Extreme Pumpkining

It starts with a cute kid and her pumpkin.  Gotta have a picture of that, right?

 

Then the big sister who is all dressed like fall.  Cuteness!

 

 And before you know it, it turns into feats of strength.

 

 

African style.

Weapon-wielding Preschoolers

What tasks do you let your kids do in the kitchen?  I recently had a couple of assistants when I was making my favorite winter salad: this Cranberry Waldorf.

 See how focused she is?  She feels so proud to have a real job!

(How many of you are freaking out that I am letting my kids use actual knives?  Let me talk you through this.  What happens if they do slip?  They get a quarter-inch boo-boo that gives them a little more respect and focus for the next time they are working with something dangerous.  Don't get me wrong--I would never leave the room while they are armed.  I know what they are capable of.)

Even Jude (not yet 3) loves this.  It is cool because there is a TOOL, something SHARP and DANGEROUS.  Just right for a boy. 

 He loves being my helper too!  Look how proud he is of all his sliced grapes!

 "How did you ever get anything done before we came along, Mom?"

And voila!  A delicious Cranberry Waldorf salad (I make it without the yogurt, and I use deliciously-fresh pecans straight from Lubbock, TX instead of the walnuts).

The least of these

By recent statistics Burundi ranks last in terms of the Global Hunger Index.

Read here or check this interactive map.

Many many people go hungry every day due to lack of resources, lack of jobs, and past years of civil and political unrest.

Pray for Burundi.

The impossible is not too much.

Sometimes, not too often, but sometimes these little inklings of doubt creep into my mind.  "What if we move to Africa and one of us dies of cholera?"  "What if it ruins my kids?"  "What if I can't hack it?"  And then I remember that nobody has told me I have to do this.  When the thoughts were just hatching in our minds, before we would have admitted it even to each other, there was something compelling about the idea.  The more we googled and blog-stalked, the more we were hooked.  Now if you have googled or blog-stalked Burundi at all, you may have heard that it's not exactly on the top-ten list for vacation spots.  There's nothing about living there that is easy.  But we still wanted to go.  Let me say that again.  We want to go.

Once we started to question ourselves, we spent a long time wondering why in the world we wanted to go.  We honestly tried to figure this out.  "We are just idealizing the equatorial climate," (which is not an inconsequential thing to consider in February in Idaho).  "We are just glorifying the idea of living in community with this remarkable group of doctors and their families."  We postulated all sorts of reasons that we would find the idea both compelling and appealing.  Malaria? No, not that.  Scars from years of genocide and mass killings?  Not really.  Hmmm...

After these questions had been swirling in our minds for several months, we began to wonder if maybe we were "called" to go to Africa.  You know, like really super-spiritual amazing people-of-God are "called."  We were having a conversation about this with a friend, and his response was gold.  He asked if it was a normal response to see this kind of poverty and want to live in the midst of it.  "Do you see people around you giving up their jobs and their friends and their churches and their homes and all that is comfortable and just deciding one day to go live in the world's poorest country for fun?"  Well, I guess not.  "Why do you think you want to do that?  Why do you have the desire to teach dentistry there and not in Seattle?  Why do African adventure and community living appeal to you?" (In case it's not as obvious to you as it was to us upon hearing these things, the resounding answer to these questions was "Duh! It's because God created us with these interests and curiosities that we have this desire!"

So to sum up, yes--we feel "called" to go to Africa.  Not called in a booming, fun-squashing, Charlton Heston voice, demanding us to give up everything fun and go live in a dusty hut and corral natives into white buildings with steeples, but called in a beckoning, enticing sort of way.  We hear a provocative invitation to go be part of something already moving, to learn from people who have so much strength and charisma and eminence of spirit (but no toothbrushes!).  And we want to glorify God in that, just as much as we aim to glorify Him here in our northwoods hayfield.



*So if you are wondering what finally kicked my butt back into blogging gear after a two-week silence, you can thank Jason Fader and the strong-bodied men of Kibuye.  Go read Jason's post here, or at the very least, watch the video clip at the end of his post. 

Little Joys

One thing that can almost always bring a smile to my face is watching my boys enjoy throwing rocks into the water.  It's something so basic, so simple, and yet somehow so thoroughly entertaining.  It is a show of strength (how big your rock is, how hard you had to work to dig it up or haul it to the water), which pleases all my boys at any age. 

These pictures are from our Banff trip a couple of weeks ago. 

 Hank and Henry, dropping pebbles into the deep Marble Canyon gorge

 After our Marble Canyon hike, still in Kootenay Park

 "Ooh--look at this huge one, Mommy!"

 Pausing during the Lake Louise hike

Lunch break at Moraine Lake