OKFSCMST for Short

I don't know if you remember or not, but I promised you about a million years ago that I’d share some photos from our time in Texas. I don’t like to be a liar (except outrageous exaggerations, like in the previous sentence) and I want this to be included in this blog (aka my online family photo album), so here is a long post of photos from the amazing week we spent in South Texas at the end of June.

By long, I mean loooong.

We only make it down there every few years, but it sure is one of our favorite places to visit. The friends and hospitality are incredible! It was our first time visiting with two kiddos. And if you’ve ever traveled with two kiddos then you know that sitting around ‘relaxing’ just doesn’t really work. Staying busy is better, in many cases. So the week we spent down south felt a lot like summer camp to me. Yes, we did feel relaxed and we took it easy (and did a lot of other things and got to catch up with other amazing people who aren’t pictured or mentioned here), but we also did lots of fun things together… summer-camp like!!

Let's call it the One of a Kind Family Summer Camp Week in South Texas. That's OKFSCWST for short.

This is the location of our 'summer camp'. I love the Brown Ranch. And the people there. Love love love.

And the cows that surround it. (Sweet N learned to “Moooo” while we were there. Ha!)

So here comes a long list of camp activities in no particular order:

1. Swimming!

Big water tanks meant for large bovine animals to drink out of also make fabulous swimming pools.

Little fishy H practiced swimming underwater.

Then Sweet N grabbed a territorial bee and got stung in the hand. She cried for about 4.5 seconds and then got royal treatment from the compassionate medics. ;)

Sweet lil’ friends. One of the major highlights. (Along with their parents!)

2. Paddle Boating

Oh my word. Why does it look like he’s grown up so much since June?!

The kiddos fed the fish while we paddled around.

3. Fig Jam Canning (I know… something for everyone!)

The figs were from a tree in the front yard.

This was my first canning experience… which I was grateful for! I hope to start canning when we get back home. Except I don’t have a fig tree in my yard. Boo. In fact I don’t have a yard.

4. Bird Watching

Road Runners are smaller than I thought! And they don’t actually say “MmnnBeeepBeep” either. Bummer.

5. Front Porch Chillin’ (Captions not necessary) :)

6. Water Balloon Fighting

Mike and Kasey spent at least an hour filling these balloons.

Then the kids chased,

tossed,

dodged

and laughed!

And then the basket was empty again in less than five minutes. Oh my!

7. Pedal Go-Karting

Check out that sky. There are not many places I have seen a sky so amazing and huge and beautiful as I have seen in Texas.

As soon as N would climb on the car, she’d whip out her toy cell phone. Gee, I wonder where she learned that?!

8. Day Tripping

We took a day trip up to San Antonio to visit several old Missions. It was fascinating!

We also visited a museum where the rangers looked strangely familiar. Or strange and familiar.

and the kiddos were especially cute.

9. Date Time!

I explored the RiverFront in San Antonio by myself when I lived in Texas for the summer eight (eight?!) years ago, but Mikey had never seen it.

So we accepted the generous offer of our hosts to take our kiddos home after we toured the Missions together and we had some date time looking around! Wow! It’s such a beautiful place to explore.

10. Worm Wrangling

Ever heard of worm castings?

Me either, until a few years ago when the Browns started their own operation. It fascinates me, so we always have a look around and ask ten million questions.

Questions, for example, about this neat-o contraption that gently separates the worms from the dirt from the castings (aka poo).

And we are always, always kindly given ten million answers with utmost patience.

Hi worm! Thanks for your poo that is organically fertilizing many crops!

N loved it. H didn’t as much.

And last, but not least…

11. Eating Nacho Cheese by the Spoonful

(This activity was led by my daughter) I don’t think even real Texans do that. She is an over-achiever, to be sure. Ha!

Wow. We sure do miss all of our friends down south! What a fabulous time we had together!

Tried and True Recipe: Sweet and Sour Sauce

This sauce can be served with rice and sauteed veggies or meatballs or chicken in any and all forms or even fish probably, if you're into that. Serve it with whatever you got a hankerin' to be sweet and sour. It’s simple, delicious, and (obviously) isn’t picky about what it’s served with.

