Morning motorcycle ride

Good morning! I'm Jerod. Since I'm now one year old, I can ride a motorcycle. This is me headed off for a joyride on my bike. I'm going to the farm, obviously, since I'm in my overalls. I've got some business there to attend to, but I'll be home soon and expect a big welcome back after my little trip around the living room!

Aw... polar bears!

For Christmas, Zarya got a pair of super cute, cozy pajamas. They have a little polar bear all decked out in a scarf and hat on the shirt, and like 50 polar bears on the matching fleece trousers. Because, you know, what's really cuter and sweeter to bundle up your little girl in at bedtime than a fuzzy polar bear pajama set? After all, polar bears are one of the only animals (crocodiles are another - how about some crocodile-patterned summer pajamas?) that will hunt humans for food. How about let's put our daughters to bed with a pack of bears all printed all over their tender, meaty legs.

Don't get me wrong, I like polar bear decor as much as anyone else. In fact, my favorite Christmas mug features the Coca-Cola Always Cool polar bear, because nothing says peace on earth, goodwill to men more than cuddly faces like these three below:

Christmas 2015

We had a holly, jolly Christmas, and we hope you did, too! In lieu of listing presents and activities, I thought my Christmas post this year would feature some food photos. :-) Andrew got a new camera a month or two ago, and he took some food pictures this year, in addition to the usual mix of kids and gifts and Christmas tree shots. I think they turned out pretty well and deserved to be featured, in order to make you all hungry!

But first, an interesting observation...

Andrew and I have celebrated eight Christmases together, in a variety of locations:

2008 - My parents' house in Olympia, Washington

2009 - Andrew's parents' house in Arch Cape, Oregon

2010 - Our Mwisenge house in Musoma, Tanzania

2011 - Our Makoko house in Musoma, Tanzania

2012 - Andrew's sister's house in Warrenton, Oregon

2013 - Our Makoko house in Musoma, Tanzania

2014 - Our house in Indiana, Pennsylvania

2015 - Our house in Indiana, Pennsylvania

As you can see, being in the same place two years in a row is rather out of the ordinary for us!

Breakfast

Way back when Andrew and I were children, we both had cinnamon rolls every year for Christmas breakfast. Upon getting married, it was easy to figure out what we were going to have as our family's Christmas breakfast tradition! We have had cinnamon rolls for every Christmas breakfast since we got married. There were also some accompaniments of eggs, sausage (for Andrew), and winter fruit compote (what you see the remnants of on my plate). Andrew said that my fruit compote looked like something a monkey vomited up, or something like that, and declined eating it. I think sausage smells like a pig who got too close to a hot frying pan, and declined eating that, so we were even.

Dinner

Dinner was seafood soup, made by Andrew. It had mussels, shrimp, and cod in it, and it was pretty good. We liked it enough to want to tweak it a bit and have it again. Since we had clam chowder last year for Christmas dinner and seafood soup this year, it seems that we're starting a seafood tradition for Christmas.

Dessert

Dessert was Pumpkin Cranberry Cake. There are also pecans and raisins inside, and it's pretty good stuff! Maybe it's earned a spot as a Sandeen holiday classic, too. This was my and Zarya's first time to make it, and we are still enjoying it days later.

Family vs. Jesus

Okay, so the title of this post is a little out there, but hey, it got your attention, didn't it?

I just read my parents' annual Christmas letter, and it contained the following line: "We enjoy our family, but we worship Jesus." What a great reminder!

It is December 9th, and the stores, music, decor, and everything (it seems - except the weather, which is oddly warm) is telling me it is Christmastime. In general, people divide the Christmas season into two categories: material holiday ("worldly Christmas") vs. happy traditions with your family ("good Christian Christmas"). Jesus would be included in the latter, since he is a traditional part of Christmas.

I hear plenty of people saying that we need to remember the real reason for the season and how Christmas should be about Jesus, not presents. What I also hear is a lot about family. But is Christmas about family? Isn't it supposed to be about Jesus? But doesn't Jesus want us to be with our families and love them? Families are good, right?

I know some families who don't celebrate with any/many presents. They have a big fun day together as a family, but don't give any (or many) presents. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they are worshiping Jesus any more than those who have ceiling-high piles of stuff that takes them all day to open. Both situations could be about people having a really great day with their families as they celebrate Christmas, one is just a less-expensive version. Is either situation more or less about Jesus? Not necessarily.

This isn't a blog post with an answer, so you can read the above questions and think about them and draw whatever conclusion you wish. Personally, I think celebrations are a lot more fun with other people. The people with whom I usually choose to celebrate things (such as Jesus' birthday) are my family. If you want to dig back into history, God commanded the Israelites to celebrate Passover and other big holidays with their families (and friends and neighbors at times, too). Small families were supposed to share their Passover lambs with others, so as to create a bigger group with which to celebrate.

So, let's enjoy being with our families as we worship Jesus, and let us not confuse the two!

