New Blog

Well, we have finally made the switch from blogger over to wordpress. Now it is so much easier for me to keep info organized! I was able to import all the posts from this blog to the new one, so not much has changed except the site address.

It is...http://www.joshuaandlydia.wordpress.com/

I won't delete this blog for awhile yet, but all of our postings will be on the new site.

Happy Reading!

Estes Park

Last week we got the chance to spend a weekend in Estes Park with my whole family (except my brother and sister-in-law in France). The mountains were beautiful and we spent a lot of our time hiking and biking.

Colorado

After a hectic week in New York of sorting through a years wroth of mail, getting our car back on the road, and throwing a big wedding shower for my sister-in-law, we left for Colorado via Indiana.

For the last three weeks, weh ave been spending lots of time with family and meeting with some of our friends and supporters. The kids LOVE being with their cousins...they are busy running around and playing with each other from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. And we have a gorgeous Colorado summer to enjoy as well! We have been hearing reports of very cold weather in South Africa, which makes us enjoy the sunshine here even more!

My sister and brother-in-law and my darling niece got in late last night from Seattle and my brother and sister-in-law from South Carolina arrive tomorrow and then we are all headed up to the mountains for the weekend!

Traveling With Kids

I am sitting in New York as I write this. We arrived a few days ago very dirty and weary from our 2 weeks in England and France with all three children still intact. Since we had to fly through London to come back to the US and Lydia's brother and sister-in-law are helping to run a church retreat center in France this year, it was a good opportunity for us to see a bit of Europe and not spend too much money doing it. We did get to see some amazing things and we certainly made many wonderful (and not so wonderful) memories!

Here are some of the things we learned:

1. European cities are breathtaking
2. European cities have lots and lots and lots of stairs...everywhere
3. Children don't like climbing the aforementioned stairs even when you are already carrying all of the luggage and the stroller
4. The cities are also very dirty places, especially when your kids decide that it is fun to crawl along the metro floor and lick iron gates
5. If you don't take your child to the bathroom immediately they will pee all over the train station floor (the upside is that with so many people around no one cares or notices)
6. Driving in France is very calm and enjoyable (except in Paris)
7. Driving in England is not so calm or enjoyable.
8. If you exit from a British roundabout in the wrong lane, you will get honked at
9. If your three-year old says that his stomach hurts while you are driving through the French countryside, it means that he is going to throw up all over your rental car
10. When your six-year old touches a painting at the Musee Louvre, you will get yelled at...alot
11. When your six-year old steps off the sidewalk into a bike lane in London, you will have to reassure the girl who hit him that it really wasn't her fault and that he will be fine
12. A written contract is not a guarantee that you will have a place to stay
13. All McDonalds have free wi-fi, which is a good place to go to find another place to stay at 9 pm
14. If you can't stop eating all the amazing French food, you will gain weight
15. European cities have great playgrounds
16. The publics toilets are not so great
17. Family vacations involve a lot of suffering and a lot of great memories!


The highlights of the trip were riding to the top of the Eiffel Tower (Liam), the mummies at the British Museum (Serra), riding on all the airplanes, trains, and buses (Kamu), spending time in the French countryside (Lydia), and exploring a medieval castle when no one else was there but us (Josh).

June already?

I have been really bad about posting lately! In two weeks we are headed back to the states via France and England, and there is so much to do before we leave…birthday parties, kids club, Bible studies, Taco Thursdays, car repairs, hair cuts, packing, the list goes on and on. I am a little too in love the post-it note function on my desktop…my screen is now completely covered in to-do lists!

Here are some pictures from the month of May. We sent out a newsletter a couple of weeks ago. If you didn't get it, sign up on the right-hand side of this page for future updates!
Liam at soccer practice (he is in the orange sweatshirt)

A family hike to Blyde River Canyon

Josh's trip to Swaziland to take part in a church training seminar

Dinosaur Park!

Camping in the beautiful lowveld

Raindrops…er, maggots….keep falling on my head

We happen to live in this incredibly beautiful place. We are close to all the conveniences of town but are surrounded by gently rolling hills and orchards and nut farms. One of the positives of this location is being so close to nature, but one of the negatives is also being so close to nature! Winter is here and the cooler weather is driving all animals to find a warmer place to live (aka our house). We have recently found several cobras on our porch and property and a rat family moved into our ceiling (which not only resulted in poop all over everything but also a large owl landing on our tin roof right over our bedroom at regular intervals during the night and then frantically scratching with its claws trying to find purchase on the slick surface). It is not fun sharing your home (and your food) with rats, especially noisy ones that chew through Tupperware containers and make lots of loud noises when you are trying to sleep. After several week of daily sweeping up poop and wiping rat pee off of shelves, I reached my limit. It was on!

We tried a mouse trap, from which daddy rat easily ate all the peanut butter and then disdainfully kicked it off the shelf. We tried a big metal trap, from which daddy rat easily ate all the peanut butter while evading the pressure spring. Out of desperation, we finally put out rat poison, which daddy rat carefully carried back to the nest to save for the cold winter months ahead.

We had officially despaired of ever evicting our unwelcome tenants, when Liam came rushing in to the house declaring that he had seen the rat climbing into the house on an exposed pipe and had whacked it down with his "monkey stick" (the big stick that he carries when patrolling our property with Jenna for thieving monkeys). Josh and I came out to investigate and did indeed find the rat lying on the ground looking pretty near death (from poison, most likely, not our son). Josh got the shovel out and finished him off (naturally I made sure all the children were safely ensconced in the house while he did it).

We were out for most of the next day and when we got home, we noticed a nasty smell emanating from the kitchen. Apparently, mommy rat had also bit the dust. By leaving all the windows open and overdosing on air freshener, we were able to brave our way into the kitchen. Unfortunately, we couldn't get into the ceiling and knew that we had several weeks of this smell to look forward to.

And by the way, there was still a nest of baby rats in our hall ceiling who filled the air with eager squeaks every time we were nearby.

Surprisingly, the horrible smell dissipated after just a week or so and the squeaking and shuffling in the ceiling went away as well. Finally, we were victorious!

We were happily adjusting to our clean, rat-free house when Josh walked through the kitchen and said, "what's this stuff on the floor?" I came over to investigate and we realized we were looking at about 30 maggots busy squirming their way into other parts of the house. We looked everywhere and couldn't figure out where they were coming from, when to our horror, we realized they were dropping out of the ceiling! Apparently, they had finished up with the dead rats and were in search of more food. We spent the rest of the day sweeping up maggots and carefully examining the floor before walking anywhere. The low point was when Josh was looking up at the ceiling and pretended that he had swallowed one…he thought it was funny but I was not so easily amused!

And yesterday we heard more squeaking from the ceiling in the hallway. We apparently won the battle, but not the war. The saga continues….

Happy Easter!

After weeks of cold, cloudy weather, we woke up yesterday morning to clear blue skies and a glorious sun rising over the mountains. It was as if all of creation was celebrating the resurrection of our Savior! All day was absolutely gorgeous. At church we focused on worshiping Christ and meditating the meaning of his death on the cross.

When we got home, Josh created an elaborate scavenger hunt for the kids to find their Easter baskets, which was so much fun! There are no plastic eggs here to hide. Most families here will do an egg hunt with chocolate eggs instead, but we decided to just do the baskets.

After a well-deserved nap for everyone, we had an early braai with our neighbors and some other new friends out on our deck to enjoy the end of such a gorgeous day. It was a lovely time!