Happy Birthday, Sweet Banana!

Last week, the Banana turned into a beautiful, full-of-fun 4 year old. She had a wonderful, action packed birthday, made super special by a weekend visit from her Uncle T. and Miss S. Here's a recount of the birthday celebrations, in photos:

The Banana requested a butterfly birthday. So the day began with butterfly waffles, decorated by her Uncle T:

Breakfast was followed by a treasure hunt around the house, planned by the Papaya. Each clue the Banana found told her where to look for the next clue:

At the end of the treasure hunt, the Banana found her wrapped gift the Papaya chose and purchased for her the day before:

It was candy! We all enjoyed some.

Then I baked the birthday cake and put it out to cool. The others made a picnic lunch (including fresh zucchini bread!) and we headed out to one of our favorite beaches. It was low tide, and there was a large expanse of inviting sand to dig in, and many exciting marine discoveries to make.

The kids loved turning over rocks and watching scores of tiny crabs scurry for new cover. They caught quite a lot, then released them.

A good time was had by all.

We got home just in time to decorate the birthday cake and head out to our house church for an evening meeting. After our Bible study, the house church helped us celebrate the Banana's birthday with a couple butterfly themed games.

The other kids turned the Papaya and the Banana into cocoons:

Then they played "Pin the Antennae on the Butterfly":

Finally, it was time for the cake. There were two colorful butterfly cakes:

Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of the Banana blowing out candles - just a video. It was fun to eat the cake together with our house church.

The birthday wasn't finished yet! We headed home, the kids got pyjamas on, and then it was present time!

The Banana got a wonderful baking-themed package from her fun Aunty P. and Uncle AJ! The cookbook included gave us lots of great ideas for more fun cakes. As you can see, the Banana is excited about the possibilities.

She's all prepared to bake now, since she also got a super-cute chef's hat and apron. These two articles of clothing get worn a lot around the house these days!

Our present to the Banana was a butterly kite. We haven't had any good breezes since we gave it to her, but the kids did manage to fly it by running fast in a field. So here's our closing picture, of the Banana giving her new kite an inaugural flight. Isn't she a beautiful 4 year old? We are proud of how she is growing. She's a strong, graceful, healthy, imaginative girl, and has become a wonderful and gentle big sister to the Portabella. It will be fun to see how she grows and develops this next year. We love you so much, Banana!

More Pictures

I'm not energetic enough to write any brilliant blog posts right now, but I will post some lovely pictures taken the last three months!

This one portrays the Papaya's birthday celebration, taken while my side of the family was visiting. It was a bug themed birthday party, and I think the Papaya is an ant that has been caught.
Yes, there really are six children in our bathtub - all the cousins together! Crazy fun.

Here's the Papaya, running through old growth forest not too far from our house.

We had some hot days this summer. No air conditioner in our house, but the kids did get some relief from our sprinkler (happily, they tolerated the heat better than our lawn).

The Portabella loves the water, even when it's frigid (which is most of the time).

This is the same spot as the previous picture, but the tide is coming in!

The tide continues to come in but the Portabella is unperturbed. Don't worry - we rescued her soon after this photo was taken!

All dried off & loving the sand...

The Papaya's recent beach "mission" is to push all the driftwood he can find into the water & launch it - hoping it might sail to Hong Kong or some other far away port. Sometimes he & the Banana decide to ride the logs first.

Goodbye!

Look! It's me again!

My last blog post was the first day of Spring, and now it's almost Autumn. During the last two seasons, our family has managed to achieve a major move to the Seattle area. We've hosted both sets of extended family here, set up our new house and garden, and survived numerous new viruses, including an incredibly nasty influenza that Papaya Daddy brought home as a present from a sick patient. (Since he was a health care provider, he got tested - turns out it was Influenza A but not the swine variety - somewhat disappointing - if we were all going to be that sick, I at least wanted to get swine flu out of the way!) The Portabella and the Papaya both had birthdays & the Portabella (often called Shmora-doni around here) started walking & talking.

In the midst of all this transition, I've been pretty overwhelmed, and I'm afraid this blog was one of the things that suffered (despite finally having a fast internet connection). Now that summer's over & the school year is beginning again, I'm hoping to get back on the ball (although I've decided not to promise)!

Over the threshold, into our new house:
Our old front yard, at midday during a duststorm a couple weeks before we left Arizona: Our new front yard:
Our old backyard (during the same duststorm):Our new backyard:
The Portabella! Our new life is heavily defined by lush greenness, distant mountains, and salt water.

And lots of laundry...

Life is good here, even though we don't feel completely settled yet. All for now! I'll post more pictures soon!

Spring has Sprung!

