Homemade goodness

Thursday, March 26

So one thing I can do from scratch is pancakes.  Made those again this morning.  The kids layed a blanket out on the back porch by the garden for breakfast and thought it was a treat.  It is fun to talk about this garden as if it is my own, as if I put my hands in the dirt and planted the basil and sukuma.  Have I ever done this? No.  Well not really.  Unless you count the year we moved to Minnesota and I was trying to be Minnesotan and planted two rows of peas.  

Edna came in this morning and added some more homemade goodness to our lives.  I asked her if she could do something with rice and beans for lunch and she said "yes, and I make tortillas."  Yummy delicious homemade tortillas. I hug her and I'm pretty sure I'm invading her comfort zone.

Edna and her tortillas

Hayden wanted to host a tea party for her friend Claire today so we called her in the morning and scheduled the event for 3:30 this afternoon.  Hayden cleaned up the living room, helped me make real tea with cream and sugar and laid out the table.  For snacks we busted out some American treats - graham crackers, jelly beans and Reese's peanutbuter cups.  After tea they played Spot-it and made rubber band bracelets. 

Hayden has thrived here.  She seems comfortable meeting all the new people and has made friends easily with the missionary kids and Kenyan kids.  She loves all the food we've eaten and the slower pace of life here is totally her thing.  I'm really proud of her.  The only thing she has struggled with is sleeping.  Every night so far she has had major anxiety about bedtime.  She worries about if she will be able to sleep or not, what she will do if she can't sleep, what to do if the power goes off in the middle of the night, etc.  She cries and worries and wears herself right out.  I keep telling her the nights will get easier and easier but if you ask her what she thinks of Kenya she will say she likes the days but not the nights.

Claire and Hayden

I pray for God's blessing on my children and thank him for their resiliance.  They have all had their ups and downs.  Liam struggles with the lack of structure to our days.  If you know Liam, you know he is a fast-paced kind of guy.  Harper has fallen and scraped herself up everyday.  It wouldn't be so bad if she hadn't gotten up in the middle of the night when we first got here and opened every single bandaid I had brought from home.  We have bummed bandaids off of other people daily.  And Charley... she is winning the battle against bed bugs.