A Catch Up post!

Wow...have I really gone 2 whole weeks into January without posting?  Oops!  We've been super busy these days enjoying our extended Christmas break.  The Ugandan schools have their long break (their "summer vacation") right now.  They will begin a new school year in February.  Our little friends love to come here and play and visit with our family, so the Tuininga compound has reached new levels of joyful chaos in the past month.  Because of that and because we are anxiously awaiting our new helper's arrival tomorrow night, we have postponed starting school for a bit longer than normal.

So here are a couple highlights from the past couple weeks:

::We found a yucky-big snake in the outside part of the shower drain of our guest bathroom.  Sorry to all past and future guests.  (No worries though, we are working to cover the drain, so please do come visit. :) ) Rebecca was taking a shower at the time, and Benaiah was outside walking around when he spotted it.  He did the right thing and immediately told an adult.  The snake crawled into the drain towards Rebecca (who was blissfully ignorant of the events of the moment, and later found the whole thing quite humorous) but eventually, the guys were able to pour petrol down the drain and chase it out and kill it. 

::I had two goals for Talitha over Christmas break... #1: to potty train her;  #2 to get rid of her pacifiers.  The first was an epic fail.  I'll have to maintain my habit of holding off on potty training until closer to age three.  But what's a few more months after almost 13 years?  However, she was able to be bribed "given a gift of appreciation" for (as the Ugandan police say) throwing away her beloved pacifiers...or as she called it, her "si-si".  She got a book and a aqua colored, sparkle covered tu-tu.  Now she has officially become a night-time motor mouth...she talks (and sings!) non-stop in bed while she's trying to fall asleep!

I gave Katelyn the camera for this one and I thought it turned out so sweet.  :)

::A church in America sent a lovely care package for us.  Inside it was two crafts that our kids could do with the kids that come over to play on Sunday afternoons.  Katelyn loves to take charge of these kinds of things and organize.

:: We spent last Sunday at a village church.  Talitha chose this little one to be her friend for the day.

:: A few of the kids put their money together and added a few more members to the Tuininga Farm.  We now have 2 dogs, 3 cats, 3 bunnies and 5 pigeons.  Currently, they have their flight wings tied up while we coax them into staying in the yard...no small task considering they are at the bottom of the food chain.  Every morning has become an exercise in separating all members of the food chain so that they can eat in private and not eat each other.  Hopefully, after a week we will be able to untie the pigeons and they will be able to escape the canine and cat teeth and still stick around our compound.

::  Eric, Mark, Pastor Charles and a few young men, took about 12 preteen boys from our church on a camping trip at the top of Mt. Wanale.  They ate 8 packages of hotdogs at night and 120 pancakes that I had premade for them for breakfast.  From all reports, they had a blast...and nobody died...which was a huge answer to prayer considering the sketchy hike they went on in the morning.  And of course just before they got all packed up to come home, it poured rain.  When they got back to our compound, all of the tents had to be set up and I won't begin to say how much laundry we had!

Well, that's all for now.  Hopefully it won't be too long before you hear from me again!  :)