Snow!

You may wonder about the snow in these pictures…well, right now we’re in Wisconsin waiting for Baby #2 to arrive! We enjoyed this beautiful snow.

This is Thad’s first time playing in the snow—he wasn’t so sure about it…

a new discovery

One of our friends here has a trampoline. Thad and I have been going to play at their house every so often and now Thad has new love—the trampoline! He can’t actually jump yet unless he has a little help, but enjoys the bouncy sensation when he runs around on it.

(These photos were all taken by my great photographer friend!)

He also enjoys having a friend to play with…and tickle him!

washing the car

Jamie and Thad washed the car last weekend. It was Thad’s first introduction to the hose, and he loved playing in the bucket of water!

Jamie's BD party

Jamie had a birthday last week, and we celebrated with some friends on the weekend. Jamie enjoyed having helpers to make his birthday pizza! Each of the three boys got to help make one pizza, and we all enjoyed eating them!

spreading out pizza dough on a pan

adding cheese topping

adding meat topping

Our four hard working bakers!

I tried to make a creative cake for my hunter: chocolate frosting for dirt, yellow colored coconut as hay bales and remnants of corn stalks in a field, with a little blue-jello river running in the corner and two elk borrowed from one of the boys...all that's needed is the hunter!

Jamie and Thad exstinguish 33 candles in one blow!

After the kids went to bed, the adults got to play games and eat popcorn…but I was having so much fun I forgot to take pictures of that part!

what goes up...doesn't always come down

A couple of weeks ago, I (Jamie) had a flight where I was taking vegetables to a commercial customer and then picking up a retired translator who had been visiting and showing the Jesus film to the people with whom she had worked.

A Cessna 206 plane--the kind that Jamie flies

That morning as I got the airplane loaded, a friend of the lady mentioned that my passenger had been sick and in the hospital. I didn’t think a lot about it because I was busy and we are usually told if we need additional equipment like stretchers for the flight.

approaching the island airstrip

When I got to the airport 2 hours away, I discovered my passenger had been brought to the airport in an ambulance and was on an IV. I went and talked to her and she sat up and talked to me. I asked if she could sit up and travel and the medical staff said that she could. They also said that the IV could be removed. So in consultation with aviation personnel at Ukarumpa, who were in contact with medical staff at our clinic, I decided to take her to Ukarumpa.

We started on our way, but we needed to get fuel at another location before heading to Ukarumpa. After the 36 minute flight to get to the fuel location, my passenger was barely able to speak and had gone into shock.

There was a small medical post at that location, and a nurse helped as we got her out of the airplane and laid her on the ground with feet elevated.

After more consultation with aviation personnel at home base who were communicating regularly with our clinic medical staff, we felt that time was of the essence and that we needed to fly the last leg of the journey, 1 hour 50 minutes to Ukarumpa, as quickly as possible. Apparently, she had more significant health issues than the malaria or dysentery I had assumed she had when I picked her up. I felt the hospital she had just come from would likely not be equipped to deal with her condition. I also realized that we needed to keep her lying down. So I moved the seat around and had her lie down in the airplane. The nurse was willing to accompany us, so I had her sit next to my passenger/patient. When I would look at the lady, she would look up at me and smile. She was pretty stable for about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Then I had to start working around some bad weather and her condition worsened quickly at about the same time. Just after getting through the worst of the weather, and with about 20 minutes to go, she died.

Medical staff were waiting on the ground when we landed and they immediately checked her as well, but nothing could be done.

Shortly after she had died, I was struck by the frailty of human life. I mean this person had just passed into eternity and her life on this earth was finished.

Praise God that she knew Christ as her personal Savior and is now in His presence for all eternity. Oh, that all would repent of their sins, trust Christ, and have this same hope.

those grey days

We’re still in the midst of “dry season”, which really means “time-when-it-is-grey-and-misty-but-may-or-may-not-rain”. This makes getting laundry dry on our clothesline a little frustrating. On particularly unpromising looking days I have taken to hanging most of the clothes up on hangers BEFORE I hang them up on the clothesline. It feels like a little more work (especially for Thad’s clothes, which end up in a drawer, not on hangers), but makes taking them OFF the clothesline a bit more speedy if it does actually start to rain…and quick to put back out again when the rain stops!

Thad's clothes-mostly on hangers-on the clothesline

Reading with Daddy

Thad has been getting a lot more snuggly lately with us and his stuffed animals and is even becoming willing to sit still for short periods of time. We’re enjoying this new side of him!

Thad snuggling ON his teddy bear

On Sunday as Jamie was sitting on the couch reading, Thad climbed up beside him. But instead of climbing all over Jamie or trying to take away his book, when Thad was offered a book to look at, he sat quietly next to his Daddy looking at his own book…even seemed to be reading it aloud—though it was a picture book where we just usually talk about the pictures that are on the different pages! He sat happily there for at least 10 minutes! So cute!

Thad reading with Daddy

two years ago...

Doesn’t sound like very long – 2 years – but it was 2 years ago this week that Jamie & I got married. A lot has happened since then, and we sure are thankful to God for blessing us with each other and we are enjoying life together!

Mommy's little helper

Thad is turning into quite a helper! He loves to get the broom and carry it around--though it's a little big for him to control.

He likes to stand on the kitchen stool and watch whatever is going on. Here he is making sure Daddy got all the dishes really clean!

