Life Beyond Birthdays

Seeing as how the last three posts have been related to birthdays, it's time for more of a life update!  Stay tuned though- Sawyer's birthday is coming up in a month:)

My parents were here for a visit the second week of September.  Dad is the mission manager for the Haiti Dairy Program and likes being involved with S.E.E.D., so he tries to come down several times a year.  Mom was okay tagging along with him:)  Mom spent the week with us while dad tended to his duties, but he did come up to the hospital to spend one day and night with us.  It was good to have them here and the kids loved it!  The first thing they asked grandma was "what surprises did you bring us?"  Oh boy...

We had ordered some pork and beef that we planned to grind and our order was filled while they were here!  Some guy who is selling a pig or cow whacks it apart with his machete, and somehow by the time we got it it was skinned and kind of cleaned off and put into a five gallon bucket.  Then it's our job to wash it good and chop it into small chunks that will fit into the grinder.  So me and mom cleaned and chopped pork while the men took care of the kids.  We are glad to have the meat but the smell was something to get used to!  Not sure I ever actually did get used to it:)  However, now we have 50ish pounds of ground meat in our freezer and we won't be needing to do that again for awhile!  Actually, sometimes people butcher a cow right outside the main hospital gate and we could get some there too if we wanted.  I haven't seen it with my own eyes, but it has happened since we've been here.  Once, Danny was outside by our gate and saw a man walk past carrying the cow's head after the butchering was done!

We are moving right along with language lessons.  And by moving right along, I mean we have them almost every day, NOT that we are speaking really well!  In the picture is Falens, our tutor.  He comes to our house most afternoons while the kids are napping.  I'm sure I'm probably his worst student ever!  I understand more than I can speak.  It takes me forever to piece together a very broken sentence.  Say something as slow as you can.  Now say it a little bit slower.  That's about how fast I talk in Creole.  And I find myself saying Spanish words interspersed in there too.  The poor people that have to communicate with me!  Danny's doing good with it.  I've had more driving practice and am probably a little more comfortable with it, so we decided we make a good team.  I can get us around and he can speak for us!

After a lengthy conversation about the endless supply of oatmeal creme pies we have in "the red door", we had a version of a Chopped competition.  Dessert only.  One of the required ingredients?  Oatmeal creme pies, of course!

We are getting into a groove with our house ladies.  We have a really long ways to go as far as our communication, but we are usually able to figure each other out.  So far, the food has been great and my house has never been cleaner!  They seem to really like all our kids, but they LOOOOOOOOOOVE Tucker!  He gets doted on all day long!  They can't stand to hear him fuss and if he does he gets picked up and played with right away:)  Pretty much every time they cross paths with him he gets picked up for a little bit or ticked a little bit or something.  But I would rather have that than feeling like they didn't like the kids.

Our yard guys started too this week.  Most people only get one yard guy but we have a large yard with lots of trees and plants.  It's pretty, but requires a lot of upkeep!  After being here this long with nobody working for us yet, it was getting a little out of control!  So we are glad to have them:)  For now we have our people come just two days a week.  That might change to three days but for now we just need to get used to having them.  It's not as easy or fun as one might think to have people doing your work for you when you're used to doing it all yourself and when you struggle to communicate with them.  But we have no complaints about them as individuals and we do like the fact that we can give someone work.  When we did interviews for the yard guys, one question Danny asked one of ours was what he was interested in doing in the future, or something along those lines.  His response was "all work is good work".  It's a different mindset than Americans who are always on the lookout for just the right job!

Please pray for Haiti.  I feel so unqualified to talk or write about the condition of the country because we are still so new here.  But I can say what others who have been here much longer have told us.  There is a fuel shortage which has caused widespread protesting, roadblocks, and violence.  I haven't been to town in awhile but I hear the roads are pretty clear as far as vehicles and motorcycles go.  Crazy is an understatement for what traffic normally is.  We have a little traffic here at the hospital with people using coming and leaving via moto taxi, but it has quieted down significantly in the last few weeks because people can't get gas.  So people (not just taxi drivers) are not generating as much income (if any), which means less money for food.  Food that has drastically inflated in price in the last year or so.  People are feeling more desperate and hopeless.  Quite honestly, because we lack the language skill, I don't hear first hand their stories, so it's hard for me to comprehend all of the desperation.  But I know it's there, and it feels heavy to me.  Back home, we know that we live in abundance, but so do many other people.  Here, it is glaringly obvious.  Plus, we have a way out if we want.  They don't.  It's easy to feel guilty, but at the same time, even if we freely handed out money, we could not fix the problems.  Falens (our language tutor) was spot on when he said every society has their problems.  It is a heart issue that can't be fixed without the Lord.  

