Village Visit

We went to the village on Friday morning, after trying to rush everyone out the door before 9! Which I realize isn’t saying much, but for whatever reason, I am not going to make excuses…but for whatever reason we simply CANNOT do it! We are ALWAYS late. I promise you I was never late before I had kids and now we are ALWAYS late. This doesn’t actually bother me that much, because I know I am trying very hard to get everyone dressed, fed and out the door, however it drives tim nuts! So, all of you with kids can imagine how our morning started off…to say the least it was a little chaotic. Did I mention we were late? Then to add to that we forgot to actually feed Jesse and take him to the bathroom BEFORE we left. Tim also forgot his guitar. So we ran home and took the kids to the bathroom one last time, got the guitar and a nutritious breakfast of crackers and raspberry filled cookies for Jesse. We got to the end of the street and I remembered I forgot my camera. So once again we returned to the house…you get the picture…it was a little chaotic. but we finally made it there...

we wound our way through the streets, seeing the buildings made from mud and straw...very simple structures. we were led straight to the leader's house. when he sat down with us we explained to him that we were here to pray for people. he was confused that we wanted him to change religions first, we explained that that wasn't necessary, so he was very open to us. he sent someone out to tell everyone.

Laura and I went outside with the kids. The kids ran off to explore and see the cows and goats and find kids to play with. Just as we were wondering what we were going to do, people starting coming up to us telling us of their aches, pains and sicknesses. we stumbled through our Kurdish, but we were very openly received. all of these people in this picture were prayed for. the women on the left has heart pains, the woman on the right has shoulder pains and the old man has leg issues. we didn't see them get healed on the spot, but we are believing that it will happen soon.

tim sat inside with the men and was able to share extensively. the leader, Nerimon, is sitting on tim's left.

i just liked this tree...an old rotted tree that was uprooted at the edge of the village...i took it as a sign of what once grew here in terms of what they believe will be uprooted.

toby brought a soccer ball and played with some boys the entire time. he finally joined us after a couple of hours for lunch with rosy cheeks and a big smile on his face. i think a little boy is happiest outside and playing...a little dirt never hurt either....much to my chagrin.

at the end of our visit we gave out a box of Crocs that were donated a while back.

here's all the men!

here are all the women...with the box of crocs in the background.

annie was so excited to give her friend some shoes, she picked out 2 pairs for her!

she was so shy at first and i think even a little embarrassed, but in the end she warmed right up to annie and played with her.

look...the mom of the household put a pair of crocs on already!

here's the little soccer team

here's our parting view of the village...as you can see the grass is starting to come up...apparently in the spring the hillsides will be covered in red poppies. i can't wait.

after we drove out of the village, we went up the mountain to see the view. i love this picture. possibly my favorite one...looking out over his homeland...praying for the harvest to come.

the landscape is amazing here. this is a "Kani" a natural spring. this is the name i chose for my Kurdish name. i love it. there are so many of these around here. water springing out of a dry and weary land.

we hiked around on this rocky spot

and got a few fun pics.

we found these wild blue bonnet flowers. so beautiful. before we left i felt like God told me to look for the winter flowers, springing up in a hidden nook. i was pleased to find these little treasures waiting for us. it was a promise from God that beauty will spring up, even if it seems like it won't at first or the land is rocky and hard.

Tim and Rizgar

always time for a cute family shot

or a crazy and fun picture...this one is a little more accurate anyway!

when we drove home, we went right near the village again and saw a group of kids out in the grass wearing their new crocs. they all posed for a fun pic!

it just feels great to give something out and we know we gave out more than these shoes.

