End of the school year

The end of the school year is a very busy time. We have school concerts, conferences, and parties galore. And being expats only compounds the issue because everyone leaves for the summer so there are so many loose ends to tie up at home and at church as well. So this month has been busy with not only school events, but church parties and activities; and on the home front holidays (Mother's day, our anniversary, my birthday,) doctor's appointments, getting organized to lock the door for 7 weeks, and so on. So the calender is about ready to burst. And we missed pictures of most of it, unfortunately. I don't know if it is laziness or craziness.

Maggie had a musical concert at school that was really fun along with a walk-a-thon recently where the 2nd graders walked or ran laps to raise money for several local charities. Maggie has a very philonthropically oriented mind and is always wanting to give things to people (starting at home with her siblings.) She ran 8 laps and walked 8 laps in the 1 hour they had allotted. She tied with one other 2nd grader for the most laps. When she puts her mind to something, she has a surprising amount of endurance. She has also surprised Joseph recently when she has gone running with him. Maggie is wrapping up a fantastic year and has grown a lot. She will say goodbye to "Ms. Fabulous"--that is really what Maggie calls her teacher Ms. Farris, which I concur wholeheartedly.

At the end of the year we go to student-led conferences at the school. This is a chance for the students to lead their parents through their year by sharing a portfolio they put together which represents the year, along with various displays and such in their classroom. We sat down with Abigail at Maggie at their desks and listened to them as they talked to us about their math, reading and writing. Abigail and Maggie also led us around the campus to their "specials" which means art, PE, music, Chinese, and science lab. We visited the art show featuring their art. We played badminton with the girls in the gym, conversed with Abigail in Chinese, listened to Maggie play the gamelon (Indonesian instrument,) and watched Maggie show us how to balance a bird on her nose in the science lab. It really is a highlight for the kids and a chance for them to show us how much they have learned and what they have enjoyed throughout the year.

Abigail had a swim-a-thon event as well and had 15 minutes to swim as many laps as she could to raise money for the 4th grade charitable event. She is not too fond of swimming but she did a great job swimming 14 laps. She also has had a productive year with Mr. Roach, an incredibly energetic and dedicated teacher, who has helped her learn to work hard, challenge herself in reading, research, write with a strong voice, and work independently. I think she was a little intimidated by him and she has worked on overcoming her hesitant nature in approaching others and working in groups.

I also had the privilege to attend Abigail's music concert featuring gamelan instruments from Indonesia. Both girls have a chance to spend part of their music instruction in this room and it is always a highlight. Abigail's 4th grade class did a great job performing traditional Indonesian music.

Shower Curtain Innovation and such

Innovation with a shower curtain . . . and another good reason to turn the TV off (only we don't really have TV anyway.) I had to make a puppet theatre for my activity day girls that I work with at church. They practiced scripture puppet shows for their activity on Wednesday night and performed them for the nursery kids and sunbeams at church on Sunday. It is especially fun to work with the girls at church when 2 of the 16 are mine. Maggie was thrilled to turn 8 and get to come with Abigail and I to the activities.

All throughout the weekend the kids were busy putting on puppet shows here at home. Ella was the targeted audience; however she prefers more interactive shows where she can touch the puppets and go up to talk to them. It turns out that I was the most dependable and desired audience and had the privilege of watching many puppet shows these last few days with Juliet sitting contentedly on my lap. What great imaginative fun.

It is hard to see, but Abigail and Maggie have on little finger puppets and made food displays for their rendition of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We have several setbacks this month (May) with flu's and fevers. It started with a really bad flu virus running rampant in SAS and wiping our entire classrooms of kids. My children all got that one, keeping Abigail and Maggie out of school for an entire week. Then a few weeks later, we had a strange fever starting with Xander, going down the line and hitting a home run with Juliet by the end of a week. And if that weren't enough already, Abigail is now sick with another fever and respiratory ailment. And I can't forget the mysterious "polka dot disease" that began one Monday afternoon with Abigail and quickly spread to her siblings within a matter of 15 minutes. This one was truly baffling. Luckily, it only lasted through the evening and disappeared as mysteriously as it had come.

Ella is quite an active character and loves to literally follow in my footsteps.

And we just don't take enough pictures of Juliet. She is so cute and easy going. It has got to be tough sometimes surviving the noise and chaos of 4 older siblings. Just the other day, I rescued her from a peanut butter and honey sandwich that Ella was so generously sharing by trying to shove it down her throat. Dangerous on 3 accounts.