Cheerios

Jerod would like to give you a tutorial on how to eat Cheerios. Since Cheerios are clearly the best food in the world, this is a very important skill.

Are you paying attention? This is how it's done!

You have to pull them out of the far reaches of the tray, which is very tricky.

Next, once it's within reach again, you have to pinch them between a finger and a thumb. Concentrate - so much can go wrong on this step! 

Get it up to your mouth without dropping it, then smash it in.

Delish!

Pandemic Board Game

I had heard of cooperative board games but didn't really understand what that meant until I actually played one. The concept of all players being on one team so that everyone was working together and all would win or all would lose as one seemed rather cheesy. I mean, let's all be honest, what's the fun in not getting to beat anybody else? It sounded like a modern twist on the old Ungame (board game in which you talk about your feelings and there is no winner or loser).

Well, let me tell you, there is a lot of fun to be had in Pandemic! Sara and Julie, two friends from Hope College were here visiting over the weekend, and Julie brought the game with her. We played six rounds of it all in one day, just because it was very fun, and we were determined to win. Finally, on the sixth round we got it. I think if we won too easily, it wouldn't be as much fun, since in a game with four players, you should only win about 1/4 of the time (I know, I know, that's not how it really works, but if all players were equal and luck distributed evenly, that's how it should pan out). Having a cooperative game that is a true challenge made us all put our heads together and try to plan moves out for each player in advance in hopes that we might win. Guess what? It was really fun!

Should you be interested in aforementioned game, it appears that the cheapest place to buy it is on Amazon: Pandemic on Amazon

I highly recommend it!

On this date...

November 25 is one month before Christmas, is sometimes Thanksgiving day and is always Thanksgiving week, at least, and is a memorable day for us - the anniversary of The Flood and Jerod's birthday!

Way back in 2011, we had a week to remember. We had recently returned from vacation, and I returned with cases of both malaria and dengue fever. Just in case one mosquito-borne illness wasn't enough, I picked up two. I've never been so exhausted in my life! I missed an entire week of work because I was lying on my couch either asleep or acutely miserable most of that time.

Our amazing friend Holly was living next door to us at the time, and I remember one day she came over for dinner. I had mustered the energy to attempt to cook, but halfway through I told her, "I think I need to sit down." I guess I looked like I was going to fall over right then and there, because she ran and got me a chair and made the rest of the meal herself while I sat there. I don't think I managed to eat anything.

Thursday of that week was Thanksgiving, and I left the house for the first time that evening, and ate my first food of the week at Thanksgiving dinner. And then on November 25, we awoke to rain on Friday morning, and then THIS is what happened: http://www.amsandeen.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html

To keep things exciting, that very night we had visitors from America arrive for a visit, too! Just in case being doubly sick, a flooded house, and a big holiday weren't enough, how about two guests coming? Of course the runway in town was flooded, too, so they had to fly into a city several hours away and we didn't know how or when they'd actually be arriving in town, and they had no way to contact us...

On November 25, 2014, we had another "visitor" arrive - Jerod! He wasn't due until mid-December, but he wanted to arrive early, and I certainly wasn't opposed to the idea. Because he was born on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we skipped last year's celebration. It seemed a bit much to try to put on a big dinner on our first day home from the hospital. We were certainly very thankful for our healthy little boy, though. We were also very thankful for a house that wasn't flooded, and not being sick with malaria or dengue fever!

Flowers from our backyard (former backyard, that is)

I was looking through a folder of pictures on my computer when I came across the flower pictures below, which I took in 2011. This fabulous plant was located in our very own backyard in Musoma. I was fascinated by how the flower grew downwards and spread out as it matured, starting at the top and moving downwards over time. It was about 18 inches long (.5 meter) when fully in bloom. Isn't it beautiful? A friend (who used to live in this house) called it an ornamental banana plant, I believe. The leaves certainly resemble the leaves of a banana plant. They grew to be about 10-12 feet tall - our own tropical jungle!

First and Second Thessalonicans and the Epistle of Jacob

When doing translation work, I am dealing with several languages at once - Ikizu and/or Zanaki, Swahili, English, and Greek. It's easy to keep them all straight except when it comes to names. For example, sometimes if I am writing in English after having been reading Swahili, I will accidentally type "Yesu" instead of "Jesus." I always catch myself right away, and it's not a big deal.

However, the other day I wrote 1 Thessalonicans. It looked wrong, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong about it for a moment. I mean, Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus is called Ephesians, and his letter to the church in Rome is called Romans, his letter to the church in Thessalonica should be called Thessalonicans, right?

Wrong. You forget that this is English we're dealing with! The equivalent of Thessalonicans is what the people of Thessalonica are called in Ikizu, Zanaki, Swahili, Greek, and most other languages around the world (having not done a scientific study of it, I can't give a percentage of that), but oh no, not English. I looked up everything I could think of online that might be enlightening as to why good old English decided to drop a consonant out of the name, but alas, I came up with nothing. Nobody wants to admit the slip-up happened! In all fairness, it probably happened in the Latin Vulgate and good old King James carried the new name over. But as to why it has never been added back in, well, I should write Tyndale and Zondervan and complain!