Graphing Crocs

alright...it's not very often that i am creative with home school...i am a fairly decent teacher, but i am so left-brained that i like to check off the list or do whatever the book tells me to do, so when i come up with a creative idea, i feel really good about myself. but don't get the impression that i am super creative based on this blog entry, because i am not. but i was so excited that we had all these crocs to give away...so i wanted to incorporate my kids in giving these out. crocs are so fun because they are so colorful. so i thought how fun would it be to sort and organize them into colorful piles. after we did that, i realized we could count and graph them. then i realized that it probably wouldn't kill me to deviate from the "schedule" for math this week and take time to do this as our math. perfect: hands on math + a good purpose = LEARNING for life!
first we sorted them all into piles...we made two even piles, because we were making two separate boxes of crocs for 2 teams to take with them on village visits this weekend.
then we counted them...
then we used graph paper to make graphs based on quantity, color and size.
toby even joined in on the fun...the great thing is that we just happened to be on a graphing unit in our math curriculum. that makes me not feel so bad for going against the "rules."
on one side we wrote numbers on the bottom we wrote the sizes and then we used the appropriate color crayon to color the correct amount of shoes for each size
here is the finished product. one box ended up with 26 and then other 27.
then we piled them up into each box...ready to be taken to the village
jesse however was really enamored with the red fur-lined crocs and kept trying to sneak them back out. but in the end he put them back
annie was really pleased by all her work and couldn't wait to present her "data" to the team the next day before the village visit.

SNOW DAY!

Today, i convinced Tim that we should take off part of school and work and go up to the mountains where snow actually stuck to the ground.
i love this cute kid, but check out the mountains in the background.
we hiked up a little mountain...here come the two stragglers.
annie and toby led the way.
we found an old fort at the top
and we were not disappointed with the view of our town and the mountains we see every day and then the huge ones beyond that.
we even found enough snow to make snow angels in.
the stragglers still weren't up the hill yet...
the kids even figured out how to "slide" down the side.
and we finally managed to get a picture together...there was no around so we could actually be close! it was such a fun morning together, what a great memory!

Date Night

Let's face it...we really stink at dating! Tim and I that is. we have never really been good at it, even when we were dating which was about 3.5 seconds. first it was work, then it was kids, now it's we live in the middle of nowhere...where are you supposed to go on a date? no longer can the dinner and a movie date be a safe fall back. although i have to admit, i am kind of glad about that. i never liked that date. tim did, but i never liked going to the theater. so while we still aren't great about making time for "dates" we get a lot more time together and we connect a lot more. actually our marriage is thriving right now, and it's not because we have been going on dates or having "game nights". partly we have coffee together every morning, we talk about everything and anything. in fact we talk too much and have decided that a couple mornings a week we need to be in separate rooms, so we can talk to Jesus more! but Paul and Erin decided to take the kids for us and we got our 3rd date in 9 months. shout out to them! the kids had a blast having their own personal Olympic Games. They did NOT want to come home when we showed up to get them. Tim and i thought and thought beforehand about what we should do and we decided it would be fun to dig around in our yard and plant a few things and try to coax some life into it. however...it got super cold and snowed, so scratch that! instead we got in the car after we dropped the kids off and we had no idea where to go...so we looked out and saw that mountain in the first picture and what may be a road on it...so we thought...let's go find it. so we grabbed some flat bread, hummus, apples, cheese and chocolates of course and headed out.

as we drove, clouds were moving in and snow was coming behind us, but not ahead of us. it made for a really cool sunset.

it's impossible to capture our landscape and scenery. but the road was amazing, up and down and all around. just a narrow dirt road with some of the edges eroding away. kind of scary....mostly fun.
we passed through two villages. if we weren't watching the turns in the road carefully we ended up right smack in villages. it literally felt like we were tiptoeing through someone's house. it was so bizarre. these houses are made out of stone and mud.
i wish i could say this is the car we took, but it's not. we just found it abandoned by the side of the road and i love these old land cruisers. tim and i decided that if we had been born Kurdish we would totally have been Freedom Fighters and owned an old car like this and driven all over Kurdistan together doding bombs and fighting side by side for the freedom of our people. now...in a way we really are!

when we got to the top, this was the mountain. another spectacular view on the other side, but the light was fading and i couldn't get a good pic. we got out and it was completely silent! such a great feeling. we stayed and sat in our back seat and watched the moon and stars come out while we ate our little dinner together. we also watched a movie in the back seat. we have decided that being spontaneous really is the spice of life for us and going on adventures.