Watering the flowers

As you can see from the two orange flowers, Ellie has yet to prove if she has her Grandpa Abel's green thumb. Nonetheless, she's learning... and enjoying it.

Brrr.

It's winter here... not anywhere near as cold as Minnesota, but it sure feels cold to us. We stay bundled up as we have to ENDURE 70 degree weather during the day and 50 degree weather at night (no indoor heating). It's crazy how bodies adapt when you live in a HOT climate.

You know you have an awesome husband when...

he not only makes the best homemade pizza in the world, but homemade bagels as well! Above was the first try with plain bagels. He decided to fold them like pretzels. Ellie LOVED them!!! Her first bagels ever... she asked for them for breakfast for a few days after that. Once I even offered to make donuts, and she said she'd prefer a bagel. :)
Below was the second effort... wheat and honey bagels. I have never had these before because when I shop for bagels in the States, I always get some sort of bagel with cheese on it. These were amazing! Yum. Ellie and I can't wait until Franklin makes bagels again!

A Birthday Party at a Kids' Park

The other day we got to go celebrate a 7 year old's birthday party at a kids' park just North of town.


Ellie got to play on fun playground equipment.


She also got to ride a carousel. She seemed happy at first, but then when the loud music started to play and the horse went up and down, she wasn't too sure what she thought. She liked waving to her daddy and her friends every time her horse went past them, though.


Three lovely ladies enjoyed their time together.



It's hard getting a picture of 9 kids between the ages of 1 and 7. Here are a couple efforts.



Maybe this is where we'll have to celebrate Ellie's birthday sometime... or even my birthday! :)

St. Nicholas Day-12/6/2010

We put our shoes out.

And St. Nick came. He bought a bunch of local snacks, winter clothes for Ellie, a pencil case and some bracelets for me, and a coffee mug for Franklin.


Unfortunately I didn't catch good photos of Ellie's reaction. Or maybe she didn't have that great of a reaction. We had a really busy day that day, so we celebrated at 5:45am. hahaha.



Maybe next year we can celebrate a little bit later so she'll be a little more excited, or I'll be able to take better photos. Happy Belated St. Nicholas Day.

Dressing up

Each day it is exciting to see what combination of items Ellie will use to dress up and play with.

Fun by the river

Happy Thanksgiving.

I know I'm super late on this Thanksgiving post, but life's been busy. I always find this dilemma when I get behind on posting. Do I post the old pictures or do I skip them and just get to where we are now? Either way, you can't skip Thanksgiving.... and we had a really special Thanksgiving this year. I was excited about it for days... so excited that I was just daydreaming about how fun it would be. I hosted it at my house... and there were twelve of us at the table. 6 adults, 6 kids 6 and under. Fun times, my friends.

The table... mom taught me that one of the first things you do when you have friends coming, is you set the table. So, while the first of three chickens was roasting in the oven, I set the table. I set it the normal way with dishes and cups put upright, and my house helper told me to flip them all over because they'd get dusty otherwise.

I printed off place mats from the Internet. Ellie colored some.


And I colored some.


We had a homemade centerpiece. :) Yes, I put a toilet paper roll on my table. And I had all the stuff so that before the meal, the kids could make their own toilet paper roll turkeys.


For the first time in my life, I roasted chicken. I thought I put on way, I mean WAAAAAAAAAAAY, too much garlic. Turns out, you could hardly taste it. I used garlic, lemon, and herbs. It was yummy. We had leftovers and made lots of chicken sandwiches.


We made a chain of things we were thankful for.


Here we are pre-feasting. I'm not in the picture, because I was taking the picture.


We even had pumpkin pie for dessert.



So much to be thankful for!

Flowers

Franklin loves flowers. His dad used to plant flowers all around their house in the Solomons and each of the nine kids had an area they were responsible to help with. Ever since we got our own little apartment almost a year ago, Franklin has been talking about getting flowers. The other day he came back from the market with these two plants that together cost just over $1. He is so excited about helping Ellie learn to love flowers, too.


She loves them already, I think.

A walk by the river

We live just a few blocks from the Ganges River. During rainy season, it is full. In the picture above (with Ellie's "castle" in the background) the water goes up at least half of the staircase. Now, though, it's not raining anymore, and it's getting cooler. The water is drying up.


Each day it seems you can walk out further, and the soil is extremely moist. Ellie likes to make footprints. Here she is pushing her foot down to help the print be better. :)



We weren't the only ones out enjoying the cool (temperature-cool, not necessarily awesome-cool) sunset.

Playing in the stroller

Ellie has room time each day when she gets to play by herself. This is what I found her doing the other day.

Ellie and the Cat

We went visiting for Eid and Ellie loved holding the cat. There were actually cats at two of the houses we visited.

A picture of pig tails

Ellie's hair is now long enough that I can fit it into two little pig tails. However, whenever I put Ellie's hair in pig tails or a pony tails, she loves to pull them out. So, here is my effort at getting the picture of the adorable pig tails.

A new sweatshirt

It was finally cool enough for Ellie to try on her new sweatshirt. She loved it. At one point she informed me, "I was born in this hoodie."
Thank you, Aunt Susie!!

Pre-Uno

You may call it learning colors and numbers, but I call it pre-Uno.... We received some uno cards from the States, and we are working on the necessary sorting skills so that we can play soon.


Another important skill: shuffling. I am not interested in teaching my daughter this, nor do I think it's necessary. But, my little girl who wants to do EVERYTHING mommy does and do it BY HERSELF has decided shuffling is necessary... even if you are 2.


The results of her shuffling effort... cards that were successfully mixed, I guess.

Fun with friends

Every now and then we have some kids come over and play with Ellie. Recently we brought out big beads and pipe cleaner. Pipe cleaner is the greatest thing since anything. I think most mommies learn that early, but I must be a slow learner.



We also made trees since it's Fall... even if trees don't change here. I found this activity on this blog.

Feet, part 1

So, I have this GREAT idea. (Franklin LOVES when he hears me say that.) I want to put a footprint of Ellie's small foot on top of a foot print of my medium foot on top of a footprint of Franklin's large foot.
One afternoon my wonderful husband let me take his footprint.


While we were doing that, Ellie was busy in another part of the house. Seriously, who taught her how to take lids off things?!


Someday, I'd like to get part 2 and 3 done. Tell me, though, when does a mommy have time to dip her own foot in paint?