 And as if that weren't enough to put poor English speakers over the edge, have you ever thought about the name James? Want to know what the name James is in Greek, Swahili, Ikizu, and Zanaki, and many other (sane) languages around the world? Jacob. Oh yes, Jacob.

In Greek, meaning the original New Testament, the name is Iacobus. The name came from Hebrew, where it was Yaaqov (think Yakov, which, if you say it aloud, is easy to hear is nigh about Yacob. Then you have to remember that English likes to turn Y into J). But, all that to say that Iacobus somehow because Iacomus in Latin, and then, English took that and ran far, far away with it. To keep things interesting, English decided that in the Old Testament we could keep Jacob, based on the Hebrew name, but that in the New Testament, we should have James.

If you want to see other "Jacob" names that have ended up in other languages that also got tweaked out by Latin, here's a little sampling: Jaime, Giacomo, Seamus, Hamish, Jack, and Diego.

As for me, if I ever accidentally refer to the Epistle of Jacob, forgive me. I was probably calling it that in Swahili earlier that day. If, however, I start talking about the epistle of Seamus, just send me on a vacation to Ireland, because clearly I need it!

*To be perfectly clear, I want to make sure everyone knows that I still fully believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and the accuracy of these translations!

Child Labor

In the fall in Pennsylvania, even kids have to work!

Freezing Fall Fun at Vale Wood Farms

In the corn box

I asked Zarya if I could take a picture of her having fun (she really loved this corn box, probably because it was semi-indoors and therefore less freezing), and she agreed, but said, "I'm not going to smile, okay?" I waited a little while, but she was determined to not smile for the picture. Crazy toddler! Anyway, her favorite thing was covering her legs in corn. Other kids were making corn snow angels and filling and dumping buckets; it was good fun for a range of ages. Jerod, however, was not allowed in the corn box, because he'd just try to eat the corn, I'm quite sure! The one problem of all of this corn play was when I helped her take off her shoes and socks later at home, corn fell out all over the kitchen floor. And it didn't end there; when she went to the bathroom, more corn came pattering out from inner layers. It was kind of like sand at the beach, except at least your hands feel clean after playing in it!

Brr!

Jerod had a slightly less exciting day. Not being able to walk is a serious hindrance to having fun. He liked about half of the hayride... His highlight was the chickens. I don't know why, but he burst out laughing when he saw them. Also, of course, he liked his picnic lunch. He's a happy eater!

As for me, my highlight was visiting with my friend Shannon! Second place has to go to the coconut ice cream we brought home with us. Yum!

Brownies in the Bathroom

I am not sure at what point one crosses the line between being reasonable and being ridiculous, but the other day I made brownies in the bathroom. Bathrooms are often associated with brown things, but brownies aren't the usual topic.

Jerod was asleep, and I was concerned that the noise of the electric mixer would wake him up. His room is almost directly above where I would normally do my Saturday afternoon baking. I was experimenting with whipping the butter, sugar, and eggs for an extended time after reading about something similar on a baking blog, so the mixer needed to run for quite a while.

We generally try to avoid getting too near the obnoxious end of things, such as refusing to flush toilets, talk, move, or breathe when a baby is napping. But two baby-free hours on a Saturday afternoon is pretty precious, and I was willing to be a little ridiculous!

Oh, and regarding the end result: I think it improved the brownies to do some extra whipping. It also made them larger, because of adding so much extra air to the batter. I ended up with an extra pan of them, in fact; it increased their volume that much. How obnoxious to have an extra pan of brownies...

One important way to pray for single missionaries (that you might not already be thinking of)

So, for an intro to this blog post, please scroll down and read the post about praying for married missionaries. This post is based on the same principle, but there is a different prayer suggestion this time around.

While there are a host of ways to pray for any missionary, a big one for single missionaries is their housemate(s) or lack thereof situation. Most all single missionaries can attest to the fact that it's hard to find and keep a good housemate. Missionaries move a lot, so keeping the same housemate for an extended period is rare. It's exhausting to be frequently changing with whom you are living! Living alone can be financially impractical or emotionally undesirable, although certainly some people enjoy it. However, depending on where in the world a missionary is serving, it might not be a option. Having a housemate with whom you do not mesh well is incredibly stressful, but your missionary friend might not be able to say this outright in a newsletter prayer request. So just because your friend never says she is having a really difficult time with her housemate doesn't mean she's not, and she might really appreciate your prayer support.

You could pray about:

• Getting along well with current housemate
• Having good local friends (it's fun to have friends all over the world, but you also really need some friends who live close to you)
• Comfort through all of the good-byes that come as a part of the missionary life
• Emotional fortitude when to starting over repeatedly

Two case studies:

Hazel Gray

This is Hazel, who has had nine housemates over the past nine years. She's said hello to a lot of strangers and good-bye to a lot of friends as she, and they, have had to move apart for various reasons. Married missionaries say good-byes a lot, too, as they and their friends have to move apart, but at least they have a spouse and perhaps also children transitioning with them. It's rough going for singles to find and keep good friends who live near them. 