Busy Day

I had quite the day yesterday. It started early with Xander's surgery to get his tonsils out. After 3 bouts of tonsillitis in the first 4 months of this year alone, not to mention previous years, 105 degree fevers and copious amounts of antibiotics, we decided it was time to have them removed. However, no matter how minor the surgery, it is still a scary prospect to be an accomplice to putting your child to sleep in the OR and then waiting outside while they take something sharp to his throat. The part where he is waking up out of the anesthesia certainly isn't my favorite either, holding him and trying to calm his thrashing about; avoiding looking into his bloody throat while he cries, "no more surgery," as he attempts to jump up and run. I can't speak from experience, but Joseph says that is the worst part of it all: waking up. All said and done, it went well and he came home several hours later to ice cream and his big surprise.

Xander waiting to go into the OR.

And I came home to a surprise as well. A pit viper had crossed through our yard and Marifi spotted another curled up on a leaf in the neighbor's banana tree that used to partially hang over the fence into our yard. Another brown snake was seen in the same tree and most of my afternoon was spent figuring out what kind of snakes they might be and what to do about it. After reading and researching online, and based on the description (green with distinct white bands,) we are convinced it was a viper. I called the pest control company and by the time he finally made his way out here, the snakes were gone, scared away no doubt by the noise and confusion. I was quite disappointed on two accounts: I wanted the reassurance of knowing at least one of our slithering friends was permanently gone; and the pest control man finding the viper and killing it promised to be an exciting show from my front row seat in the kitchen looking out the window. After he left, Marifi quickly cut all the banana leaves that hung over toward us and we will be constantly vigilant from here on out, that's for sure.

This is a photo of the Pit Viper I pulled off the Internet on a site with info on snakes in Southeast Asia, including Singapore.

Headbands

None of my kids have grown hair very quickly, with Ella being the slowest to date. Her hair is growing in curly though and it is rather cute, so I am being patient. I did pull out these headbands that my sisters gave me for Juliet. I thought I might try one on Ella and see how it looked. She loves anything "princessy" now so all you have to do is call it a princess dress or hat to make her more than willing to wear it. Putting one on Juliet first did the trick (Ella adores Juliet) and she was excited for hers. I also love her blue eyes--like her dad's and Grandma Gordhamer's. They are fun girls

Easter

We had a nice Easter weekend, beginning on Saturday when we got together with friends in the ward to enjoy brunch followed by egg decorating and hunting activities. Xander is busy dying Easter eggs and Maggie found a big, albeit melted, chocolate Easter bunny.

This year we participated in another Easter activity, collecting change to donate to Heifer International, a global non-profit organization that provides animals to families in 3rd world countries. All the children gathered for an Easter lesson on the resurrection and a presentation about people in these less developed countries and how the animals can make a difference in their lives. With the money collected, as a group we were able to purchase a pig, goats, and some flocks. It provided another meaningful aspect to our Easter festivities. (Abigail's 3rd grade class last year did a project working with this organization and it was pretty neat. Here is a link if you want to check it out.)

http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.183217/#

I tried to coordinate the kids for Easter Sunday and of course I wanted some pictures. It is always interesting trying to get the kids to gather and hold still, let alone position them for a picture. It usually starts out with something like this:

Then we get some faces like this.


And if we are lucky, we might even get everyone looking and the majority smiling. Still not a perfect picture but cute enough.

Spring Break

Wow, what a trip! We spent a week on Lombok island in Indonesia. Lombok is about a 2.5 hour flight from us and just south of Bali in the Indian Ocean. I chose Lombok because it was a little lower key and looked really interesting. This was the first time we ventured out with 5 kids and I learned two things: first, it is A LOT of work--we had to scale things way back from my original ambitious agenda; and second, people stare at a family with so many kids, especially with one as young as Juliet (3 months--and at times I thought I was crazy too bringing her to Indonesia.) Despite some minor frustrations, limitations, and exhaustion, the trip was an overall success.

These are some pictures we took just before leaving for home.

The sunsets were gorgeous. Here is the view of the sun setting behind Bali off in the distance. You can see the looming volcano. Indonesia is a volatile land with volcanoes and earthquakes. Lombok has an even bigger volcano than Bali on it which erupted most recently in 1994. People hike to the summit and it takes 3 days. However, it is currently closed because it is spewing noxious gases and smoke.