It's the first day of Spring! Our peach tree is responding appropriately:

Our irises have given way to delicate hyacinth:

And the willow in our backyard is beginning to unfurl its pale green leaves.

At first glance, the desert behind our house doesn't show many signs of Spring.

But look closer...

No, that's not quite close enough. Get down on your knees...

Ahhh, there we go. A veritably verdant carpet of baby tumbleweed. Spring has arrived in our desert.

Happy vernal equinox, everybody!

We're Tired of Opportunities for Character Development

So, it looks as though our move has been delayed yet again. Based on what the Commissioned Corps told us a month ago, we thought we'd be on the road two weeks from today. But it's extremely unlikely that's going to happen. Papaya Daddy's orders have been delayed, apparently because of a couple of incorrect words in the official position description that took about a month to correct. Right now, his orders are in Alaska, the regional headquarters for the Commissioned Corps (they headed there after the regional headquarters for the Indian Health Service in Portland finally got the position description ironed out). Once they get processed in Alaska, they head to Rockville, MD (national headquarters for Commissioned Corps), then back to Portland Indian Health Service, where somebody will finally be able to schedule our move.

The most frustrating thing is that nobody can tell us how long this will take, or when we'll be able to expect our orders. They're now telling us that Papaya Daddy will have a clinical start date of April 17. However, they emphasize that even this is iffy, and that they have no idea when the orders would be processed for the purpose of scheduling the movers. For somebody like me who really dislikes ambiguity, this process is mildly tortuous. I want to have a timeline so I can plan things out!

The tribe that will be hiring Papaya Daddy from the Commissioned Corps seems equally dazed over the incredible inefficiency of the whole government process.

Papaya Daddy did request annual leave for the first two weeks in April (and his leave was approved). Our hope is that we'll get the orders very soon, then be able to schedule the movers in the next couple weeks, and spend those vacation weeks moving into our new house in Washington. Or we could be just sitting here, twiddling our thumbs. I really hope not! It does look like we'll be able to keep our house closing date of March 27.

It's now been over four months since the tribe in Washington decided that they wanted Papaya Daddy to work in their clinic, and he told them that he wanted to work there. The government has been trying to process paperwork for that long. We're still in better stead than our current neighbors, however. When they transferred here from Alaska with the Commissioned Corps, their bureaucratic nightmare took six months to resolve. I sincerely hope not to top their record.

We are all very ready to move. Even the Papaya drew a sidewalk chalk mural to welcome the moving truck (see picture above). We feel like we've already mentally and emotionally moved on from this place. Yes, God has been developing our patience and teaching us how to trust Him together throughout every step of this process. We've grown in the areas of contentment and thankfulness for all we have (i.e. a good, secure job, even if it's not yet in the location we'd prefer). We really have been learning a lot. But enough already! Haven't our characters been sufficiently developed? We're tired of being patient!

I guess I still have a few lessons to learn in the area of living joyfully in the present while patiently trusting in God for the future.

Yard Maintenance on the Rez

I happened to glance out our window this morning, and saw three men and an enormous blowtorch at our back fence. Turns out they were torching the dead weeds blown up against the fence. Luckily, it was not a particularly windy day today. They were kind enough to move our soccer ball from the side of the fence, after it was already on fire. Papaya Daddy (who had the morning off) ran out to rescue our other items near the fence (such as our rain barrel) that we did not want torched. Unfortunately, he missed something. The Papaya burst into tears when he discovered the remains of his cardboard windvane among the ashes.

Our yard looks so much better now! Just as brown and barren, but with an attractive blackish rim, and a lovely smokiness hanging about in the air. And after the next day of wind (there are many still to come this Spring), the yard will have just as many dead weeds back at its perimeter.

Still, talk about a dream job for a teenager! Get equipped with a serious power tool, then paid to go around torching the neighbors' yards!

Just when we think we've seen it all, our housing management thinks of another brilliant landscaping idea. We've joked before that they held a "scorched earth policy". I guess that wasn't just hyperbole...

Month of Gentle Wind

The Hopi word for the month of March means, literally, "month of gentle wind". That has got to be about the biggest euphemism ever coined. Currently, the wind is blowing around 35 mph steadily, with gusts that are much greater. Badger Butte is obscured because of all the dust in the air. Our cloudless sky is a depressing dirty gray color, and so is everything else. The desert (what you can see of it) is in constant motion, with tumbleweeds of all sizes blowing steadily to the east. Our ears are assaulted by the never-ending sound of wind howling, window panes rattling, and exhaust fan covers clacking. There are even waves in our toilet water (no joke)! Tomorrow morning, Papaya Daddy will have to move tumbleweeds out of the way before he steps over the sand dune in our entryway to go to work (see above photo from last March). The kids will draw in the thick layers of sandy dust deposited on all windowsills.

