yall are funny

okay i have had lots of responses to my last post. The responses were about how well we eat over here. The T-bone steak and coconut shrimp did it in I guess. O-yeah and the $42 in chips and hot sauce... like I said before a girl has to do what a girl has to do. You learn to get what you can when you see it. By the way I have never seen T-bone steaks here before I bought them. I will tell you all about it. Well since we can't go our to Chilli's or Outback or even Cracker Barrel we have decided to splurge every once in a while. Well actually God has blessed us tremendously here. I guess I also owe it to Target and Wal-mart. There aren't any clearance aisles to blame my spending on :)
O- how I can't wait to go to Target.
Okay bye for now since this is my second post of the day.
O-yeah Abby threw up 2 times tonight. Yuck! I am sure she will be fine tomorrow.

I love you all and remember... always move out of the way when your child startes to throw up!

the octopus

After we picked the kids up from school yesterday we went to a couple of stores. It was Friday and the kids get to drink coke for dinner. So our first stop was what we call the bull store. We call this because it is located close to a big sign that is the shape of a bull. Anyways every one but me stayed in the car so i can get my hot sauce that I was looking for . This store has some good hot sauce... it reminds me of Red Hot from the states. So I went in just to buy that and came out with $42 worth of hot sauce, plain tortilla chips and tortillas. I am covering the screen while I type. Ha! The lady at the register just smiled. Luke went on and on about how much I spent on chips. I told him I did what I had to do :) When you see something on the shelves that you like your take it and take it all! It could be months before those chips come back on that huge cargo ship. So I bought all they had!

Okay the second stop was the Casino... our supermarket. We went in just to buy shrimp and bought coconut, bread, T-bone steaks (which is gonna be dinner tonight), vimto (the kids choise of drink) and ... I know there was something else but can't remember right now. So when i started cleaning the shrimp I realized there was a small octopus in the bag. The kids were so excited. Luke wanted to make some sort of "creation" for it and then cook it. Since I was already frying the shrimp (coconut shrimp) I just dipped it in the batter (without coconut) and fried it. By the way i fried it in my new deep fryer. It is so cool. Anyways it was yummy and we had an awesome dinner.

Today Abby and I are going to a birthday party for a girl in her class at school. Not really sure where she is from. Maybe France.

Okay write more later.
I love all of yall and remember... always make sure the octopus is dead before you start playing with it.

april

PUMMPED UP!

Okay not with high - heeled shoes... that would be really hard here in the sand. I am sooo excited because we have our dates for our transition and.... we are headed to Kigali, Rwanda via the STATES! Waahoo. I can't wait to eat a quesadilla salad from Chills with some Dr. Pepper. So far the plans are to leave Senegal the first week in June and head to Rwanda the first week in July. Wahoo again:)

Anyways today is a holiday. The Islam New Year. We didn't realize the kids were out of school today until last night about 8. I called a girls mother from Luke's class and she confirmed no school. I tell you what Senegal celebrates every holiday know to man. Seriously! Luckly the grocery store was still open. Abby and I went to the Casino which is where we shop for food. Well we buy our veggies and fruit at the veggie stands. Anyways we bought 2 fish called Thoif, milk, chicken, beef, olives, canned corn, peas and greenbeans, french fries, chips, eggs, tp, coffee and a very cool deep fryer. We made french fries in it today and it was yummy. So good! I am thinking of going to the market tomorrow and buying zucchini to make some fried zucchini and onion rings tomorrow. The other day I rode my bike to the market.... maybe I will do that again.
I am enjoying riding my bike here. Although the wind is really hard right now.

We praise God every night for the blessings we are given. As the kids pray at night they say things like: thank you for our comfortable beds, our fans, running water, our eletricity staying on today, Cheick, Sophia, school and many other things. I am so thankful that Luke and Abby are able to experience life outside the US. I know that things are hard in the US right now as far as the financial world but as long as you have things like... a roof over your head and running water, someone to care over you... you are blessed. It is hard somedays to see little kids running around wanting food and longing for someone to talk with them. I wish I could take everyone in.

