A family update

I realized recently that it has been awhile since I have given you a more personal update. Therefore, this blog will be dedicated to what is happening with our family these days. As I’ve mentioned before, this fall has been a busy one. It has been our first real chance at being involved in our projects full-time, without having the obligations of full-time language study. We still continue to push forward in language, but the majority of our time is taken up with our various areas of responsibility.

Scott took over this past summer as our team leader. He acts as a representative between our team and our organizational leadership, the local government, and the other projects/foreign workers in our city. It has been a responsibility that grows and changes with each passing week. He keeps pretty busy with that, connecting with his friends here and delving into many different areas that our whole team takes part in. My responsibility along with helping him and our team has been to coordinate all of our short term visitors. We have many people that come out to check out all that we have going on and to see how they might help and get involved. I love being a part of teaching others about this place and the people that we have grown to love so much. We also have our longer-term visitors who teach at our center as little as two months and for as great as 2 years! I really enjoy this job because it gives me an opportunity to invest in the lives of young people who are trying to figure out what the future holds, which is something I have been passionate about for as long as I can remember! It has been good settling into and discovering new parts of our roles. We both desire to be learners and to always do everything to the best of our abilities, but that definitely requires a fine balance of time between our professional life and our personal life.

We are definitely at a stage in life where our family requires a lot from both of us. Zeke turned 3 nearly two months ago now and is a very active and curious boy! He keeps us laughing at all of the funny things he says and the crazy things he does. He is very physical and loves to wrestle or tackle anyone who will allow it, and many who would rather not! It has been sweet over these last few months as he has begun expressing affection more regularly by surprising us with saying “I love you” and “I missed you so much.” It is amazing to me how big he is already and how many things he can do. It’s been just in this past month or two that we have finally got him using the toilet. He often puts his pants on backwards when he redresses himself, but its all a part of allowing him to grow in his independence, although it about kills me when he won’t let me take them off and turn them around! He loves being a big brother, although his understanding of being gentle and sharing his toys has a lot of room for growth!

Ethan is continuing to grow and change almost every day! At nine months he was 20 pounds and 28” inches long! He, like his brother, is extremely active and along with his new found mobility is getting into lots of trouble and shoving everything possible into his mouth! He mostly does an army crawl to get around, but is trying to work on doing it the more traditional style. He is now pulling himself up on furniture, but forgets to hold on and often falls over. He also said his very first word the other day…Dada! He now calls out for Scott, which makes those early morning wakings a bit more cute. He has a very sweet personality and seems to be very interested in music and enjoys his mommy and daddy’s cuddles! He laughs and smiles very easily and Zeke loves to tickle him and do things to make him crack up. Our dinner table many nights is quite the scene with these two silly boys!

It’s so interesting to me how different two brothers can be. We look forward to watching them grow and learn and seeing what God has for their lives. We are so grateful for our family and are happy to be right where we believe God wants us to be. More to come in future posts!

A cause for celebration!

Life here is always presenting opportunities to learn more and have unique experiences! A few weeks ago we were at home one night when all of a sudden we started hearing a bunch of commotion outside. I looked out our back window and from there I could see that there were fireworks going off to the east of our house. After hearing it get louder and hearing tons of honking and booms going on Scott and I headed up to the roof to have a better look. The funny thing about heading up to our roof is that it is what everybody does when something is going on, whether it’s a car accident, a fist fight on the street or helicopter training exercises (yes, all of these things we’ve observed from the safety of our rooftop!). From being up high you can have a great view of what is happening down below! When we reached the top we had an amazing sight awaiting us: 360 degrees of firework action! Everywhere we looked there were fireworks going off from rooftops and even what looked like flare guns being shot off. It was quite exciting! Although, we had no idea what all of the ruckus was about!

So I quickly called up a friend of mine and asked what was happening. She told me that their beloved president had been reelected by parliament to once again represent their people as a whole throughout the country. So basically what we were seeing was a city wide victory party! There is a big bridge near our house where traffic had completely stopped while people watched the fireworks and honked their horns in support. Politics is something here that everyone from the very young to the very old gets involved in; everyone has an opinion and cares deeply about who represents them and how! The only part I don’t like about these celebrations is that many take out their guns and shoot them up into the air, so the sound of gunfire is also fairly common here, but not in the way that most people would imagine! This whole scene went on for a couple of hours and Scott and I fell asleep to all the booms and rat-tat-tats. I can tell you it definitely makes for interesting dreams when that is what you are hearing while you slumber!