Hazel was polite enough to refrain from telling me if any of those nine housemates have been rotten apples, but surely some in that mix have been a bit more difficult to live with. On the positive side, housemate number eight was particularly great, but moved out last month (to get married, so a good reason for losing a housemate, but still difficult). So now Hazel is with housemate number nine, and her life is once again in transition as she adjusts to a new person in her home.

This is my friend who is working in a closed country

This is my friend, whom we'll call Ruth. Ruth works in a "creative access" country in Asia, so I can't be putting details of her up on the internet. She's a missionary who has had some interesting living situations over the past few years - here are just a few: two women who were very good friends with each other and from a different country than Ruth; a pregnant young national living apart from her husband, and later she also lived with the newborn baby; a large national family in a very poor home; and by herself. She is currently living alone, but is expecting a new housemate to move in next week.

Ruth, as is the case with many other single missionaries, has no national counterparts. In the country where she works, women get married when they are young. There are no 30+ single women, except for widows. It can be difficult for nationals to know how to relate to someone who is in a category entirely outside their cultural framework. Sometimes there is not much in common to talk about with other women, and the attention she receives from men is not often of the type she would prefer. So, difficult housing situations aside, friendships are few and far between, too.

Do you have a missionary friend who is working in a culture very different from her own? (And I say "her," because the number of single female missionaries is drastically higher than the number of single male ones.) Perhaps she struggles with similar issues. Pray for her housing situation and friendships with locals!

So, when you think of your single missionary friends, pray for them as they go through the inevitable revolving door of housemates and friends.

One important way to pray for missionary families (that you might not be thinking of already)

Missionaries often ask people to pray for them. They put little lists of prayer requests in their newsletters, and they talk about building prayer teams to support them in their work. If you are like me, you really care about missions and missionaries and want to pray for them, but sometimes you just can't think of a thing to pray about - those little lists are out of sight and out of mind, and you can't remember for the life of you what their current challenges are, and so you pray something very general about God helping them.

I am certainly not advocating that you ignore lists of specific prayer requests or paying attention to what you missionary friends have asked to you pray about, but sometimes when you go to open your fridge you see the prayer card with your friends' smiling faces on it, you are reminded to pray for them, yet your mind is totally blank as to what on earth to pray about for them.

One thing I think most all missionary couples/families (to come in the near future: a blog post about praying for single missionaries) almost always need prayer for is for their time apart from one another. One or more member of missionary families is often traveling or living away from the others. Sometimes these trips are just for one or two nights and sometimes it's a long-term arrangement, but it's very, very common for couples/families to have at least one member away fairly often. 

So when you can't think of what to pray about, pray for them about their time apart:

• safety for the one(s) traveling and the one(s) left at home
• smooth readjustments to them being back together again
• comfort when they are missing each other
• friends and fun to fill in for missing family members
• protection from craziness - everything just seems to go haywire when someone is gone!
• anything else you can think of - there are lots of ways you can think of about how to pray for families being temporarily separated, since many of the issues are the same as ones you might have faced yourself when having a family member away

Here are two examples (among MANY - when coming up with my examples, virtually all the missionaries I know could have been used as good examples, since they all travel a lot):

The Gilmores - Tim, Chris, Camden, Tirzah, and Braden

The Gilmores might be on the extreme end when it comes to dealing with frequent time apart! Tim, Chris, and Braden (youngest) live in Tanzania. Camden lives in the USA, where he's going to college. Tirzah lives in Kenya most of the time, where she's attending high school.  

Tim is often away for a week or two at a time traveling for meetings or to go out to villages. Earlier this year Chris was in Kenya to teach an ESL class for a few weeks. Since Tim also happened to have to be away then, Braden had to stay with another family for a week because both parents were traveling at the same time! He has two siblings, but he often feels a lot like an only child. Camden can't fly around the world to be with his family for Christmas break or the summer, which is really hard on everyone. Tirzah loves her boarding school, but calling home is not the same as sitting down with your family for dinner every night.

You (probably) do not know the Gilmores, but I bet you do know a missionary family who needs prayer! Maybe hearing about this family inspires you to pray for your friends when they are inevitably apart.

The Heffts - Paul, Melissa, Josiah, and Anna

The Heffts live in the USA, but Paul works in Tanzania. That means three to four times a year, he is in Tanzania for about three to four weeks each time. Multiply that out, and you'll realize it's a lot! The phone and internet networks is not amazingly reliable in Tanzania (or many other places - chances are your missionary friends deal with this problem, too), and that combined with the large time zone difference means that they don't always get to call and Skype as regularly as they might want. 

