Breakfast at Grandma's!

Look what I got!

Who knew you could find orange roses in Kigali. I came home yesterday and got surprised from O and Eric. They sure know the way to this ladies heart. I am a sucker for pretty much any fresh flowers.

Happy 4th of July

Who's a Monkey?

Thanks for the fun glasses Nama - O boy loves them - though I think he has ripped the monkeys off the frames already. Now that I am thinking about it - I think I picked up a monkey tail from the kitchen floor this morning. "mamma mamma mamma...you were them monkeeeeee's"

Round Up

I am not really in the loop when it comes to the blogs written by other Foreign Service Folks. People that we have met and those we are friends with sure, but in general, not really. Come to find out there's a lot of FS bloggers out there who all have very interesting perspectives about all aspects of the FS and family life. YoAli started when I was pregnant and has just continued as our life has continued. Imagine my surprise when I got a note from Nomads by Nature telling me that YoAli was on the FS roundup. A really cool posting that includes FS blogs from all over the place. Check it out.

http://webtexans.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/the-red-white-and-blue-round-up

Moth Madness

See this huge crazy looking thing that was just chilling on the wall. Yowza! See the freaky looking spots on it that look like eyes and are intended to scare off things that might want to eat it.

School Daze

Check out my O's new school uniforms. Crazy cute aren't they? So he only goes to "school" three half days per week and they don't really require uniforms for his type of school - call it nursery, preschool, creche, whatever. But dang, he comes home from 4 hours at school so stinking dirty. His regular clothes were getting stained, ripped, torn beyond repair. So, thus the uniforms. I had a seamstress come over to the house, take measurements and now getting ready for school is a snap! Uniforms...I'm loving them! So hard to get a decent picture of a 2.5 year old - they never stop moving

Except for when they stare at the camera in a creepy way...

The torture of posing for me to take a picture

Avocado Tree

In our front yard we had an old avocado tree. This tree was about 80 feet high and so old it produced avocado's that didn't taste very good. The problem with the tree is that when an avocado falls from 80 feet up, it's like a small bomb when it drops. One avocado fell and knocked the side mirror off of a truck that was parked under it. When O was outside playing I would make him put on his bike helmet cause I bet you would get a concussion from getting hit on the head with a rogue avocado.

The landlord decided it needed to be cut down and so the process started. No chainsaws, no power tools, no safety equipment or cherry picker type lifts - just good old fashioned hard work. About 10 guys showed up one day and proceeded to chop down the tree with machetes. But get this, they didn't chop the tree all the way down because in Rwanda it's against the law to chop down trees without replacing them. So now we have a toothpick in our front yard - it looks horrible but I guess its better than getting knocked unconscious or losing a mirror.

The work begins - see the rope? That's how they would lower the branches they cut down to the ground.

The first of many branches falls, successfully!

Check out our toothpick

Can you imagine cutting these branches down with a machete?

What a nose!

This is what I picked up from school last Friday. Ouch! He was so excited to tell teacher Maureen that he went swimming that he fell face first down the hill. Running of course! Is it strange the school didn't call me? Do school's call parents for minor bumps and bruises? Just glad there were no broken bones. Knock on wood cause I know they are coming.

Father's Day Hike

It's really hard to find wide open space in Rwanda. There are people all over - it is one of the most densly packed countries on the continent. A huge change from the Navajo Nation. Our friends, Duncan, Laura, Taylor and Conner know that we love to hike so they invited us for a Father's Day hike up Mount Kigali. We met up at 9am and soon we had found a place to park and we began the uphill climb. Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills and this was just one of the hills. A steep single lane road with washed out trenches from the rains and little houses built into the sides of the road. Of course we attracted our fair share of attention and had company the entire hike. I think there was a moment of about 10 minutes when we were all by ourselves. The views from the top were amazing and the ecupalyptus trees smelled so good.
Orion and our posse of kids that followed us almost the entire hike...