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!