This is a part of an email from a fellow Harvest Call missionary who has been here for quite a long time:

This is a difficult time in this Country of Haiti.  The “mood” of the country is different than what I’ve experience during my tenure here.  There is a tension unlike after the earthquake of 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.  A verse that comes to my mind when I think of Haiti is 2 Chronicles 7.14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.  May the Grace God change the hearts of those in Haiti who need change and strengthen the hearts of His faithful followers.

Tucker Joseph Is 1!

Today we celebrate our sweet, happy, content, snuggly baby!   Tucker has been such a joy to have around.  Truly.

I've had all the feels today looking at some of his early pictures, especially those first few post partum days in the hospital.

He has been the only one of my babies who really seemed to enjoy being swaddled and did better if he was wrapped up.  At bedtime I would wrap him up in an actual swaddle/sleep sack thing, but in the evenings we would wrap him up in this fuzzy green frog blanket and he loved it so much.  He had a couple months of evening fussies where I would just pace the floor and shush very loudly while bouncing him up and down all wrapped up in that blanket.  Then he would settle into his swing for an evening nap all cozy and cute:)

He has been my easiest baby overall.  We could take him anywhere!  Including the Selah Christmas concert where he slept for most of the concert EXCEPT for the glass shattering high note on "O Holy Night".  He did not appreciate that.

Most of his baby hair fell out except for his mullet and that awful rooster tail!  I knew it didn't look good but it was so hard for me to cut because it was his sweet, soft, fuzzy newborn hair!  And he liked to play with it and twirl his hand through it while he laid on the floor.  It was his little built in toy!

Tucker started seeing the world early on in his life.  He traveled to Haiti for the first time when he was four months old.  And made a friend while walking down the road:)

He got to go to Florida with the rest of us in March.  

He sometimes likes to practice his yoga moves.

As he's gotten older it's been fun to see him try and tag along with Summer and Sawyer.  They just love him!

He enjoyed his first time at the lakes this year!  He could sit and splash in water for a very long time:)

Then when he was just over ten months old he traveled to Haiti again- this time for quite the extended stay!

We just love him to pieces!

We'll keep him around as long as we can, no question about it!

Tucker Joseph, you're the one,

You make my life lots of fun!

Tucker Joseph we're awfully fond of you!

(sung frequently to the tune of Rubber Ducky)

Birthday Present Failures

Well I have no pictures to show for this post, so you'll have to use your imagination.  And just to preface things, it might be a "need to be there" type of story.  But I'll share it anyway just for kicks and giggles:)

First fail: oatmeal creme pies

Fun fact about me, I love oatmeal creme pies.  I rarely have them, mostly because if I'm going to have those kind of calories (which I do far too often), I would rather use them on homemade goodies instead of processed boxed stuff.  But I do like them and Danny got me some for my birthday.  YAY!  However, thanks to the uncle of one of the other missionaries, we have hundreds of oatmeal creme pies in "the red door".  The red door is a communal storage room filled with things mostly from Midwest Food Bank.  We didn't know about the creme pies though, so that was only a fail.  Unlike the ultimate fail.

The ultimate fail starts with a backstory.  Back in May when I was shopping for the sea container, I had no idea what I was doing.  I found myself in sort of a mind numbing state while I put food into the cart that we might possibly wish we had when we got to Haiti.  When we were packing up our house, we put some of the food from our pantry in boxes to go out on the next container, which is currently on it's way.  The rest we gave away.  I had our microwave popcorn in the giveaway pile and Danny said we should take some along.  I said he could take a few if he wanted but I was pretty sure I had already sent some on the May sea container.  So he packed a few bags in his suitcase.  When we got here and started unpacking all the boxes that were already here, we found two JUMBO boxes of microwave popcorn!  So when I opened up my present to find a box of microwave popcorn, we just laughed and laughed!  His whole idea was a movie night present.  It was the popcorn and peanut m&m's, and a movie.  So it was very well intended.  But it was pretty funny!  And the real kicker is that we don't even eat that much popcorn!  Typically we buy one box of boy scout popcorn and barely make it through that box before the scouts come around again the next year!  So why I bought those two jumbo boxes?  I'll never know.  But we will have enough popcorn to last us the whole time we're here I'm pretty sure!

Movie night, anyone?

