Just Stuff...

 It's December.  I can't even believe it.  It so does NOT feel like December.  The weather here has gotten hotter and hotter.  Last week we reached 40 degrees celsius and thought we might actually cook inside our own flesh.  Thankfully, the weather has come down a bit in temperature and it's a nice cool 32 deg outside today.  In the shade.

Life here is good, thanks for asking.  We have been really busy. I'm not sure what has kept us so busy but it's been busy nonetheless.

So here are some photos of life here, just so you feel like you know what we're up to....

Here's Teddy enjoying the dogs. Teddy gets peanut butter on his face EVERY SINGLE MORNING.  So the dogs enjoy it when he gets down and lets them wash him.  He giggles and giggles.  I love this shot.

Last Sunday was Ethan's fourteenth birthday.  FOURTEEN!!  As if!  I can't believe that either.  When I think that time here in Africa is going slow I just think about how fast the last fourteen years have gone and I know we will be home in a blink of an eye.

Ethan hates cake.  So every year we have to come up with a non-cake birthday dessert.  This year he wanted doughnuts and without a Tim Hortons in the neighbourhood, we decided to try making our own.  They are ugly little things but they tasted great!

Here he is blowing out the candles on his doughnuts.  Fourteen candles wouldn't fit, so we put six.  

He asked for crazy African pants.  So we found some fabric with fish (turns out he's quite the angler out here.  The men have taken him fishing twice and both times he was the ONLY one who caught anything!)  and got some crazy pants made.

The only thing he really wanted for his birthday was a coup-coup, which is the french/togo term for a machete.  So, we gave in and bought the boy a machete.  He already has a big scar on his shin from a little machete mishap, so I can only imagine what a new, sharp, African coup-coup will leave on his body.  But he does look genuinely happy.

And for the boy blog readers, this is the Transalp.  I think that Nate looks like one of the guys from Chips when he rides it BUT, I do have to admit that it's fun to ride on.  He and I whip around town on this big green machine.  The other day a woman in our neighbourhood came home from her fields very very sick.  They came and got us to take her to the hospital.  Nate drove and they put the sick woman on the back, and then behind her (to hold her on) was another woman, so the three of them drove off to the hospital.  Turns out she had a nasty case of malaria and passed out on the way there.  Nate carried her into the hospital "fireman style", not understanding a word of what they were telling him to do.  But thankfully, they treated her and she is home and fine.  Three people on a moto is not uncommon here.  Five is even pretty common and looks pretty funny.  We saw a guy carrying a cow on his moto the other day.  

And then today we had a guy take our gate to be fixed...on his moto.  Check this out.

Our "garage door" broke off the hinge, so we called this welder.  He came on his moto, put the door on and then sat on it.  About 30 minutes later he was back with it fixed and ready to install.  Talk about customer service!!

So while the door was off, Nate decided the Transalp needed a bath.  That attracted a few hundred African children.

So we bathed the Transalp and half the neighbourhood kids.  All in all, a productive afternoon.  It took us about 10 minutes to round up all the kids and get them out of our yard so we could have lunch.  In fact, one of the mothers in the neighbourhood had to come and help us.  

So that's us over the last little bit, just the stuff of daily life.