Many Updates!

So since I haven't been able to upload any pictures on the blog due to technical problems. I just figured out how to from Bud's phone so this might be a bit of a picture overload! And be sure to keep scrolling down after the pictures to see a couple of videos!

The past month has been our first official "home school month" for Elisha. It is pretty intimidating to think about homeschooling my child. But many have been encouraging and we are just taking one day at a time. I've really enjoyed it so far and really the flexibility in it is perfect for what we do. A lot of times, what I teach him ends up being unexpected trips around here. My mind has been expanded to teach beyond just a book and lesson plans... cause that's how I roll.

Angeline has been staying with us. She will be moving into house three soon! Speaking of. Yesterday a group of college age guys that are here on a team for a few months, came and painted house three. What an unexpected blessing! They will come back to help finish and move in furniture so that we can get our next home "planted" and growing. I can't wait. We are going to have a BIG party!

So Angeline has been joining in on Elisha's school and she helps motivate him. She didn't know a lick of english coming into our house except for the "if youre happy and you know it clap your hands" song. Random. So I try teaching her some english during school time too. We have school on our front porch... most mornings.

Several weeks ago when Bud's parents were around, we took them to the dairy farm that we buy our cows from. It was perfect since the vocabulary word for Elisha was "calf" and there were a lot of them there....

That'd be Elisha plugging his nose saying "ewie!"

Ian, our "Kenyan son", who lives in our guesthouse with Caleb, is on break from school at the moment. We were planning a family vacation to the coast but that didn't work out. (due to time and finances... we're planning one at the end of a summer FULL of teams and visitors) We wanted to do something where we take the boys and enjoy a family getaway.

SO, we have decided to take a weekend trip and go camping. It'll be the cheapest trip we have planned thus far. I love to camp and we felt the kids are now getting to where we think they'll be fun to go with. We shall see!

Here's Bud with his boys, trying to figure out how to work this pressure kerosene lamp.... not so sure the fire is supposed to be outside of the lamp! Oh dear, and we haven't even left yet... who knows what our camping trip entails...

A few other random pictures from this past week.

What have I been busy doing?

Sometimes it's pushing these little guys around....

Or cleaning up after this little sweet pea....

Or being entertained by this little dude...

Or currently keeping these two growing preschoolers fed, loved, and bathed. Ish, the bath water at night is terrifying! They usually play great together but at times there's some pretty intense fighting. Angelina can hold her ground pretty well around this tough dude. She is NOT shy by any means. Let's just say these two keep me on my toes!

But then I've had a chance to escape reality and go relax on our hammock with my baby girl

Yesterday morning we had our second session with our house parents and potential future house parents. It is still so hard to decide which couple will be in house three. We are still leaning in the hear the Lord. It was another enjoyable lesson of teaching and learning lessons on parenting. I so look forward to Tuesday mornings.

All of our Mattaw children are on break. They go to tution in the mornings for a few hours. Every school does that here. It is an extra set of lessons that is basically extra tutoring. And yesterday when I went out to Mattaw I discovered some of our children are getting rashes and our house parents think it could be an outbreak of measles. OH, great! So we'll be taking them in shifts to the Dr. Can't wait to have our clinic up and running by next year!

Keep scrolling down to see a precious video of our Mattaw children...