you make it :)

Side notes, if you're curious: the propane bottles to the right are what we use to run our oven and heat rooms with individual propane heaters. 

And across the way, is a house to the right and an empty lot to the left. Our neighbors have a pick-up truck they use to drive around to neighborhoods and sell fruits and vegetables out of the back. This lot is where they store their empty crates until they can haul them off.

*Karis took some of her senior photos this year in front of the crates, and they turned out so good ;)

I was so thankful Kylie said she could take Karis' senior photos. 

These were taken two weeks ago when she was here:)

January 5, 2022

Traveling * Awards * Shopping * Communicating

Blog About Fall 2020

The week after the hurricane, we headed the other direction to Brownwood, Texas.

The house where we stayed had a lot of dress-up clothes for grandchildren, and Keira modeled no less than 7 outfits one night.

October 17, 2020

When we returned to College Station, we took Karis out to celebrate her becoming a member of the National Honor Society.

Since she attends an online school, there was no ceremony or acknowledgement. I thought back to my own induction, and told her to hold up a steak knife while she said the "pledge" (that we looked up online).

I would say this generally is not what you want to see your 16-year old daughter doing.

October 19, 2020

Two days later, my friend Shelley invited me to go antique/vintage shopping with her. I don't often get to do "girl trips," so it was so fun to spend the day with her.

One crazy thing about the day was so many reminders of Africa.

For example, this mannequin head is a similar replica of one in Kampala, Uganda, that we used to pass often and note how out-of-place it was there. I found a picture of another laughing one in Uganda that I posted way back in 2011

Also, these wood crafts, which were shipped in from Ghana, reminded me so much of all the times we went to craft markets anywhere in East Africa.

And this speaks for itself.  (the link is from Tanzania in 2010).

 

October 21, 2020

And this became our new normal in communicating with Kylie while she was at school.

What a blessing instant communication with video is!

October 20, 2020

The Anniversary of his Birthday

We celebrated the anniversary of Caleb's birthday at the end of January.  

We incorporated his enjoyment of Dwight's humor from the "Office" with some pirate figurines because he had been slated to play Captain Hook in the May performance of "Peter Pan" before Covid started dictating other plans.

We also learned that a boy turning 14 is STILL not old enough to cut his own cookie cake.

Maybe next year, Caleb...

For now, leave it to the professionals.

These are candles that are used on almost every cake in this town, especially in restaurants.

Don't worry.  They know what they're doing 😲

Also at the end of January, Kylie free-handed this logo at a local business to commemorate their new offices.

 

Then she free-handed this chalk wall calendar for them, which was going to be updated monthly before Covid (B.C.)

Covid's coming...

Acceptance Letter

Kylie's college acceptance letter came in November.

The trick is that the letter was mailed to my parents' house, and so my dad scanned it and forwarded it to us by email.

What I didn't know is that he also forwarded it to Kylie.

Nevertheless, Doug and I wanted to make a big deal out of it, so we sealed it in a beautifully scripted envelope (writing creds to Karis), and we told the kids we were going out for a special lunch (Keira was at school).

We took them to a fancy steak house, and they kept asking, "What's up?"  

(Note: There is actually a "gold" menu in this restaurant where you can get your steak, coffee, dessert, etc. covered in edible gold. Don't worry, we didn't try it, but a few of us did try some of their beef.  Good, but nothing compared to Doug's steaks or those I've had in America.)

Back to Kylie.  We gave her the letter, and of course she had seen it already, but we still wanted to make the day memorable for her.

Ta-da!!💗

Since everyone was looking so cute, when we got home, we decided to have a small, silly photo shoot.

It started small.

And got sillier and sillier.

I convinced Caleb to jump in,

and then he got silly.

After the "smolder," I knew it wasn't going to get any better than that, and I love it!

Kylie calls this one: Dreamy, Smolder, and "Fashun"

November 6, 2019

Things I See (Vol 11)

Welcome to "Things I See."  If you want to see the previous installments, you can click on:

 Volume 1 , Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, Volume 6, Volume 7, Volume 8, Volume 9, Volume 10

See anything?

This one building of MANY in the city where people line up daily trying to get visas to get out of the country. It might be for work, a trip, or for permanence, but it just causes me to be thankful for my passport country.

I know you can't see it, but the SAM Office Furniture building is NOT on the street.
(It's over by the green plastic playground equipment)

Twins!

I love that she tried.

At the salon where I get my hair cut, younger boys are hired to hold the hairdryer for the hairdressers, they also hold the foil for the hairdressers on ladies' heads who are getting their hair colored.

I thought this was unique, but maybe this same thing happens in America???  You'll have to let me know.  I'm not that familiar with salons in America.  I can count on one hand how the number of salons I've been to in my life.

This is in our old neighborhood.  

Your eyes are NOT deceiving you.

Yes, that is three lanes of traffic PARKED on our street, and our gate is down on the right where you can see a dark blob of people sitting. 

March 19, 2019

Our side-of-the-road grazers look a little different than they do in South Texas.

"Chevy Runs Deep," but what does SHEVY do?

Ahhh!  Breathe in that beautiful air!

Speaking of air...

It's pretty common for houses here not to be built to code. (*smile)

Doug put rubber on the bottom of all our doors when we moved in because there was at least a half-inch space for dirt and air to come through (and the elements are still successful sometimes).

This is our front door area.  You can see to the right of the door how it's not flush with the wall.

Here it is zoomed in.

March 28, 2019

You wanna know why these small things don't bother me?

The back door to my kitchen in Africa had a ONE INCH space down the right side of the door.

You could literally put your hand through the hole, so Doug filled it with classy trashbags ;)

I've searched and searched for the picture of it, but after going through three years of Africa pictures twice, I still couldn't find it, so you'll have to take my word for it.

Things I See (Vol 10)

Welcome to "Things I See."  If you want to see the previous installments, you can click on:

 Volume 1 , Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5, Volume 6, Volume 7, Volume 8, Volume 9

It always amazes me that with all of the English speakers in this country, the businesses don't take advantage of them for spell-checking ads.

  

Life Water becomes Lefi Weter.

Some poor fellow named Henry is on sale.

Your guess is as good as mine.

I'm not sure this would be my first choice for a travel agency.

And just like Africa, we find some overloaded vehicles here, too.

I've told you before how each household washes the street in front of their house every day.

But what is new is that in the last year, the government has started "metering" water on houses for the first time.

I'm anxious to see if they will still think cleaning the street is important when they have to pay for it ;)

And let me leave you with this...the taste of Cardamom chewing gum in your mouth.  YUM!