Melissa knows all about what it's like to be a temporary single parent - a lot of work! And as for things going a bit crazy when your spouse is away, she's got some good examples of that one, too. Having one's routine and home dynamics change often, according to whether your spouse is around or not, is also stressful.

Earlier this year Paul also got to do the single-parenting thing, because Melissa did a typesetting course for three weeks. (That would be typesetting as in preparing translated Scriptures for publication.) Imagine a family without their wife/mom around for three weeks, and that should inspire you to pray!

Again, you likely don't know the Heffts, but think about the missionaries you do know - at least one of them travels a lot, I am sure. And I'm very, very sure they would greatly appreciate your prayers for their family in regards to that big aspect of their lives.

Zarya - age two can be great

Some days having a two-year-old is just the best. You get to play outside with crazy cuteness like picture number one, and if you succeed in playing enough, you can create the effect of picture number two (notice the undone puzzle and scattered toys - she was supposed to be having 30 minutes of quiet play time in her room, but opted for an hour long snooze in her bean bag instead. Fine with me!).

The Hidden Thrills of Spell-checking

I'm on day twelve of spell-checking a massive amount of Ikizu translation. It's not the most exciting job, but I have a secret passion for finding those little accidents that have slipped through the cracks. You know, when an extra vowel has snuck into a word, when the prefix for the perfective got confused with the extremely similar one for the past tense - exciting stuff like that.

This evening as I was (quite successfully) combining watching The Voice with spell-checking, I laughed when I saw a list of four words next to each other. I showed Andrew my screen and joked, "Think any of these might be wrong?" (If you missed the intonation there, it was the pattern that meant, "Can you believe the mistakes I find? There's no way all four of these words are correct!")

See what I mean?

abhahirɨ
abhahiri
abhahiiri
abhahɨɨrɨ

But guess what? I checked them all, and they are all right! And we're not just talking a little tweak of a different suffix on the same root, but like totally, completely different words! How exciting is that late in the evening of day 12 of spell-checking?

In respective order, they mean:

he should take them
angel
relative
he gave them

COOL!. I love Ikizu.

Backyard View

My friend Chris Gilmore takes amazing photos, and what's even more amazing is that she takes them with a very ordinary camera! This is one of her recent shots of Lake Victoria.

Can you believe that I used to live in a town that was right on this lake? In fact, two of the houses I lived in had lake views, and one actually abutted the lake in the backyard - that's right, my back fence was on the beach!

Gorgeous as this is, let's remember that there is bilharzia in the lake, as well as massive troops of lake flies hidden in there, just waiting to rise out and swarm the neighborhood. But I still miss it!

Cute, but wiggly

Have you taken any pictures of small children recently? Ai yai yai! For Andrew's birthday, I wanted to take a few pictures of the kids for him. He loves pictures and doesn't get as many chances as I do to take them of Zarya and Jerod, so I thought it would be a (cheap, easy) sweet gift. Well, I can't deny that it was cheap, but easy?! What planet of immobile, yet cheerful, babies/toddlers was my brain visiting?

I finally ended up with a decent ONE, but here is an example of about 50 that happened along the way...

At least on this outtake, Zarya was being helpful and prevented him from totally taking off for another room or something!

They both sat still! And smiled!

Ginger Lime Cookies

Ginger Lime ones are on the left

Want to make some Ginger Lime Cookies with the recipe I made up? Try them, you'll like them (okay, provided you like both ginger and lime, that is)! The Indiana County Fair judges might or might not have liked ginger and lime, since they got 3rd place.

3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 Tbls ginger powder

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 inches fresh ginger

1 egg

1 tablespoon milk

1 tsp lime zest

Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Directions

Mix together flour, baking powder, salt and ginger powder. Set aside.

Put the fresh ginger and sugar in a food processor and pulverize them.

Place butter and sugar/ginger in large bowl and beat. Add egg, milk, and lime zest and beat to combine. Gradually add flour mixture. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Sprinkle surface where you will roll out dough with powdered sugar. Place dough on the surface, cover dough with the cling wrap, and press it down with your hands (the cling wrap keeps the dough from sticking to your hands). Re-sprinkle more powdered sugar underneath the dough if need be. Still with the cling wrap over teh dough, use a rolling pin to roll out dough to 1/4-inch thick. Move the dough around and check underneath frequently to make sure it is not sticking. Cut into desired shape, place at least 1-inch apart on greased baking sheet, parchment, or silicone baking mat, and bake for about 9 minutes or until cookies are just beginning to turn brown around the edges. Immediately remove to wire racks for cooling.

Mix powdered sugar and lime juice and ice cooled cookies.

Cookies for the County Fair

In an effort to justify my cookie baking habits, I decided to once again enter two cookie entries in the Indiana County Fair. I spent more time than I think it appropriate to admit preparing for my big baking day. 

First, there was the whole matter of choosing what kinds of cookies to enter, then the recipe search, taste tests, recipe tweaking, practice runs, and big day production. But hey, it was great fun and delicious! And this year I did learn something - make sample batches in half-recipe amounts, which only generate half as many calories to have lounging around the house, begging to be consumed.