Birthdays In Haiti And Other Stuff

Well I survived celebrated my first birthday in Haiti!  I was feeling a mix of excitement and dread.  Excitement because I reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllyyyyyyyyyyy like my birthday.  Although I'm starting to not be a fan of the number that goes along with it.  But dread because I reeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllyyyyyyyyyy like my birthday and I knew it would be different this year.  On Monday, the day before, I had a pretty rough day.  Like, maybe the worst one since we got here.  I was a little nervous that it would carry over into Tuesday so that night I prayed that God would help me to not have too high of expectations.  I know- such huge problems, right?  But even though it was different than normal, all was well.

For starters, Danny was an all star and even in the craziness of getting ready to move (and boy was it crazy), he still managed to get me some presents and bring them down, all wrapped and ready to go!  (All we had was Christmas paper so that's what I got.  Actually that's still all we have and there's a lot of it so we will just use it for all occasions while we're here until it's gone!)  Anyway, him doing that really meant a lot.  Like, a LOT.  Now, the presents themselves almost need a blogpost of their own because two were fails, one being an epic fail.  But we had a good laugh over it!

Summer and Saywer made me cards and Tucker was just cute.  They were pretty excited to give me the cards!

For supper, the Aberles watched our kids while we had a little date!  We got "takeout" from the gate and took a gator ride a little ways up the mountain to a scenic lookout.  It's a great view and it's quiet, away from generators and fans and lots of motorcycles.  But we pulled up there and a couple guys were there chopping down trees.  So we went a little further up the mountain and found another scenic spot and made it work.

We enjoyed some peace and quiet, had the company of a cow who was grazing the the shrubbery nearby, and were able to just sit and talk while we ate.  Maybe next year we'll go a little further to an actual restaurant or the beach or something.  But for this year, we took what our language and driving skills allowed.  So it ended up being a good day and I am back to being seven years older than Danny instead of just six.

In other non birthday news, here's just a little snippet of our everyday.

I found Sawyer in this box one day, which is actually our makeshift hamper until the next sea container comes.  I asked him what he was doing and he was using the flap in front of him as an ipad.  He had discovered Danny's hiding spot not too long before that and after too much screen time, the ipad found a different hiding spot.  So he had to make do with the box.  Desperate times, I guess!

The kids love to play in the shower for some reason.  They don't love to take showers, but playing in it is okay:)  In this particular picture, Summer had put a couch cushion there so Tucker would have an easier time crawling in.  Thoughtful, but not a great plan for the cushion!

This is Falens, our language tutor.  You could say it's a love/hate kind of thing.  Love because I do want to learn Creole because it's really hard to not be able to communicate with people.  But it's been a tough and very very slow process.  I can see progress but it's not easy!  I don't know if I expected it to be easier or what but I get frustrated pretty easily.  

Even so, we are glad to be here and are getting a little more acclimated.  Most days anyway.  Some days leave us feeling completely drained from trying to live in such a different place than what we're used to.  We have hired our house help!  They will be starting next week and we are both excited and nervous.  Story of our lives these days.  Hopefully soon I will be able to introduce them to you on here!  For now, it's supper time.  Leftovers tonight, but I need to go warm them up so you all have a great night!

So. Much. New.

 Hey all!  Things are going well for us- fairly smooth- but there is so many new things to learn and our minds are feeling a little overloaded!

First I wanted to make sure and get a picture up from when Danny's parents were here.  They were such a good help!

No bath tub in Haiti, so the sink it is!  We've stuck him in the shower a couple times with the other two but he's not a fan and it's a lot easier to get him clean in the sink:)  He loves to splash!

We tried out "lunch at the gate" for the first time.  I'm not sure if it's considered a restaurant or a food stand or what, but it was good!  A couple of ladies serve chicken and rice and the Haitian version of a hot pocket right outside the hospital gate.  Just know that if you should happen to come visit us there's a good chance you will experience lunch at the gate:)

I caught the tiniest little gecko in our kitchen.  I mean, I don't love having them in the house but I would say I've already learned to tolerate them because I know they eat bugs and they're not to interested in me.  However, I especially wasn't a fan of having one crawl all over the dishes I had just washed.  So I decided he should be caught and released.  Although this morning I saw another tiny little gecko run under the stove so I'm thinking it might have been the same lil guy.  As long as he stays off the counters!

One Sunday each month we have a small church service together with the missionaries from Les Cayes and the surrounding area followed by an early supper.  This past Sunday the service was held here in Bonne Fin.  At one point I realized I hadn't seen the kids in awhile and wanted to make sure they were still around and hadn't wandered off.  I found them both playing with Selah's (a girl from BF) doll house with no other kids around.  They have plenty of bickering between them, but they really play pretty good together.  And they've had this lingering game of "house" or "family" or something they've been playing where I have been the designated grandma.  For two days Sawyer called me grandma.  I'm not sure how I feel about that!