Okay more tomorrow... I love you all and remember... always use a sharp knife when fileting a fish.

april

a winter day in dakar

So today we once again wore clothes suitable for warm weather. the high was in the mid 90's. So are you jealous or loving your cold weather. i would actually like to have a little cooler weather myself. Anyways so Luke wore shorts to church and Abby wore a sleeveless dress. After church we ate at a Brazilian restaurant. It was yyyuuuummy! We had lots of meat and lots of side items. Plus the best thing about this resturant is that they give missionaries a discount and the kids eat free. So we ate an awesome lunch for about $23. O-yeah they also had a swing set pretty close to our table. Man - the US should catch up on that.
As most of you all know we have been in Senegal for 1 year now. Wow time flies when your having... hum so how has it really been? It has been fun. Hard at times but good. God has been so good to us this year and we are only expecting greater things to come. Praise God for calling us here... or Rwanda whenever that will be :) Okay until tomorrow.... after I take my flour back to the store...bugs in it - blaaaa!

remember i love you and... don't forget to spay and neuter your pets.

the other house

Okay here are some pictures of the other side. As you can tell we need to do some work on the house. Bathroom work and paint... If you are interested in helping by crossing the ocean in a huge jet with a paint roller and some tools just let us know and we will work it out! This would probably be before June so start praying now :)

O-yeah the bottom picture is KICS - Kigali International Community School. This is where the kids will probably go to school. The school is sharing it's property with a church. It is a Christian school with American curriculum. No french though.. boohoo!

our house in Kigali

Okay everyone tell me what you think. We have housing options in Kigali. The missionary property has 2 houses that are joined together that are totally different. Here are the details:
House one -
This house is bigger. It has 3 bedrooms that are bigger than the other house with an extra room for the office. The office has a door that goes outside. This house has a more separate dinning area with a door that separates the kitchen from the rest of the house. The living room is a good size room. This house is the first house you see as you come into the compound. There are 2 good size bathrooms with one in the master bath. The porch on this house is smaller than the other house and is just open on one side
House two -
This is a smaller house but with a vaulted ceiling and has some sort of wood decoration that looks cool. This house has 3 smaller bedrooms. The area where the washer and dryer is big enough for the office and also has a door that goes outside. If we lived in this house the office would be in the other house which is just right next door. The kitchen in the house has an open feel and you can see the kitchen dining room and living room at the same time. It also has a bar with bar stool in the kitchen. The living room has a fireplace which would be good since there is no heat in the house. There are 2 bathrooms. The master bathroom does not have a door to the bedroom, it is in the hall. The other bathroom is just down the hall. These are smaller than the bathrooms in the other house. The porch on this house is really big and open on 2 sides.

For some reason this blog will only hold this many pictures so I will post again. The pictures in this blog are pictures of the smaller but open feel house. The house two.

The property is huge with hills. There is a basketball goal with a paved area. There is also a covered area for the vehicle. The yard if I remember right has citron (lemon), avocado, guava, and papaya trees. There is also an area with lots of bamboo.

Okay I will post some more pictures of the other house and yard.

dinner and sparklers

Last night we had a lot of fun. One of our pastors and his family came over for dinner and sparklers. Some of the food we had was little sausages, chips and a layered dip, lamb on the grill, crab salad, smoked salmon, dips and lots of other yummy stuff. The kids had a great time playing with the girls and then after dinner we lit the sparklers and threw those snap pop things. Even though our sparklers are only about 3 inches long it was fun.
At the new year there were fireworks all over town. It was a cool sight from our terrace. You could see fireworks from every direction. I am so glad the kids didn't wake up from it.
So we decided not to go to the church service last night because it started at 10pm and our kids would be CRAZY if they stayed up that late. There is no tellin how long that service lasted.
Today we might go for a bike ride since there will be less traffic on the roads. Yes it is a holiday here and everything is closed. We celebrate every holiday you can imagine. It is nice sometimes. We are thinking about going to a park this week. Who knows. I am probably going to order some long sleeve clothes online today. It is starting to get cool here and since we had no idea it would get cool, we have very few clothes to stay warm at night. It is mainly cool at night and in the mornings.
Okay i am in need of some more coffee so this is all for now.
love you lots and remember I was here first!... in this new year :) ha... i crack myself up
april