Bakers can only enter one product per category, which is a good rule, but a frustrating one for me. I prefer to make drop cookies, and I wanted to enter two kinds of cookies. Therefore I had to figure out a different kind of cookie for my second entry. This year I opted to try a rolled cookie, which is hardly my forte. I can't remember the last time I made rolled cookies, to be honest! But I wasn't up for experimenting with filled or refrigerator or sugar-free or spritz ones, the other cookie categories.

Many months ago I had volunteered to help make cookies for a friend's son's wedding. I did a lot of internet browsing to look for a cookie recipe that was wedding-worthy, and found Guyanese Lime Nutmeg Cookies. They are kind of like lime snickerdoodles. They turned out fabulously that time, as did my trial run a few months later. Choosing them as one of my fair entries was an easy decision.

Recipe number two, however, took a lot more work. Andrew had suggested once that I try to make ginger lime cookies, and I set about working on those. Well, let me tell you, there are not (that I found, and I really tried) any rolled ginger-lime cookie recipes out there! Necessity is the mother of invention, so invent I did. After four attempts that didn't turn out quite right, but each one got a bit closer in some way, I am happy to say that attempt number five, which was the one I had to enter in the fair, turned out excellently! I wanted to replicate the flavor of a Stoney Tangawizi soda with a lime glaze, and I think I got it.

A friend in town is also a bit obsessed with fair cookies, and she and I had a lot of fun discussing entry options during the year, and then e-mailing and texting each other while baking. That made the whole experience that much more fun. We'll find out how we did after an interminably long two-day wait!

My enthusiastic helper

Every heard of a silicone baking mat? This is why you should use them! Cookie on the left, no mat, cookie on the right, mat. Go buy yourself a Silpat now. Silpat on Amazon

The finished products! Ginger-Lime on the left, Guyanese Lime Nutmeg on the right.

Northwest Vacation

We went on vacation! We flew from Pittsburgh to Seattle, and had one night and a two Sunday morning church services in Olympia. Then we journeyed down to Oregon where we spent a week with Andrew's family. After that we went up to Priest Lake, Idaho, for another week, this time with a whole pack of people - my parents, my sister and her husband and two kids and his parents, and our near and dear family friends and their four kids! Ai yai yai! Then the kiddos and I went back to Olympia for a week at my parents' house (Andrew had to return to PA after the week in ID). That third week finally felt like my week off - two grandparents to two kids is a great ratio, and it left me rather free at long last!

Here are a few highlights among many, many great moments.

Zarya had some awesome bedhead every morning

 Jerod would like his dinner now, please. He often sat at the head of the table where all 18 of us were, and this is his family patriarch expression.

 Neither of our kids liked Priest Lake all that much, to my great disappointment. They grudgingly agreed to let me push them around in this little boat, but when they discovered that they didn't get wet while in it, we found a successful compromise.

 Andrew went on a hike one day. I guess it was a decent view at the top!

 There were some good male bonding moments. Nothing like a little elbow in the gut to say, "I love you, Baba."

Bob and Jerry

Jerry and Zar

Before I start this blog post, I'd like to make sure it's clear that the names Bob and Jerry are perfectly fine names and I know some great people with those names.

As I think I've mentioned before on here, Andrew goes by Baba, the Swahili word for father, with our kids. Of course we lived in Tanzania when he decided to be Baba instead of Dad or Father (does anyone actually call their father Father?), where it was a bit more common than it is here in Western PA, but I think he'd have chosen it anyway. We like being a little unique. I'm Mama, which is both Swahili and English, so that was a straightforward choice.

Sometimes Zarya calls me Mom instead of Mama, usually after being around other kids and hearing them call their mothers by that. Although it's not my preference, it's not a big deal, and sometimes I don't really notice, because the two sound pretty similar.

What we do notice, however, is when Baba becomes Bob. I guess Zarya figured out the Mama/Mom connection, heard other kids call their fathers Dad or Daddy, and so created Bob out of Baba. It was just occasional at first, but it's like she thinks it's just too much effort to get out two syllables of Baba and now prefers to keep it short and sweet, Bob. A few times I've even heard her call him Bobby... We're going to be out in public someday and she's going to yell across the room, "Hey Bob!" just like she does at home. Eventually this Bob business will get to the point when other adults assume his name is Bob and that he's her step-dad and she calls him by his first name.

He tries to call her Zar every time she calls him Bob, as in, "Hey Bob!" followed by, "Yes, Zar?" She gets mad and insists that her name is Zarya, and seems to miss the point as he explains that his is Baba.

And if having Bob around weren't enough, Jerod has become Jerry recently, too. Andrew and I never, ever call him Jerry. Nothing against the name Jerry, but that's not what I'd like to call my baby boy. I'm hoping that he sticks with Jerod. If he wants to be cooler and go by Jer at some point in his future, fine. But not Jerry. Zarya, however, seems to think Jerry is a great name and calls him that quite regularly, and she never consulted me on the matter of his nickname. Crazy toddler!