The kids are getting a little stir-crazy already. Papaya Daddy is working the ER today and will get home late. At lunch the Papaya capsized his bowl of orange-glazed tofu and broccoli with rice, all over his chair and the floor. I painstakingly picked every grain of sticky rice up (too sticky to be swept) while holding the Portabella back with one leg as she desperately tried to maneuver her body into the middle of the mess. Because food found on the floor is always much more exciting than food given to you when you're in your high chair.

The ten day weather line-up reveals a depressing series of WINDY... WINDY... WINDY... WINDY... WINDY forecasts for the days ahead.

It's going to be a long month. And we are going to be SO ready to move at the end of it!

So I'll cheer things up a bit by posting cute pictures and news of the kids. The Portabella is crawling! Everywhere! And pulling herself up! And she has two teeth! And judging by her complaints and earnest gnawing, probably has a few more on the way. She's even gained a little weight lately, and reached the 3rd percentile for weight on the growth chart. It's nice to know she's not falling off the bottom any more. She started saying "Bye" as well as "Hi" (accompanied by an endearing two handed wave), and a couple days ago, she said "Mamamamamama" while she crawled toward me. I'm not sure if that was intentional, or just a happy accident.

All those new accomplishments tucker her out, so we've been able to add to our collection of photos featuring a baby asleep in a high chair:

The following two pictures were taken right after a bath last Sunday, and remind me a bit of baby pictures of myself.

The Banana is an excellent babysitter (when she's not doing things like covering the Portabella with a beanbag and sitting on her), and can entertain her up to a half hour at a time.

The Banana's not allowed to feed the Portabella, though, so she practices on her doll. She's learned from the best.

The Banana decided she wanted to graduate from her tricycle and try riding the Papaya's bicycle with training wheels. She did an excellent job, and even managed to steer it. She still needs to learn a little about braking, however.

Yes, she should definitely be wearing a helmet. We need to buy one that fits her.

The Papaya, not to be outdone, asked his Daddy to take the training wheels off of his bicycle so he could learn to ride it properly. He did a great job! He had the expected falls (associated with steering), but was able to get up and start again. His bike is currently much too small for him, which is actually good for learning to ride without training wheels, since it's not a long way to the ground.

As soon as we move, we're going to take the Papaya to a local bike shop and get him a long-belated Christmas gift of a new bicycle that's more his size.

Here's the Papaya wearing a mask he made to scare off rabbits from our yard (when they eat our nice plants). I told him the rabbits would definitely be scared. Unfortunately, he left it on the floor & the Portabella found it. She wasn't particularly frightened, and destroyed it fairly thoroughly. So he'll never get to try it out with the rabbits. Papaya Daddy is scarier, anyway (as well as highly entertaining), since he usually roars loudly while throwing a metal bowl at the rabbits. (But they always come back.)

Here's the Papaya looking very boyish on a recent hike during our weekend stay in the Camp Verde/Sedona area. His backpack is full of mint-chocolate sandwich cookies that he was dying to share with the other hikers. We finally stopped at this spot so he could divvy them up, since he was unable to think of anything else or enjoy any of his surroundings until he tasted those cookies.

A picture of Beaver Creek, from the same snack spot:

I tried to teach the Portabella to throw rocks in the water, but she was more interested in eating them than dropping them.

The next picture brings back some funny memories from the same trip. We folded up the hidden seats in the back of our Honda Pilot so we could fit 8 people in. Unfortunately, none of the seats in the back were wide enough to fit a car seat, so the small children resided in spendour in the spacious middle row, while three full-size adults squeezed into seats that were clearly not designed for them. If you think it's just the perspective of the photo that makes the back row appear so narrow, you're wrong. It really was that narrow! My brother-in-law, Uncle T., looks especially out of place. Getting us all in and out was a truly acrobatic endeavor, since there are no side doors for the back row. To exit, somebody had to open the back gate and remove the headrest behind me. Papaya Daddy would then grab my armpits and haul me backwards out of the car. Then we could fold down my seat and Uncle T. and Miss S. could climb out.

It made for good laughs, good memories, and numb legs.

I think the Banana may be eating something she found in her nose. Please ignore her.
The lovely yellow crocuses in our backyard suddenly went the way of all things. Happily, they were replaced by exquisite violet irises. The iris is one of my favorite flowers. They bring us a huge amount of enjoyment, as well as constant amazement that we've gotten them to bloom here. I hope this wind doesn't blow all of the petals off.
Looking at these pictures cheered me up. I hope that you've enjoyed them too. Good-bye from windy northern AZ!