Combine and cook for 3 mins in a big pot:

2 1/2 cups cubed and drained pineapple (I use canned), save the juice

2 T butter

Add:

1/3 c. pineapple juice

2 c. green peppers, chopped

1 onion, chopped

Add:

1-3 T soy sauce

2 T vinegar

1/3 c. sugar, white or brown

Mix separately and add:

2 T cornstarch

1/3 c. pineapple juice

Dissolve, add to cornstarch mixture and cook, stirring until thick:

1 bouillon cube

1 c. boiling water

Simmer one hour.

Optional: Add other veggies before simmering, such as julienned carrots, green beans, etc.

Glory to The Wycliffe International Cookbook for this one. These cookbooks must be rare now, selling for a hundred or more dollars?! Nuts! I don't understand it. Or maybe I do, cause I wouldn't want to sell mine for even that much... that is how much I love it! Good thing I bought mine on May 13, 2006 for only $16.74 (as Amazon so kindly informed me when I just did a search on it). Enjoy!

My Recipes, Tried and True

Five years ago I couldn't really cook. When we moved to Africa I was SO clueless. Sometimes I'd serve rice with fried onions (?!). Or I'd just serve popcorn. That's all. Learning to pop that in a pan with oil on the stove was enough of a challenge for me. And once I served Mike a whole boiled potato. That's it. He sat on the couch and ate it like it an apple. (Yeah, he loves to tell that story.) I really had no idea what to do with a big pile of fresh vegetables from the local market. I'd look at it and just wonder how in the world I was supposed to make dinner out of it all.

I have come a long way since then and I often get asked what I cook in Africa. The answer is I cook all kinds of stuff... local foods, American foods, international foods and all those foods mixed together. I am no professional chef by any means, but it's been a fun journey for me. By now I have a collection of recipes that are tried and true. You know, the ones that you eat again and again and again and again some more.

I plan to start posting them here and put a collection of the links to those recipe posts on a new tab.

My Recipes, Tried and True

I am hoping you might enjoy the eclectic collection as it grows and also I am hoping that this means I can stop carrying around odd bits of paper that I scribble the recipes out on before I leave my house in Africa to travel each year in case I have a hankering for our fav Czech crepes, lentil and rice burritos or wacky cake along the way. I can kiss my bits of paper goodbye and the recipes will all be on here for good.

My fav recipes are most often completely from scratch and they never require fancy ingredients, cause we just don't have even some basic ingredients readily available, let alone anything fancy. They're also almost always vegetarian, cause when we moved our budget was perty tight. We didn't want to pay for the 'nice' meat from the supermarket and we weren't big fans of the more affordable meat that had been hanging on a hook in the open market covered with flies all day. So we learned to eat beans and vegetables instead. And now we're just accustomed to it.

Tomorrow I'll post the first tried and true recipe! Although fun pics to go with will have to wait until we're home and settled again...

Ribbon Love

Yes, my daughter still uses a pacifier. We've been on the move for so long now we haven't even considered taking away her favorite coping mechanism. I think we may have waited too long taking her big brother's away for the same reasons and I fear we're headed in the same direction towards a traumatizing parting of the child and the cork... but who can take a beloved lovie from a girl who hasn't been home in over four months?

Not me.

Not you either.

Step BACK.

He he

Her paci is attached to this cutest taggie blanket (made by Cuz Lori). This whole attaching the paci to the blanket thing is something my Mom came up with when H kept loosing his paci ("bice" as he called it, don't ask me!) in his covers or behind his bed or under his bed while he was sleeping. He couldn't find the tiny pacifier in the dark on it's lonesome but he could find it if it was attached to a furry blanket.

My Mom is a genius. Seriously.



Soooooo the cutest thing about her with her taggie-corker-blanket is that she always finds the couple tags that are made with the butterfly ribbon and slips her lil fingers through the loops. The butterfly ribbons are soft on the inside because of how they're woven and she likes that.

And I like her. She melts my heart. I'd like to give her the world if I could, she's such a gift.