Popcorn and smoothies

First of all, I will not apologize for my recent lack of blog posts. I am sorry that I have not been able to write any for a while, but I'm not sorry for having chosen spending time working on Bible translation, making dinners/cleaning the house/etc., hanging out with my husband, or taking care of my children instead of being at my computer.

But, it's Saturday afternoon and the kids are both asleep and the baby food is cooking away on the stove, so I've got a few minutes.

I had a revelation a few weeks ago. It was the same one I'd had a few years ago, so you think I'd have remembered it and wouldn't have had to figure out the same thing twice, but I guess I'm a little slow sometimes. I realized that the same meal every week was stressful for me. It occurred to me that if we just had popcorn and smoothies, which we all love, is pretty quick to make, and not too bad for you healthwise (I'm not saying it's amazing, but it's not awful), for that meal every week, life would be a whole lot better on those days.

It used to be Tuesday dinners that worked me up. Back in Musoma, I had Bible study late in the afternoon on Tuesdays. By the time I got home at nearly 7:00pm, Andrew had been taking care of Zarya on his own for almost three hours, he and I were both hungry, Zarya needed her bath and to be put to bed, and making dinner (or trying to make sure we always had leftovers on hand) was just stressful. I loved Bible study, but on the way home every week I could feel myself tensing up and bracing for this low-blood-sugar racing around trying to do everything at once stressful evening.

Then I discovered the relief of a planned popcorn and smoothies night. We had that combo for lunch or dinner sometimes, but not on any sort of schedule. But as soon I figured out that if we had popcorn and smoothies every Tuesday evening, all of that dinner stress disappeared. Okay, so we were still in Musoma where nothing is really stress-free, because sometimes there was no electricity for running the blender to make the smoothies and the stores periodically ran out of our preferred kind of popcorn, but most of the time the plan worked well.

Skip ahead a year: we're now in Pennsylvania and have two kids. What's stressful about life here, you might wonder. Well, let me tell you, and you might agree with me - Sunday lunch! Seriously, we get home from church and we're all hungry and want lunch NOW, and naptime is the looming deadline, so we really do need to eat lunch soon so we can get the kids down for their naps on time so we don't all dissolve into puddles of hungry exhaustion after having all of that fun at Sunday school/church. Andrew tends to prefer different kinds of lunch foods than what Zarya and I eat Monday through Friday, so figuring out something we could all eat and get it together quickly stressed me out.

Voila - popcorn and smoothies! We had been having popcorn and smoothies for Sunday dinners in PA, but when I figured out a few weeks ago that moving my emergency meal to being Sunday lunch, well, life got a whole lot better. We now come home from church and Zarya and I make the smoothies and Andrew makes the popcorn (for the world's best popcorn, please see the Whirley Pop - http://www.amazon.com/Wabash-Valley-Farms-25008-Whirley-Pop/dp/B00004SU35/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1434824414&sr=1-1&keywords=whirley+pop) and then we sit on the couch and enjoy ourselves.

So, maybe popcorn and smoothies isn't your family's thing, but I bet you know some meal that is your well-liked, quick go-to meal. Should you find yourself getting stressed out regularly by some meal each week, do yourself a favor and plan your easy meal in advance!

Titular humor

Warning: immature humor that some might consider in poor taste to follow.

While washing dishes this evening, I had a flashback to something my sister Alyssa and I found hilarious back in the day. Way back in the day, to be clear.

Our family used to listen to Garrison Keilor tapes (see, told you it was back in the day - we had tapes!) when on long trips, One of his stories was about how he and his brothers (or were they cousins?) used to play a game with book and song titles, substituting the word "buggers" (or if you prefer a different spelling, "boogers") for one word in the title. We included movie titles when we played, being a bit more modern than Garrison.

Our house was packed with bookshelves, because this was pre-Kindle. Alyssa and I would slowly walk along the shelves, trying out "buggers" in the titles until we found a good one, then call it out to the other person. It was hilarious stuff to middle schoolers. Dad's theology books were the best - titles like "Transformational Christianity" lent themselves well to becoming "Transformational Buggers." Even mature readers like yourselves might find a little humor in it if you're lame enough. Try a few classics:

The Old Man and the Sea
The Sound of Music
Little Orphan Annie
The Scarlet Letter
A Tale of Two Cities
100 Years of Solitude
A Room of One's Own
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
As I Lay Dying

See - simply irresistable.

As an adult, I found out about a similar game that a friend had played as a kid, one that would have sent Alyssa and me into eruptions of laughter if we'd known about it back in the day. That being said, I confess that as a mature missionary singing hymns with friends, occasionally it still popped into my mind and made me make a muffled snort at times. This friend's version (which, she told me, most of the kids at her Christian high school and Bible college also knew, so apparently it's popular in some circles) was to add the words "in the toilet" after the title of a hymn, as in, "Jesus Paid It All in the Toilet." See, I told you this post was ridiculously immature.

