We had a pretty uneventful week here in Swaziland, but here are a few highlights.

Last week we decided that we would partner with Joe and have a garden together.  We all wanted a garden, but none of us wanted to do the work by ourselves…enter teamwork!  The ground is very hard at our garden plot (right outside of Joe’s house), but we were able to dig about 1/3 of it out and prep the ground.  Basically you dig a big ditch and then alternate filling it with manure, straw and dirt.  This helps to aerate and enriches the soil.  We hope to finish digging in the next week or so and then plant by July.  We will see!  We worked again this week and were able to get three of the four berms finished.  One more weekend and we should be about ready to plant.

Ben and Mikayla hanging out in the ditch before we filled it back up to make our berms.

We have always known that we had a condiment obsession.  Most of the time our condiment shelves in the fridge are overflowing.  Since arriving in Swaziland and restocking our fridge and pantry, we have also developed a "heat" obsession too.  Particularly a hot sauce and chili obsession.  We pulled these gems out of the fridge and spice rack.  We also have a bag full of frozen chilies in the freezer and a whole rack of chili’s drying in our laundry room.  Do you think we have enough?

From left to right:  Ben’s homemade Peri-Peri sauce, homemade chili paste, dried bird’s eye chilies, Peri peri sauce (sweeter), Tony’s Cajun seasoning (our favorite), a Mexican seasoning we picked up here, Chili powder, Ben’s homemade hot sauce, dried and crushed chilies, Nando’s Peri Peri seasoning (Nando’s is a local chicken food chain), Black mamba hot sauce (delicious), Nando’s garlic Peri Peri (also delicious) and in the front row we have Black Mamba chili paste and Cayenne pepper.  I guess you could say we love some heat!

Sometimes Ben comes up with the best inventions and sometimes they are just plain silly.  He would call the following a "best invention", I call it just plain silly!  Instead of pouring Mikayla a glass of milk he took two straws and put them together to make a large straw so she could drink milk out of the box/carton.  By the way, have I mentioned the milk here before?  It is what they call long life milk and you buy it off of the shelf.  It will last for months in the pantry and then three days once you open it in the fridge.  I hate the taste of it, but for convenience sake it is nice because we don’t have a grocery around the corner to purchase milk from when we need it.  I am looking forward to a nice glass of real milk when we head back to the states (along with some Mexican food and a few other staples)!

 Don’t you just love her mischievous face here?

Early in the week we were painting some rocks for our learning time and I ran inside to get something.  When I came back out this is what I found.

Turn your eyes for five seconds and this is what a toddler does with paint!

After Mikayla found out her friend Lylah could draw people a few weeks ago she decided she wanted to give it a go.  (Do you think she gets the competiveness from Ben or me?)  We have been working for a couple of weeks on drawing stick people and she has finally caught on (sort of).  Here are some snapshots of her people from this week.

Can you see the tiny feet at the bottom?  She hasn’t quite got the hang of drawing the feet yet!

Ben caught the stomach bug I had a couple of weeks ago at the end of the week so we laid low.  Unfortunately I came down with something on Friday and Saturday we were both pitiful!  Good news though, we are both feeling better today!

Here is a bird for Steve.  I think we have posted this bird before, but it was before he had his Swazi bird book!  These birds look really cool when they are flying because of their long tail feathers.

While most of our friends and family in the states are preparing for summer (or in it really), we are starting to feel the cooler temperatures of "winter".  When I say winter, I really mean more the temperatures of a Kentucky fall.  It is cool in the morning and night, but still heats up quite a bit during the day.  It has been a nice change of pace from the constant heat we usually experience!  We have even been able to enjoy a few fires around our fire ring and snuggle up on the couch with a blanket. Since we don’t have air conditioning (only fans) or a heater we really feel the outside temperatures in our house.  It stays relatively cool in our house for most of the day now and is very cool when we wake up in the mornings.

We spent last Saturday driving the folks from Cabrini College around Swaziland.  In one day we were able to hit all the "hot spots" and show them all the different elevations.  Mikayla got to play on three different playgrounds throughout the day so we she was a happy camper.  I bought a fantastic wooden mask in the shape of a giraffes face thanks to some haggling by Joe.  And Ben got to drive around the mountains!  Despite the 12 hour day, we all enjoyed ourselves. 

On Sunday we hosted a farewell dinner at our house for the Cabrini College guests.  I made my usual staple of bread and dessert.  For dessert I made this recipe for Cookie Dough Brownies – a layer of brownies, a layer of cookie dough and a layer of chocolate glaze.  And I must say they were AMAZING!  So amazing in fact that they inspired us to make cookie dough balls dipped in chocolate  later in the week.  I just took my regular recipe for cookie dough, omitted eggs and baking soda and added in some milk.  I used a melting chocolate I had picked up at the grocery a few weeks back to dip them in, but it ended up not being very tasty.  With good chocolate these would have been incredible!  We didn’t complain too much about the bad chocolate though and had those puppies devoured in less than a week!

On Monday, Zodwa from the office came back from her maternity leave for a few days to help out with some finance issues.  Mikayla and I offered to watch her 1 month old for the week while she was working.  His name is Sewandzile (pronounced say-wand-ZEE-lay).  Mikayla was a great helper and loved having the baby around.  She always wanted to hold him.  He was a little bit of a crier, but we still managed to get our regular school work and housework (for the most part) complete with him around.

On Friday, we celebrated the Feast of the Sacred Heart with Cabrini staff and a few people from the community.  It wasn’t quite as eventful as our last feast, but still fun.

The birds have been out like crazy in the mornings this week.  Here are a few shots I got of some for my father-in-law.

Not a great shot, but this guy also has a black tuft of hair on the top of his head.

And just because she is so cute in her new dress, here is a picture of Mikayla.  We bought the dress when we were at Bush Fire a few weeks ago.  The lady who ran the shop said that she designs the dresses and then gives the designs to Swazi women to make out of fabrics from Swaziland and South Africa.  She had so many cute dresses it was hard to decide on just one!  This dress is corduroy on one side (with sequins and fabric to make up a flowery viney design) and then fabric on the other side (it is reversible).  Does anyone else have trouble getting their three year old to stand still and smile for pictures or is is just us?

Such a ham!

We went out and picked some of the last bird’s eye chili’s as a family this week.  Ben took 1/3 of what we picked and made a batch of hot sauce.  It made for a rather strong smell in our house for the day.  Some of the hottest hot sauce I have ever tasted!  My Uncle Mark would have loved it.  We are planning on freezing some and drying the rest.  We plan on using some of it as part of our Mexican themed dinner this evening!  Happy Saturday!