in celebration

This post is in celebration of the fact that our satellite internet is finally, after two months down after the lightning strike at the beginning of March, FIXED... and we have great internet again!!  So I am finally able to post photos on my blog again.  Starting today, I am going back through old posts and updating them with photos.  I'm starting with the most recent and working back consecutively, so keep checking back...!!  And to celebrate, here's some recent photos to share with you of life around here:

Elijah getting more courageous climbing trees in our garden

our own crazy little monkey!

Last night the internet technician arrived as we were eating dinner, and started work to replace the radio receiver which connects our house to the compound where the satellite is located.  Elijah was SO EXCITED that 'Grandma was being fixed'.  In the weeks preceding the major lightning strike which 'fried' the internet at the beginning of March, we had been talking to my parents using ooVoo almost every day... such a treat for the kids!  Elijah's been really missing it and been asking incessantly, 'When fix Grandma?' ever since.  So he was really, really happy when he was told that the man was here to fix the internet - he knew what that meant!  He was so excited that he didn't finish his supper, or want his bath... he just wanted to be hovering where the men were working!  :)

yes.. she really does get that dirty! posing with her brother's hat and a broken flashlight

Ketzia's favorite thing to do is dig in the dirt

Yes, she did manage to get herself further in than this, amazingly!

our little dress up queen :)

This morning I took the kids to the farm so that they'd be out of the way while the technician was still fixing settings on our computers.  At the farm we found Jackson, the farm manager, giving a tour to a group of missionaries in the area for a 2-week training course.  Elijah was really keen to join them (there were a bunch of small kids) so we tagged along for part of the tour, through the vegetable gardens and then out into the fields to see the crops partly harvested.  While we were in the fields Jackson was showing the children the sweet potatoes and dug up a few so that the kids could see how they grew.  Elijah and Ketzia each got one. Even though I told Elijah that I would cook his sweet potato for his lunch if he was patient until we got home, he was bound and determined to EAT that raw sweet potato.  He must have been hungry, because eat it he did -- the whole thing!!  Everyone was laughing at my crazy child.  As we got home he was chewing the last bite.  And what do you think he did?  He walked straight into the kitchen, grabbed a pot, spit the last chewed bits of the sweet potato into it, and handed it to me, 'Here, Mama, cook it!' 

At the Farm the last thing Elijah got to do was take a ride in the oxcart with the other children... and unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me!  He was so overwhelmed that you could practically hear him bursting with happiness a mile away.  :)  It was really cute.  Hopefully it will happen again sometime so that I can get a photo!

And finally... a family photo in closing.  Courtesy of Rev. Andrew Allan, who took it in mid-April.  So we have a current family photo at last!