Remembering Christmas 2005

This was Christmas 2005, 4 months after moving to Cameroon and we had only been in our house in the rainforest for 2 months. Besides our leafy branches that we tied together to make a 'tree' (that had to be replaced every few days when they wilted) and decorated with the few ornaments that we had packed as well as some tissue paper circles to make a tree collage on the wall and green and red construction paper for the Christmas chain...what else do you really need to be festive? We also painted noodles to make a garland for our 'tree' hoping that no bugs would eat it, just the weevils that already came in the bag. Notice my sweat-glistened face...no snow this year! It was fun making new traditions and coming up with creative way to celebrate the birth of Christ.
It's hard for me to remember our kids being this little! We took a little girl, a toddler and a baby over with us in 2005!
That Christmas we gave out rice, salt, bouillon cubes and candy at the village to over 60 families. Also, Nestor and Samba, two Baka guys that were living next door to us, told the story of Jesus' birth from a picture book someone had given them. Doesn't this picture look so different from your church's Christmas service? We are glad to show our kids our American culture, but at the same time enjoy reminding them how simple life in Cameroon is and how we enjoyed it just as much because we were together as a family.

Children's Inn at NIH

This weekend we went to the National Institutes of Health in DC to get more blood tests done and meet with the tropical disease specialists. It turns out that we all have strongeloides, which is a worm that comes from soil. It's easily treatable with a one time dose of medicine. Nandry and Nathan are the only ones of the five of us who have filaria (more specifically: loa loa), a slightly more serious parasite that lives in your blood. A month from now we need to draw more blood, then Nathan and Nandry can be treated. Fortunately, neither of them are experiencing symptoms yet and we are happy that the doctors caught it so quickly and we can clear it up. All of this, since we are part of their study on filaria, is done free of charge for us, so it's been a huge blessing!

This time, in DC, we stayed at the Children's Inn, which is a part of NIH. It was awesome! From the moment we got there, they pampered the kids. Stuffed animals as a welcome gift, dinner donated and served by a local charity organization, a huge 'don't-pick-up-after-yourself-we-have-someone-who-does-that-every-evening' playroom, more toys and crafts with local high school kids, a Santa's Secret Workshop available for each of our kids to pick and wrap presents for 4 members of their family, a stocked food pantry for breakfast and snacks and more little gifts waiting for them in our personal mailbox in the morning! Almost made them forget the whole clinic visit and needles, almost!
Here's a picture of the kids with their loot...I'm a bit excited to see what they picked out as presents for Nathan, me and each other (I heard something about "Daddy's really going to LOVE that pirate guy from that movie"....hmmm?).

"Well the weather outside is"...GREAT, actually!

There's so much excitement and fun stuff going on this time of year. We are all soaking it up and celebrating the holidays by making new "stateside" traditions. The kids had a blast decorating the tree, and they love the nativity scene and other decorations around the house. Yesterday, Asher lined Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, wise men and animals up single file to see baby Jesus. He's learning a lot from preschool! :)

So Much Fun at Thanksgiving!

Though the weather was cold, we had so much fun with the cousins and the great variety of stuff to do at Pop's house!