If he can get his hand on some neat kitchen tool, that will entertain for quite a while.

visit to aviation hangar

A couple of weekends ago, Thad and I joined Jamie on a trip out to the aviation hangar where he works. It’s a 5-10 minute drive from where we live on the Centre. Thad was really getting pretty good at walking, and enjoyed walking around the wide open space, and pointing at all of the new things that he saw.

keys

Thad has now decided that walking is fun, and so I've started to try to take him out on walks in the early afternoon...tire him out before nap time! He has quite a fascination with my keys, so I let him hold them as we walked down the road on our way home. I hadn't thought about it, but in the past when he has played with my keys, he switches them back and forth from hand to hand, examining them from all angles. Well, I was holding one of his hands as we were walking down the road, so he only had one hand free to look at the keys...so every 5-8 steps he would drop them on the ground so he could pick them up again with a different hand hold. He did this over and over (until I got tired of it and just picked him up and carried him...and then he could look at the keys with both hands). I thought either he likes bending over and picking them up, or he just wants to look and touch the keys from all angles, and that's the only way he could, since I was holding his other hand! Funny thing!

Thad...tasting the keys

He loves touching the camera!

big smile!

cooking

Thad eating his breakfast sandwich with a fork!

"I'm so glad I have a husband who doesn't mind being in the kitchen," I told Jamie the other day, "otherwise we'd see a lot less of eachother! Feels like we spend a lot of our time cooking."

We've done a bit of creative cooking over the last couple of weeks. Two weekends ago (July 23) was Remembrance Day (sorta like Memorial Day) so we had a 3-day weekend. I decided to do something special for breakfast, so we make breakfast sandwiches which came out quite well! Jamie made up the fluffy buttermilk biscuits, and cooked us up some egg in little round pans we found in our cupboard. I made some little sausage patties from pork mince and spices, which we topped with a slice of cheese and combined with the egg on the biscuit. Thad ate his with a fork, because it was too tall for him to bite!

Jamie likes to make plate-sized pancakes...and I'm glad to eat them!

This past Saturday we had our regular pancake breakfast, but with a few substitutions. We can't get buttermilk (and use powdered milk), so we normally "make" buttermilk by adding vinegar to the milk--our normal substitution. This week we had a couple more on top of that. Our store was out of eggs, so we tried an egg substitution recommended in a recipe book (baking powder, water, & oil). They seemed a bit more crumbly than normal, and not quite so fluffy, but still came out pretty yummy...for not having any egg.

We usuallly make our own "maple" syrup by bringing equal parts brown sugar, white sugar, and water and then adding some maple flavoring. Well, our stock of brown sugar is getting rather low, and I thought the price in the store was a little high to use it for just regular cooking--so we tried another substitution. We mixed white sugar with treacle (which I understand to be like molasses) to make our "brown sugar", before we used our brown sugar to make syrup.

None of these were too wild and crazy, but we felt like we were having a lot in one meal!

"maple" syrup made with sugar and treacle...and a little maple flavoring

moo!

Having grown up on a dairy farm where he drank fresh milk, Jamie’s got pretty high standards for milk. Unfortunately, here at Ukarumpa our milk options are limited.

Option #1: from the cow to your door—while that is what Jamie grew up on, with the high rates of TB in country, and our understanding that TB can be transmitted through the cow’s milk, we haven’t gone this route.

Option #2: the store—here’s a picture of the “milk section” in our store…notice that no refrigeration is required!

We have “boxed milk”, which is UHT (ultra high temp pasteurized), so that it doesn’t have to be refrigerated until it is opened. We also have powdered milk, which, of course, doesn’t need to be kept cold until it is mixed. Neither Jamie nor I are really excited about drinking a glass of either boxed or powdered milk. We basically use it to moisten our morning cereal or put it in smoothies. Unfortunately Thad seems to have our same tastes, and doesn’t get excited about drinking these either. Happily, though, he is glad to eat yogurt, which we make from the same powdered milk, so he does get his milk somehow.

winter...well, sort of

So, being in the southern hemisphere, we are currently in the midst of our cooler months. Being close to the equator, we don’t get snow and sub-zero temperatures, but I sure have been feeling cold lately! I guess when you have only a few degrees of temperature change, your body feels each number.

I was laughing on Sunday, because I was so cold I put on my knitted hat to help keep me warm, and the temperature was just in the low 60s.

Here are Thad and I in our cozy hats knitted for us by my friend Melany!

Thad is starting to be a bit more mobile in his bed at night, crawling out from under the covers, and rolling about. Since Jamie & I have about 6 blankets on our bed, I worry that he will get cold in the night if he climbs out from under his blankets—so we found a solution. We pulled out the polar fleece “suit” and have been putting him in that, along with his pajamas at night. We figure that’s got to be worth a few blankets (and so we’ve lessened the number of blankets we put on top of him)! He is so cute all bundled up in his “blue suit” – that’s got to be one of the best parts of being cold, seeing babies all bundled up.

All bundled up

Fishing in the Ba'e

Jamie has enjoyed fishing as long as he’s been old enough to hold a pole (at least as far as I’ve been able to determine from the stories he’s told me). A couple weekends ago, armed with a “new” fishing pole that he had gotten from our neighbors, Jamie went fishing in the little river that runs past our Center.

I think that it was mostly just a fun venture for him to get out of the house and have some time to himself, but he did manage to catch something!

This little 6-inch guy even has some “fangs” like a catfish.

(We didn’t eat him, but gave him away to one of our PNG friends.)