What Does 'Stand Still' Mean to You?

To The Two Year Old it can mean any of the following (just for reference, this all transpired in a matter of 2 minutes):

1. Quick! Do the Hula!

2. Run up close to the camera and do my best to look stoned.

3. Stand and smile sweetly in my-one shoe, side-ponytail two-year-old cuteness.

Gets Me Every Time

Every now and then, for a little comic relief, I like to scroll through one of my favorite websites. Catalog Living is a tongue-in-cheek blog about the every day lives of the people who live in our catalogs. I think it is so funny. Here are just a few of her entries. Check it out next time you need a giggle: catalogliving

"The other kids always wonder why Jessica is the only one who gets to smile on Sundays."

"With Elaine out of town, Gary finally had the chance to try his stuntman jump from the roof."

"Elaine blamed herself for not being more specific with Gary in her request for him to 'put up some pictures of people.' "

"Gary Jr. was getting a little tired of his parents none-too-subtle digs at his recent bed-wetting phase."

Despite relegating three of our own children to the “Happy Holidays” frames, Gary felt the Allens had sent us enough family photos to warrant their own engraving.

di khatulistiwa (on the equator)

As the sun creeps closer to us here on the Equator, our days are hotter and muggier than before. Thursday is the 23rd of September, and the sun will be exactly over our hot little heads here. Maybe we'll be able to get some shadowless photos to post. For now, here is a little bit of what we've been up to.

Nadia having fun with friends who have recently moved interior. We miss them!

Making cookies does nothing to cool one down. But The Two Year Old loves it.

Dancing with Daddy is not a way to cool off either, but as you can see by her face, she also loves to do that.

This last one is a leftover from Phil's trip interior a few weeks back. Here he's helping wire our friends' house. They moved in this past week, and we've heard good news from them since then. Though, we miss having them here in town with us.

The 5 Stages of Culture Grief

As I sat sipping my afternoon coffee, I realized that something serious has taken place in my soul – many times - during this past year and a half. I know it's not over either. It will happen again.

I gazed down into my coffee and smiled, almost lovingly, at the tiny corpses. They are a symbol of what God has brought me through these past many months. The dead ants in my coffee are a silent witness to the many (many, many, many) things that God has helped me "get over" and learn to love here in tropical (read= very hot and muggy) Indonesia.

I call this process the 5 Stages of Culture Grief. Not so much now, but in the beginning, there were so many things that caused actual sadness, nearly mourning, in my soul as I struggled with the innumerable amounts of change – in every single aspect of daily life. I can't list them here. There are far too many, and I don't want to dig them all up. I've highlighted just one, very common battle early on; the battle of the ants.

Stage 1 - Denial: "I love this place and everything in it!" [Smiling broadly, she dips her coffee spoon into the sugar bowl to get a scoop, ignoring the fact that there is an army of ants crawling around in said sugar bowl]

Stage 2 - Anger: A month later: "WHY ARE THERE ALWAYS ANTS IN THIS !@#$%&? SUGAR BOWL!?!?!?!" [Fuming (and sweating profusely), she dumps out all the sugar, scours the sugar bowl, muttering about the possible reasons her negligent husband keeps allowing ants into the food receptacles. The next day she comes home from the market with 6 ways to annihilate all likely varieties of household (and non-household) ants.]

Stage 3 - Bargaining: A few weeks after that: "Ok, if I can find an airtight container for this sugar, the ants will be forced to find another home, thus another family to torment. Dear God, if you'll just lead me to a store where they might sell airtight containers… [She re-duplicates her extermination efforts, with the added regimen of scrubbing all surfaces and containers with bleach water to eliminate any excess food or sugar particles]

Stage 4 - Depression: After 3 months of fruitless searching, spraying, scouring and scrubbing: "There is no such thing as "airtight" in this backwards, filthy, God-forsaken land" [She gives up sugar in her coffee for the following 2 weeks, and listlessly allows the ants to crawl all over the counters, the floors, the baby and her own sweaty, exhausted body]

Stage 5 - Acceptance: "Honey, these ants actually are a little spicy if you bite them just the right way. By the way, how long have those lizards been in the bread bag?" [Back to drinking her coffee the way she prefers, she acknowledges and willfully ignores the 18 dead ants floating on the surface of her drink, then takes a refreshing gulp of her fresh brew, while absent-mindedly freeing a struggling drone from the baby's chubby fist]

busy times

Where to begin?!

First, Phil is sick. He was supposed to be gone this week on another trip interior, but very early this morning he made the difficult decision to stay home and nurse his fever. I'm glad he stayed, but we are both sad that he missed this opportunity to help our friends. God knows better, and kept Phil home for some reason this time.

This past weekend we had a rare opportunity. We got to spend lots of time with two families that are never in the same place at the same time! (well....almost never). These are the two families that Phil has been spending time with interior. We are praying about joining their team, and had lots of time this past weekend to meet extensively and play together as three families. Great times!

Tim and all of our kids. Irene, Andrea and I chuckled when we saw the choice of book. We know that's a longish book, and were all wondering how long Tim would manage to keep the kids' attention (and endure the collective body heat of that adorable pig-pile).

Almost half way there! Look at the kids' faces (Also Tim's. LOL!). They are totally absorbed by this tale of Sam and that Firefly (as well as some of the tribal interjections Tim keeps tossing in there, that we all know P.D. Eastman never intended). What is absolutely amazing is that two of these kids speak mostly German as their heart language, another two speak some Indonesian, some tribal language and English, and our little pip speaks English with some Indonesian. Tim must be quite a story-teller to keep all five of these guys interested.

Ah! Last page. We were totally impressed. Thank you, Tim for taking a half hour to read to our kids.

All three of our families have lived in the house that Phil and I and Nadia are living in right now. It was funny to watch all the kids feel so at home... they all think that THIS IS THEIR house (and their refrigerator, their couch, their bedroom). So much moving around can be confusing.

All five of our babies, lined up for chow. Poor Pascal is the only boy so far. He seems to manage just fine with all these girls (read: little mothers).

On a completely unrelated note, Nadia has learned how to make much bigger, complicated messes lately. Here, she shows off her newly painted hands, arms, feet and face. What is not pictured here is the table, floor and door that she also decorated. I had turned my back for 30 seconds...

And finally - This is just something funny we found the other day. Read the Serving Suggestion. Three things are funny about this: 1. That the directions are in English. 2. That a chocolate bar could possibly work itself into any breakfast. 3. That eating this cereal would ever make this chocolate cereal a "requirement".

hiatus

It's been longer than usual since my last post. Our electricity, therefore our internet, has been less than reliable lately. Another factor has been our recent move to another temporary home! :)

Phil is headed interior again this coming week. As soon as we have photos of our new house, we'll post them. And as soon as we have new footage of Phil's upcoming trip, we'll post that as well.

Thanks for checking in, and being patient with us as we post when we can.