Yesterday we started our official language training.  We will have lessons for one hour every afternoon for who knows how long.  It seems like such a big mountain in front of us, especially since my mind keeps trying to speak Spanish.  

Tonight we both had our first driving lesson.  The vehicles we use down here are beasts.  They are built specifically for places with rough terrain and of course they are manual transmission.  Thanks to my roomie way back in the day, (Hi Bex!!) I had already had some basic training in driving a stick shift.  I think that helped a lot because even though it was a long time ago, I wasn't super nervous.  Granted, I pretty much drove in a circle on flat ground around the hospital tonight...  My next time I will practice stopping and starting on hills.  Which is pretty important since we live on a mountain.  It will probably humble me significantly:)

SO, there's a lot of new things to take in.  It is overwhelming and tiring trying to learn so much.  Sometimes kind of fun.  Danny has even more than me as he has started going to the hospital in the mornings to learn some of  the ropes there.  We do appreciate your prayers!

And So It Begins

Sunday, August 11 2019.  'o dark thirty:

We showed up at the airport with one carry-on, one personal item, and one checked bag for everyone who had a seat.  Plus one more checked bag, plus two car seats.  (One car seat was already down here waiting for us.)  Not too bad compared to some who make a big move and don't have the luxury of sea containers!

Summer was my seat mate from Ft. Wayne to Atlanta.  She did great!  She got over her awe filled wonder about airplanes and flying and promptly fell asleep.  And so did I.

Sawyer's (loud and hyper) awe filled wonder continued on through Atlanta and didn't stop until we were in baggage claim in Port-au-Prince.  It was then that he finally decided to fall asleep.

I just got such a kick out of him!  He pulled Danny's carry on suitcase behind him for most of the Atlanta airport.  And he did pretty good with it too!

He and Tucker loved watching all the activity going on outside during our layover.  And I didn't even get any pictures of Tucker on the plane!  He was in the seat ahead of us with Danny's parents.  He did great for as little sleep as he had.  He survived on a couple short naps and then crashed finally on the van ride from PAP to Bonne Finn.

We made it to Port, through a fairly stressful baggage claim, customs and immigration, and finally to the van.  We had about a 4 1/2 hour drive then where we learned that Summer gets carsick on winding, bumpy roads:(  Of course I had packed some children's dramamine.  In the sea container.  So it was already at our house in Haiti and not with me!  The drivers we had took us to the bottom of the mountain we live on where we met up with some people from the hospital who took us the rest of the way.  While we were waiting for that trade off, the kids decided they were DONE.  I mean, I felt the same way but I didn't plop down on the ground at least:)

And that's where my pictures end.  I have more on my phone that haven't made it to my computer yet.

Danny's parents stayed with us through Thursday and then left early Friday morning.  We were so glad to have them here while we got unpacked and tried to settle in.  Especially for the travelling.  It would have been a complete nightmare without them!

Our first week was mostly spent just unpacking and organizing.  And trying to start learning how to live here.  Everything takes longer, plain and simple.  For example, I went grocery shopping for the first time.  We left at 7:15 in the morning and got home around 12:30 in the afternoon.  It won't always take that long though.  Once it's more familiar and I can drive and do it myself it should cut down to a three or four hour trip instead of 5!  We've also enjoyed starting to get to know the other missionaries here a little better.  We had met most of them, but not all.  Summer has really enjoyed playing with some of the other girls that are here.  They are all a little bit older than her but have been great about letting her play.  Sawyer has been okay- he needs his routine and the last few weeks have been anything but that.  He seems to be doing better though now that he isn't being shuffled around everywhere and is able to sleep in the same place for more than a few nights at a time.  Tucker has been his normal, easy going self for the most part.  He slept a whole bunch the first few days.  Probably a combination of being tired and hot.

In the next week we will hopefully begin language training, though I'm really not for sure on that.  Danny will be going to the hospital to start learning a few things down there, and we will be looking to hire our house help.  All of those things are kind of scary and daunting in their own ways so any prayers are appreciated!

I will try to post more regularly than I have been.  It will help us feel more connected when we're living so far apart and in a very different world.  Plus if I post more often, you won't forget about us, right? :)  So until next time...