That's all.

Goodnight.

Light and Free

These are my favorites.

These are two of my favorites giving my other favorite goodbye kisses.

Yes, I said goodbye kisses.

Biggest favorite bid littlest favorites and I farewell for nine days as he travels to Africa to try to get our visas so we can hopefully return to our home country soon! He’ll have a bunch of meetings while he’s at it and get caught up with many co-workers. And I'm left behind with two kiddos in not one of the three (count them, three) places I can call home, but in a fourth place. Oh my.

But it’s a good thing.

Except I miss him already.

And he just left two minutes ago.

Just kidding. He left 27 hours and 53 minutes ago.

True story.

Aaaaaanyway... after he left, we relocated to another host-home in Amman. We made some (more) fast-friends and they have kiddos like ours, so they graciously allowed us to move in so that their family can keep my family company and then I may not go stark raving mad without Mikey to help me with the chillins.

What a blessing.

Anyway, before this post gets much longer I’d like to state that life is not fair.

As if you didn’t already know this.

Wanna know why I am stating this particular fact on this particular evening?

Cause all Mikey packed for nine days was this:

One small backpack. One small bag.

That’s it.

The end.

Just look at him on his way out…

So unencumbered by stuff and kids and more stuff and wifey and more stuff.

And no stroller.

I don't understand.

I mean, he just put on his backpack, slung the satchel over his shoulder and walked out the door. But not before I cried and begged him not to go. And not before Sweet N asked him 493 times "Go?" "Go?" "Go?" while looking around the place for her shoes, poor thing.

Once he managed to get free from my death grip he just strolled on down the hill. He strolled. Not the pushing-a-child-in-contraption-with-wheels type of stroll. Duh. But the leisurely/meander/saunter type of stroll. Then he just turned the corner to begin his journey, all light and free. Headed on a solo African adventure.

God bless ‘im.

Meanwhile, I gathered just a few things to take to our ‘new place’ for nine days. I don’t think could use any of the words ‘light’ 'or ‘free’ to describe the packing job I did.

Oh, whatever. I’m over trying to pack light. Over it. Totally and completely.

K, wait. If I'm honest, I do dream of boarding a plane with nothing but a slim handbag over my shoulder and a Starbucks coffee in my hand. But I am also a realist and I know that won’t happen this side of heaven. It’s just not me folks. It did happen once (minus the coffee), but I was tricked into it. And then I got engaged. But that story is for another time.

What I was saying is that I've accepted my fate as an over-packer, that's all.

And on a closing note, I'd like to say that I'm super stinking happy for my husband, who gets nine days to be light and free. It must feel so good. :)

The Sounds of Life, Sleeping and Waking

We have been in the same flat (aka apartment) in the conservative part of Amman for nearly a month now. I like it here. I like the views and the breeze and the people and the sunsets and the little grocery down the hill. I like the neighborhood in general.

This is the building across the street.

Most nights I have fallen asleep to the sound of dice rolling on the backgammon board.

That’s nice. I like it.

And most mornings I wake up to the sound of this school’s loudspeaker. Here, ‘loud’ is the understatement of the year.

That’s not so nice. I don't like it.

The school day begins as the woman calls the girls to order. At least I think that is what she is doing. Her voice is loud enough that the lady may as well snuck into my bedroom at night and placed a megaphone exactly one half inch from my ear. A really crackly, old, annoying sounding megaphone.

We’re talking loud loud.

During the next half-hour this lady leads calisthenics (no, I don’t participate, thankyouverymuch), recitations, anthems, introduces solo singing performances (?!), does some sort of prayers (I assume), possibly leads a flag raising ceremony and I don’t know what else. And then she occasionally calls out some poor student for some of her apparently awful behavior and embarrasses the poor student to death. I don’t tell what she is saying, exactly, but I can tell it’s not nice and the girl has got to be mortified.

I hate that part, especially.

Then the girls file into the school one by one as a re-mix of Arabic songs are continually blasted for the entire side of the mountain to hear.

Needless to say, we haven’t been sleeping very late.