We stayed at a nice resort on Seneggigi beach. Upon arriving at the hotel, we upgraded to a bungalow that was perfectly situated with a nice stretch of lawn in front and a secluded beach just for us. It ended up to be where I spent a good deal of time with napping youngsters so I was grateful for the close proximity to the beach and the nice view from the couch. We spent two days of the 5 day trip just playing on the beach and enjoying the pool. They even had a horse ride for the kids. Joseph found these local ladies on the beach to braid the girls hair and polish their nails right on our doorstep. The pool was great and warm as was the ocean--probably about 85+ degrees which is perfect in my opinion. Take sand and water mixed with amazing shells, interesting coral, and a couple of boogie boards and you have all the right ingredients for a perfect day.

Just down the beach a ways from our room, the kids found a rock cave. We had to climb over and around quite a few rocks and the kids were convinced that it was a secret cave they discovered. The sand all around that area was so cool--it was like mustard seeds and your feet would sink down into it up to the ankles. And sprinkled all along the sand and into the cave were absolutely perfect, huge shells--the kind you buy in shops. We had such fun collecting them to take home. In fact, we took home some of the mustard seed sand, a huge bag of shells and water bottles full of the Indian Ocean. Then when we got home, we made what I call "Lombok in a bottle" with an old fashioned cork bottle layered with the sand, shells, and ocean water. It was our cheapest and most prized souvenir.
Picture from inside our cave looking out.
Maggie is pictured below walking slowly back from the cave and gathering shells along the way.

We had the opportunity one day to go and visit a local school. We had a special delivery to make: a suitcase full of school supplies. For Christmas last year, my parents gave us a check with an important responsibility attached to it. We had to use the money in such a way that others would benefit from it. With all the deficiencies in this region, the only hard part was deciding who and where to help. We decided on a school in a small village in Indonesia. The kids thoughtfully picked out school supplies with careful consideration of their budget and what the school might need. It was a very rewarding and humbling experience to donate our things and then meet some of the students. It made the country and its people that much more real to step aside from being a tourist for the morning to participate in something more humanitarian. And the idea of making the world a little better where ever we find ourselves, however small it may be, is something we hope to continue.

There are a variety of ways people in Lombok transport themselves and their stuff: motorbikes with caged roosters tied to the side, cars, people on foot balancing baskets, dishes of rice, or pots on their head, or carts full of all kinds of things and pulled by a horse. Just driving around from point A to point B was a fascinating study of these various modes of transporting people and things, all happening at the same time on the same roads. We tried most of them, well, all except the on foot balancing way. Joseph rented a motorbike and took the kids on rides shopping in Seneggigi and onto the back roads to smaller villages. We rented a car and driver and drove through rice fields, cocoa plantations, and crowded city streets. And we also experienced the horse and cart ride to a small village famous for its pottery. They make the pottery out of clay from the riverbeds and form it into pots on a stationary wheel. Then it is baked in the earth to get a natural dark red color. The kids all got to take a turn making something on a wheel with some clay. I stayed inside the shaded area with all the pots. The picture below doesn't show the red color well. For some reason it all looks kind of yellow (white balance problem I think. )

The rice harvesting was concluding and the locals were drying the rice. We drove by fields of rice in the process of being harvested, a hot and tiresome job. After each rice kernel is extracted from the stalk, it is set out in the sun to dry. The roads were lined with rice drying in the sun. After the rice is harvested, they set fire to the piles of old rice stalks. It was fascinating to see this process going on throughout the island. The picture of the man harvesting and burning in the fields was taken through the car window so, again the color is too grey.

We spent one morning hiking down (a very easy hike as I was carrying Juliet on a front pack) to a waterfall. It was beautiful and cool, refreshing water coming down from the main volcano on the island. The kids enjoyed splashing around and playing in the rocks. Maggie and Xander worked diligently on a rock wall, a "dam" they called it. Abigail made an adorable fairy house, currently one of her favorite past times; and after playing in the water, Ella kept busy with some prized oreos. (We had to use various, innovative techniques to keep Ella happy and out of trouble.) Juliet stayed mostly on my belly in a front pack, but I did tire of that after several hours so I made her a bed, albeit uncomfortable, on a dry rock bed and under an umbrella to shade her from the mist and sun.

Another afternoon while I stayed with the napping little girls, Joseph took the older 3 to the Gili Islands. These are 3 small islands off the coast of Lombok with pristine white sandy beaches and good snorkeling. They visited all 3 of them but stayed the longest at the middle island and snorkeled off the shore. Joseph said it was the best snorkeling the kids have done to date. They saw all kinds of coral and tropical fish.