All Of The Lasts

Phew!  We made it:)  We arrived to our home in Haiti around 8:00 on Sunday night.  I do want to share about our week so far but first I want to post about all the events that went down in the last weeks before we moved.  There was A LOT.  It was good, but it was busy and tiring and emotional and draining and... but definitely good.  It took me nearly a half hour to get all my pictures loaded and when they finally did get onto the blog they were in the wrong order.  So rather than take another half hour to fix it, I'm hoping you'll just bear with me.

The last Sunday we were in church before our actual move day was our sending service.  My immediate family had planned on coming, but also some of my extended family came out too for a nice little surprise!  It was really special for me to have them come.  We had the lead ministers from our sending church, my home church, my brother and Danny's brother all take part in the service.  We really appreciate all of them and I am looking forward to listening to the service again when I don't have Summer and Sawyer sitting at my feet demanding attention!

We had supper at our house (along with a DQ cake for my mom's birthday) and went to hang out at one of our favorite parks.  I got a little flak for wanting to take everyone to the park but once they saw it they agreed it was pretty cool:)  Danny was also in a wedding on Sunday so he wasn't able to be with us on Saturday night.  Now.... hold that thought....

A couple weeks BEFORE the sending service weekend, we headed up to the lakes.  Danny's parents go for two full weeks and since he was done with work, we were able to spend a little more time than usual up there.

Tucker Joseph enjoyed himself:)

Sawyer turned into a huge weenie and didn't want to go on anything that went in the water.  Plus, he doesn't like loud noises and spent his ride on the jet ski plugging his ears.

He rather preferred sitting in a five gallon bucket full of water!

Best frenemies.  There is a LOT of personality in this picture:)

Tucker would spend half an hour at a time just splashing in the baby pool.  He loved it!

Built in besties:)

More built in besties!

A double date mini golfing with Aaron and Cass.  There was a slight miscommunication on what to do with the golf clubs.  But a good time was had by all!

Oooohhhhh this kid.  Though he gives me the most gray hairs, I could just smooshle him!

Summer had been talking about "fingernail paint" for a very very long time.  Much to her delight, her older cousins had some at the lakes and Darci painted her nails for the first time in her life.  She was so excited!

Coolest zoo ever.  If you're looking for something unique to do in Shipshewana, here's an idea!

Where else can you feed and pet the zebras?

I mean, seriously.

Watching this deepening friendship and knowing it's about to change drastically made it a little harder to think about moving!

Okay.  That thought you were supposed to be holding from before the lakes pictures?  Time to go back to that.  So our sending service was during morning church because the wedding Danny was in had already been scheduled for the afternoon service.  Ideally we would not have done them both on the same day but that's about the only option we had.  My family all left at lunch time, taking our kids with them.  I went to the wedding and reception, then I drove to Illinois to spend a few more days there.  It was the most peaceful drive going out that I've had in a long time!

I would have loved to see AAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the people out there one last time but that was obviously impossible.  But I did pack in just about as many as I could!  Along with two lunches from Caleri's, of course!

Breakfast with these two, complete with about three hours of uninterrupted conversation around the patio table.

Pedis, Mexican, Target, and Uncle Bob's ice cream with this crew.

Catching up with a long lost friend over some delicious pizza that she lovingly prepared for me, followed by a walk, followed by more catching up while kicking up our feet in her cute little house:)

Cramming in a whole lotta cousin time!

A quick shot with my bro "in front of the brown doors".  That's ALWAYS the place mom would tell us to stand when we were taking pictures for something.  So it was only appropriate for us to get a picture there again:)

I went back home on Wednesday right after lunch.  Thursday and Friday were spent getting the last of our stuff cleared out of the house before our closing on Friday afternoon.  Thursday night when I shut out the lights before bed I had to just stand there and have a little cry while I soaked up some memories.

Friday after we had it all cleaned out, we brought the kids over one last time to see the empty house and to say goodbye to it.  Sawyer fell asleep on the way- I guess he wanted one last nap in his room!

Saturday night we actually had potluck!  We wanted to be able to say goodbye to people so we just went for supper and then left.  We went back to Danny's parent's for some good family time before saying our goodbye's to them.

Also, Friday night (told you these were all out of order!) we had a little get together with our advocate team.  We very much so appreciate the friendship of this group!  They sent us off with some prayer time and a little bit of singing.

Then on Sunday we got up a little before 4:00 in the morning and we were on our way!  Next up- our travels and first week!  Basically it can be summed up with one sentence that Summer said the other night around 3 in the morning.  "Mom, I'm COVERED in SWEAT!!"

Love you all:)