I have decided to try and give a week’s update at some point during the week. No promises for how it will go or what day it will be posted on, but I thought I would give it a shot! Because Internet is really slow here, the posts will probably only include a few pictures. My last two posts had quite a few pictures and took some time to upload. We had free Internet at the time so it wasn’t a big deal, but most of the time that won’t be the case!
If you know me at all you know I have a slight fear of ants. I know they won’t hurt me, but something about the thought of thousands of ants crawling all over me and my house freaks me out. In BG we would at the start of each summer have an ant infestation at our house. They would invade our kitchen and really freak me out. I had Ant killer on hand to immediately douse them and kill them. Of course that is not what you are supposed to do, but I didn’t care. I think the ants followed us to Swaziland, but are way worse. If you leave just one crumb on the the counter they find it within seconds. This means dishes have to be washed and counters wiped down quickly after a meal. Something I am not a fan of or used to doing so quickly. We are getting into a groove though and I am not finding it so hard to do here. Maybe because we don’t have so many distractions. We did find a bug killer called Doom here to help take care of the problem if it arises. Speaking of ants, Mikayla has taken to liking bugs. She will be walking along and discover them easily on the ground. She then wants to get down and examine them closely. Such a curious girl. I guess I will have to get over my lack of enjoyment for bugs so I can explore them with her!
Mikayla’s imagination is really starting to soar. She can come up with something to do on a whim and is able to create the most clever activity from things such as a stick. For example, on a walk the other day Mikayla found a stick. She proceeded to tell me the stick was a dog and its name was Shiloh. “Shiloh” came with us on the rest of our walk and even went home with us. She would periodically stop to pet the stick dog and tell hit good job. It was hilarious. “Shiloh” now resides on our front porch next to our digging sticks.
I made yeast rolls this week. They were similar to Sister Shubert, but not quite at the same level. Tasty though and not that hard. The only time consuming thing was letting them rise, twice! They would have been even easier to make had I had an electric mixer. All I have is a mixer you stir by hand…the old fashion kind!! I have a feeling that my baking is going to really improve here and me and Betty Crocker are going to become best friends!!
It is winter here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it gets cold. Today for example I am sitting on the porch at 1:30pm and wearing a sleeveless sundress and am perfectly comfortable. It starts out chilly in the morning and gets chilly at night, but the middle of the day is warm. This is going to be hard to get used to! How am I supposed to teach Mikayla about seasons??
Random Mikayla moment this week. She has gotten to where she wants to “talk about something”. So one day I said lets talk about itchy eyes, and asked her what we could do to help itchy eyes. She immediately looked at me and said, “ICHIBAN”. For those of you in the BG area, you know what that means. I think our girl has sushi on the brain!!
As most of you may know, Mikayla is a bit of a talker. Today her talking got the best of her. She got kicked out of Sunday School and church both in the same day. Not really, but kind of. In Sunday school the other kids were so enthralled with Mikayla that they were having a hard time focusing on the teacher. After about twenty minutes of no focus she asked us if we would please go on to church. I knew this was a bad idea because she can’t keep quiet!! So we stalled for a bit outside until it was time for all the kids to go into church and give offering. She did great with this and walked up to the front to put her two coins in the bowl. We then sat down and she lasted for a total of one minute before jabbering again and we had to get up and leave. Because of the acoustics of the church you can hear every little sound so everyone could hear what she was saying and distracting the whole congregation. We are going to keep trying, but until she figures out when to talk and when to not we may not be making it very long in church. And until the kids get used to Mikayla, we may not last long in Sunday School either!! Oh my!!
That is all for now folks. Be sure to read my other post for some very exciting news!!