So, want to give that idea a go? (No pun intended...)

For the Beauty of the Earth
All Things Bright and Beautiful
Abide With Me
Fight the Good Fight
Jesus Christ is Risen Today
Nearer My God to Thee
There is a Fountain
Are You Washed in the Blood

Okay, so you may now forever think less of me. I have probably knocked whatever missionary pedestal you had right over, but that might be a good thing and high time it happened. But whatever the case, I hope you laughed at least once as you let your inner child out to enjoy some bodily function humor.

Interested in teaching missionary kids?

Did you know that one of the biggest needs on the missions field is for teachers for missionary kids? That's right - doing a job that involves you speaking your own language and doing the job you're already trained to do (I'm writing to teachers... of course there are plenty of you who are not teachers!). So, should you be interested in doing missions overseas but aren't sure how your skills as a teacher would fit into a Bible translation or church planting or medical missions organization, let me tell you, they would fit perfectly!

Should you be interested in living in Musoma, Tanzania (see hundreds of my previous blog posts for what living there is like... it's the town we used to be in!), there is a little school there, Lake Victoria Learning Center, which is in desperate need of an elementary school teacher. To learn more about this position, go here: http://www.teachers-in-service.org/lvlc_tanzania.php. To visit the blog of the teacher pictured above (my friend Lyndy), go here: http://mkteacher.blogspot.com/.

And if you're more of a big city person who'd rather be at a bigger school, teaching not only missionary kids, but children from a great variety of cultural and religious backgrounds, there is a great school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, called Haven of Peace Academy (see picture above). It currently needs quite a few teachers, in elementary, middle, and high school levels. To learn more, go here: http://www.teachers-in-service.org/hopac_36_2.php.

I hope some of you out there might be interested! There are links to some interesting blogs and other articles at the bottom of those two websites, too, if you want to read more about teaching missionary kids.

First haircuts

At almost five months old and almost two and a half years old, our children both received their first-ever haircuts today. It's not that Jerod is all that hairy, but he had a stringy forelock thing going on that wasn't his best look. And as for Zarya, she's always had plenty of hair, but since it's curly, it's never gotten very long. The lower back part was starting to look a little droopy, however, so it was finally time for a trim.

I neglected to take a before picture of the back of Zarya's head, but here's what I do have for you:

See what I meant about the comb-over look on Jerod?

And here's the little guy all cleaned up:

And you probably can't tell from this angle that Zarya got a haircut, but she wanted her picture taken after she saw me taking Jerod's:

:

Coincidentally, I happened to get my hair cut this week, too. It doesn't look any different - my ponytail is a little shorter, though. Someday when I actually bother to have a hairstyle and style it, before and after pictures might be in order.

Holidays, or lack thereof

Yesterday we had beef-barley soup for dinner (homemade by Andrew, and it was excellent), during the course of the day I cleaned the bathroom and did laundry, and our kids wore nice, but normal and not brand-new or particularly fancy, clothes to church. Oh, did I mention that yesterday was Easter Sunday? We're not traditionalists. Thanks to the fact Andrew's mom was visiting, Zarya did eat a chocolate rabbit and searched the living room for plastic eggs. And of course church was very resurrection-ish, which kind of saved the holiday for us.

At the end of the day, I commented to Andrew that I thought we should make a point of celebrating some holidays in addition to Christmas as our kids get older. He looked at me in surprise, saying, "But you're the one who always says we can just skip them!"

I said, "I know, I know, but I don't want our kids to grow up and feel like they needs to have a crazy celebration for things like St. Patrick's Day and Flag Day in over-reaction from our lack of noting holidays."

Andrew said, "Okay, which ones should we choose?"

After some consideration, I said, "Well, how about Easter, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving?"

Andrew said, "All of those? Are you sure? And both kids' birthdays? You have a history of skipping Thanksgiving, and now you want to add it and two others on top of it?"

I added, "Yes, and our birthdays, and anniversary, but we can combine those three if need be, since they are all in the summer. Oh, and Mother's Day."

To which he said, "And Father's Day."

"No, Mother's Day is enough. We can skip Father's Day. That's just too much."

"We'll see."

We're awful, I know. At least Jerod's birthday is close to Thanksgiving, so I can combine those and get a two-for-one holiday. I hope he likes pumpkin pie! But if he doesn't like turkey, then that means I'm off the hook for having to roast one, which could be handy.

At least we do Christmas well!

Puzzle blocks and bedhead

Zarya got a Melissa and Doug 16-block 6-sided puzzle for Christmas, and it's a good challenge! She hasn't mastered it yet, and it's great to have a toy that she likes playing with, but that is still hard brain work for her. She needs something to make her think a bit and keep her interested even after three months.

And yes, this really is what her hair looks like every morning. Fortunately, all it takes is little water from a spritzer bottle and some finger curls, and this wild child turns into a cute girl again.