Famine

I had a hard time finishing my turkey sandwich today at lunch when I saw this picture of a child on a yahoo news article I was reading about the famine currently in the Horn of Africa...

There are just no words when I look at this picture. Somalia is suffering its worst drought in over 60 years. The United Nations has recently reported 3.2 MILLION people out of 7.5 million people (that is 43%) in Somalia are in need of immediate, life saving assistance... meaning if they don't get the help they need, they will die. Can you imagine, as a parent, watching your children starve to death or have NO water to drink?

Here is the article on yahoo from the Associated Press if you want to read more....link

and here is an article that I was reading off of Samaritan's Purse's website today...link

Some people say that they don't give because they don't think the money gets to the right place, or it gets used up in administrative costs. Those people are probably right some of the time, but I don't think God will ever fault the giver in the end for having good intentions that didn't work out. I have been reading Francis Chan's "Crazy Love" this summer and it has really challenged me and the level of compassion I have for the poor. Read Matthew 25:31-46 today if you want to be challenged as well! World Vision and Samaritan's Purse are two organizations that we believe in their mission and trust if you want to get involved.

Splish Splash!

We had a great last weekend here in Morgantown. Krepps Park has a public pool that we wanted to visit one last time before we left. There is a kid area at this pool that Eli has LOVED. If you look really close in this picture you can see Eli wading through the water. :)

Eli is really pretty good about sharing stuff. However, he has not mastered the concept of waiting in line for his turn. There is usually a line at the top of this slide 4-5 kids deep. Eli pushes to the front of the line and climbs in the slide in front of whoever was about to go. We have corrected him many times and even gone up on the platform to show him how to "wait" but it doesn't always stick with him.

On our last trip here, there were two boys, probably 9 or 10 years old, that looked a little big for this play area but were sliding down with the rest of the kids. Eli did his usual of cutting to the front of the line in front of one of these boys. He grabbed hold of the slide to go down and right before he made it free one of the boys grabbed hold of him by his legs. He told Eli to let go that it was his turn and Eli held onto that slide with a death grip and would not let go. Marc was quickly up on the platform to intervene. He told Eli to let go and get back in line and Eli complied. Then, the boy looked at Marc and said, "You want me to smack him for ya?" Ha! Marc kindly turned down the request. Shortly after, that same boy came up to me and told me not to worry about Eli, that he was going to look out for him. So, every time Eli got in line for the slide, this kid took him to the front and explained to all the other kids that he was a baby and didn't understand and to let him go down first. It was the funniest thing to watch this all play out. Eli avoided a "smacking" and he got to cut in line so it was a win-win for him. :)

Hailey has lots of fun as well splashing in the water. The edge to the kids' area is shallow enough that she can crawl around a little bit or sit and splash. When she gets tired of the water we go hang out on the towel and enjoy a snack. She loves cramming food in her right cheek. Can you tell?

We really enjoyed having pool access at our apartment as well. It was always a guarantee that Eli would eat all of his dinner if we told him we would take him to the pool afterwards! Eli is a great swimmer for his age. Marc lets him go all the way in the water when he jumps in the pool and Eli loves it. He unfortunately thinks he can swim so we have to keep a close eye on him. He doesn't always wait on us before he jumps. I am so glad he loves the water!

Saturday night after our day in the sun, Marc and I slipped away after the kids had gone to bed for our anniversary dinner. Our friends who live in the apartment above us have their Canadian nanny here this week and were willing to share her with us for a night. She only speaks French so we decided that for Eli's sake it would be best if we went out after he was asleep. It worked out great and we enjoyed a nice two hour dinner! Our food was delicious from start to finish. :)

Our final week is almost half-way over now. We are leaving after lunch on Friday to start our LONG journey back to Wichita. We are planning on staying at Marc's parent's house Friday night to break up the 19 hour trip. We have had so much fun here, but I feel ready to get back to Wichita and settle in a bit to our new apartment there. I feel like Eli has missed out on interacting with other kids his age while we have been here, so I am looking forward to reintroducing him in a week to his daycare friends. It should be fun!

Six years

I am thankful today for six wonderful years of marriage to my best friend and hopeful for many more to come. Happy Anniversary Marc!

Our Week in the Bathroom and Kitchen

We have done a lot of two things this week... potty training and cooking. Not things you would normally associate together, but it is what it is. :) For the past few weeks we have been doing a sticker chart with Eli in the bathroom. He was still wearing diapers, but we would give him a sticker if he peed in the potty and also a cookie if his diaper was dry when he went.

We decided that we needed to just jump in at some point to see if he was really ready to potty train. So, on Monday I took him to buy some big boy undies and he has been wearing them mostly during the day since. He is having a few accidents each day (only two today!), but he does seem to be slowly catching on, (I am mostly telling him when to go at this point) so we are going to stick with it for now. I have a low threshold currently for when he gets rewarded because I want to keep him interested. I am very ready to be changing diapers on ONE hiney instead of two. We are leaving for Africa in a little over five months and it would be a huge help to have Eli toilet trained by then.

We have had several people over for dinner since we have been here in Morgantown. We have mostly invited people out of Marc's tropical medicine class that we wanted to get to know a little bit better. Many of the people taking this class are doing or will be doing medical mission work so it is neat to see all the places many of these families are going. There are also a few nurses who work for MSF (like Doctors without Borders, a secular humanitarian aid group) who are from Canada and Switzerland. It was so much fun getting to know them this week. One of the many interesting things I learned is that Canada offers a 12 month paid maternity leave (which can even be split up between the husband and wife if they want so both parents can stay home with their baby until six months!) and Switzerland offers six months. What?!? They were shocked to find out that working moms here only have a doctor excused leave for 6-8 weeks depending on the type of delivery. It is so fun getting to know people of different walks of life, and I always love an excuse to spend some time in the kitchen preparing a meal. :)

I haven't put up any recipes lately so I thought I would throw in a dessert recipe today. I found this on a blog a few weeks ago and decided to put it to the test this week. I am usually a little hesitant to try new recipes on guests, but I figured it would be pretty hard to mess up fruit in a pie crust. This was an EASY recipe. I really don't think you could mess this one up. The most time consuming part was peeling and slicing the peaches. I made it two nights in a row and it was devoured on both occassions. If the peaches where you live are as good as they are here right now then try this recipe!

Blueberry Peach Galette
Serves 4-6

1 pie crust rolled to 12 inches
3 cups fresh (or frozen) peach slices
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1/8 cup of sugar
1 Tbs. apricot preserves

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Mix the peaches, blueberries, and sugar in a bowl and set aside. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and roll out the pie crust. Place the fruit mixture in the center leaving a 3 inch border. Bring up the sides of the pie crust and pinch to seal in several places. Warm the preserves for a few seconds in the microwave. Brush the pie crust and the top of the fruit filling with the preserves. Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes and then turn down the oven to 350 and bake for an additional 20 minutes. You will probably either have juice run out underneath the crust onto the paper or it will pool a little in the center but it still tastes great either way. You could probably mix in some flour or corn starch to your fruit mixture to help thicken the juice some. I think it all depends on how much water is in your fresh fruit. I served this with a scoop of ice cream. You can go to this blog post if you like step-by-step instructions.