Spit O' Chicken

Here's our friendly dinner relaxing in the spa, with Ben and his nephew thrown in...(I said pictures would be forthcoming!)
And here's the critter over the fire. He was yummy:

Christmas caroling

Every evening now, we have kids outside our gate, singing Christmas carols: We wish you a Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, and others. Their goal? to get goodies after singing--they each get a piece of candy. Not a bad way to spend an evening...or 10 of them, as it would be. And they come in little groups, so you have 5 sets a night at least! Our dog has quit barking at them they are so frequent. It's good fun for them. And it's helping us get to bed earlier--as long as our lights are on, they come a'singing!

Right now, Ben's sister and family are visiting us. Ty is loving it up, as his cousins are a blast to play with. Ellie is learning the art of playing along with another almost-2 year old. They've had good fun making fishing rods, roasting one of our chickens over an open fire (pictures soon coming), and taking an adventure walk thru the mangrove swamp (with mud up to their waists!) and across the beach...

Cool stuff that happens part 2

A while back, I wrote about the budike (lizard) that fell in my boiling pot of noodles. I included a picture of a bigger lizard as a joke. Little did I know that I would have the opportunity to actually take a picture of a REAL one only a few weeks later.

This LARGE critter got into our chicken coup and ate one of our chickens. The other chickens, not finding their impending fate to their liking, rioted, forcing the door open and escaping while this 'bayawak' feasted on her prize. we heard the squawking and I came outside and quickly closed the door. Our new pet couldn't remember how she got in, so she was stuck. I called Ben to do the dirty work, and he came and caught her. She was 48 INCHES long from head to tail. Ty thought it was cool. Ellie was pretty impressed, too: "daddy killed BIG budike!"

Cool stuff that happens

This was in our sky a few days ago. It's the moon and two planets smiling down at us, right outside our front window. I hear we got the best view of it in our neck of the woods (aka, this side of the planet...) as it wasn't so easily seen stateside. It was something else tho. I look up at the stars at night when I miss the states, and it brought encouragement to my heart to see the sky smiling back at me. Thanks, Lord.

A day of Flying

For the last couple of weekdays, Ben has been flying missionaries and supplies into tribal locations. Sunday morning, we got a text asking if we could make an emergency medical flight on Monday. So, today Ben is up in the air.Here's Ben landing...and taking off

Boiled critter

Fulfilling a need to have tuna and noodles, which the rest of the family despises (and I use that term accurately), I put a pot of water on to boil. Once it was boiling, I added a bag of noodles to the pot. That's where all normalcy disappeared, for I saw this thing float to the top:

Okay, maybe that is exaggerating, I admit. Just for those of weak constitution, I put that in to soften the blow. This is what REALLY floated to the top:

Gross. Really gross. AND there were no more noodles to be had. I fished him out, but it was too late for the wee li'l lad.

back to the airplane

After the engine was changed, Ben flew her around and then brought her back for a check (checking the innards, as I like to say). Unfortunately, they had a bad cylinder, which meant, the plane needed a new one. Having good cylinders is really handy in flying. Ok, it's completely necessary. As the part comes from the states, that meant a slight delay in flying. When that part arrived and got held up in a customs check, that also meant for a slight longer delay. But, alas, the part was released from customs and is on the plane. The plane is flying again. The missionaries are going into the tribe today. Oh, happy day.

Ty also got into the spirit of things. He has learned a few essentials in parking the aiprlane: