Days Fifteen & Sixteen - Flying By

Time seems to be flying by these days. Suddenly that paper chain made by Josiah and zealously shortened each day by the boys is looking delightfully short!

Jeff's teaching is over; and in fact, as I write this, he is saying goodbye to his host family and preparing to go south with the team to visit the Dead Sea, Masada, Qumran, then back to Jerusalem for the night before heading over to Tel Aviv on Sunday to spend some time there before flying out early Monday morning for HOME!!!

Jeff sent some more pictures which I was delighted about. Here he is with his host family who have been incredibly hospitable and gracious.
And here he is with one of his classes.
On Thursday evening, the English camp teachers and assistants and host families (and probably others that I'm leaving out) had a potluck and celebration/ceremony, with delicious food, Arab dancing, etc. Once again, the local news covered the event. For LOTS of pictures, click here. To help you spot him, I'll just let you know that Jeff is NOT wearing red silk pants, in case you suspected that he might have been transformed into a dancer by all this time in the Middle East. :) (He's actually wearing a blue shirt.)

Pic of the day from Israel: looking towards the ocean in Tel Aviv. This picture seriously makes me long to be there, walking along the tayelet (promenade)--a place where we spent countless hours when we lived there.

As has been our custom during Jeff's absence, we've been keeping ourselves busy and have had lots of fun activities the past two days. Our friend Janet Blosser from church invited us to go to the park with her yesterday. She packed a scrumptious picnic lunch for us with all the things two young boys would like to eat (and even garden-fresh mint tea and tomato sandwiches for me!), gamely chased the boys around the kids' castle at Purcell Park, carried Tobin to give my arms a break while twisting through narrow openings and climbing numerous steps...then topped it all off by treating us to Kline's ice cream at the end. What a treat! :)

Last evening, just about the time I was looking in the refrigerator and wondering what on earth I was going to serve for dinner besides leftover lentil stew, Dad called and asked me if I would like to go to Country Cookin' for dinner. Would I?! The boys and I were all delighted to go to Plan B for the evening, and we had a wonderful dining experience--literally, one of the best there in recent memory. First of all, our server was Maria Yoder, the daughter of one of my high school teachers; and it was fun to meet her and chat a bit. Second, David was a hungry little tiger and gobbled up his first plate of food, actually wanted more, then with my help ate a second plate of food. (Just so I'll remember in years to come what David, at this stage of life, likes to eat at Country Cookin', I'll mention that he ate cold kidney beans and grated cheese from the salad bar and corn, green beans, and pinto beans from the veggie bar...think he had enough beans?...but hey, that's what he likes!...Josiah, on the other hand, goes heavily towards the fruit when we eat there, although he likes plain romaine lettuce as one of his food choices, too...someday I'll take my camera and take a picture of each of our plates because we're all so different!) It was so refreshing to actually see David eating heartily, rather than sitting and lingering and having to be persuaded to eat his food. Third, Tobin was a happy camper the whole time. He sat in the carseat and looked around at everything but didn't fuss a bit. Usually when we're there, my dad (who is a fast eater and finishes first, unless Jeff beats him) ends up holding Tobin when he gets restless in his carseat and carrying him around while the rest of us finish. But last night was just so relaxing with everyone being happy and content. :)

Another historic moment from last night that Josiah wanted me to mention: he offered to help David get buckled in his carseat when we got in the van--a first. Since both Josiah and David had their carseats in the back seat of the van, it was a little awkward to reach back there to buckle David; but I had not made any effort to teach him how to do it himself. I was grateful for Josiah's offer of help (although, of course, I would check David's straps, too, to make sure they were done properly)...but then, even better, David learned how to buckle himself! I've written before about how tired I sometimes get of buckling and unbuckling carseats, but recently I've usually had a much better attitude about it and haven't tried to jump ahead to the next step of Josiah and David both being able to take care of themselves in that area. But let me tell ya, if they're ready to make that leap, I'm ready, too! :)

Yet another historic moment happened today, and this time I had my camera handy so I could capture it for posterity. Josiah, for the first time, fed some baby food to Tobin! He asked if he could, and, well, who am I to say no? :) So I let him have a go, and he did well! He didn't end up feeding the whole serving of oatmeal to Tobin, but he did sit there for a while and shovel it in. If he keeps this up, I'll just be able to sit around and put my feet up while I watch him take care of everything! ;)

After reading on this blog that Josiah had done a 100 piece puzzle by himself, my parents dug around in their storage in the basement of my dad's office and unearthed a box that had quite a few puzzles that we had done as children. I had forgotten all about them, but fortunately my parents had not...and they brought them up to our house for Josiah to enjoy. He jumped right in and did this puzzle this morning while...
...my friend Nell-Marie was here visiting. She just had a baby, beautiful Anna, a few weeks ago; but oh my, she is so on top of things, sending out beautiful birth announcements and handmade thank-you notes, getting out and about with two children, etc. I'm impressed! :) I thoroughly enjoyed the time we had together, just sitting (on the floor--where else?) and chatting about life and childbirth and kids, etc.

In between these various events, the boys and I have had time here at home to cuddle and play games and read books and blow bubbles and visit with the neighbors and swing and--groan--chase and capture a chicken who seems bent on self-destruction, as evidenced by its insistence on getting out of the safety of its pen to wander dangerously close to Molly's jaws. It happened last night and again this evening, but I'm getting smarter. The first thing I do is tie up Molly. The second thing I do is enlist help to stand at strategic places to halt the chicken's advance in those directions. Then I move in slowly before pouncing on the silly chicken and tossing it back into the pen. I feel a little dumb when I admit this, but I didn't realize chickens could fly so high. We're going to have to take some drastic measures to rearrange the chickens' living quarters so they can't get out. At least Jeff will be back in a few days and will be able to deal with it much more effectively than I. Hurry home, Jeff, we need you to fix the chicken coop...and for a few other reasons than that! ;)