These amazing kids!

My kids are awesome. No really.

One year ago, we were a normal (mostly) suburban family. Their days were spent at school, daycare, sports, and playing with their friends in our amazing neighborhood. Life was good.

Over the past year, my kids have moved homes five times, said goodbye to all that they knew several times, ate strange food that they had never seen before, and have kept a loving and happy spirit throughout all of these changes.

Now, life is also good. Today the kids helped Carl and I do all our laundry for the week (we have access to a washing machine! Yay! We don’t care that it is halfway across town!) We took them out to lunch. It was the first time all week that they had left our tiny house where we do homeschool and clean all day long. The dry season brings so much dirt and dust into the house that we would not be remiss to clean the house every 2 hours!

Then when we got home they helped Carl clean the yard, raking the dead grass and collecting all of our trash into a pile to burn. We have no trash service here, we have to burn all of the trash that we have. Remember us the next time you roll your trashcans down to the curb!

Next up: mango picking. Our mango tree is exuberantly dropping mangoes all over our yard, and we love it!

I think of everything that my kids have done in the past year, and I am truly amazed by them. They have voluntarily sold all of their toys, moved overseas, lived in excruciatingly poor circumstances, and they have kept kind hearts and spirits. In fact, their hearts have grown, and I know that they have learned to care about people in a way that they would never have learned if Carl and I had taken the easy path and stayed in our comfortable house with our comfortable lives. Now we know that we can have fun without electricity or any of the comforts of life in a first world country. Uno by candlelight, fun! Sleeping on the porch, fun! 

I am so proud of these amazing kids!

Back to Haiti... and loving it!

Here we are, back in Haiti. I was amazed by the kindness of strangers as my kids and I flew here without Carl. Everyone was helpful and nice to the children, from airline employees to fellow travelers. When we arrived, we got to experience the awesomeness of the new Port-au-Prince airport. It was clean! Air-conditioned! Organized! What a difference that made. Then we saw Carl at the exit and all was right in the world. Having our family apart is really difficult for all of us, we were so happy to see him.

Our house is unchanged, except that it is the dry season here so the dust is even more unrelenting in its quest to find its way into our house, our clothes, our food, and our eyes. I could focus on the 8 cockroaches Carl killed one night in our bathroom (one got away), or the fact that we have an undetermined amount of mice living behind our fridge and they nested in the bookshelf where we keep all our school books (we have caught 5 so far), or I could be annoyed that the power is being testy and the dark nights take some getting used to, but all in all I have felt really good about this trip back.

Our first couple of days we had dinner with friends, went to a fish fry, cleaned and unpacked, and even went to the beach with some wonderful missionary friends. Carl has been very busy at his job managing the fish farm for Operation Blessing. He loves his job and it allows us to be able to have a car to drive around and to have extra money for food. I am still getting used to how expensive food is here! I started homeschooling the kids already, I just love watching their minds figure out new ideas. I also love their nap time… but what mom doesn’t? J

Today as part of our home school we are going to plant seeds in old egg containers I had been saving. Once the seeds sprout and are strong we will take them over to the Good Rest garden and plant them. They are having trouble with the garden and it is my top priority to help them have a producing garden before we leave. 

It was such a wonderful welcome back to Haiti for our kids and for me. I was very worried about coming back, but so far, everything has been much better than expected. I can’t believe we are already halfway through the year that we committed to being here. We have so much more that we want to do here! 

With love from Haiti!!!