Friday, October 30, 2009

Charlotte's Halloween party

I went and helped out at Charlotte's Halloween
party. It all seemed pretty normal, including
Henry playing with the drinking fountain and flooding
the room(he really did, had to find a mop)
Until I came across 2 disturbing costumes.
Remember these are 6 year old kids.
Freddy Krueger? Why is this happening? Please
tell me he hasn't seen the movie. Where did
he get the idea to be a psycho killer? You
need to enlarge the photo to see.
This kid? I know, his costume
looks like street clothes and innocent.
Then he pulled out a pen was pretending
he was shooting people and informed
me that he was a sniper. I have
no words.


Thursday, October 15, 2009

Simon's quilt and bed

Two days ago I finally finished Simon's quilt.
I had painted his new bed and was looking all
over for bedding and decided to make a pieced
quilt instead. I love nothing more than to buy
fabric. This quilt took me a month to put together
and then I took it to a lady who did the machine
quilting on it. I did the binding this week and it
took almost 5 hours of hand sewing. It was horrible.
Simon has told me thank you a million times, so
it makes it worth it.



Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Nappy time

I put Henry down for a nap and
when I walked downstairs this is
what I found. That is his favorite
blanket from when he was a baby.
We named it Frank, but he calls
it Franky.
I asked him what he was doing and
he said he was tired so he was
going to take a nap. He had turned out
the lights and everything.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Tonga Trip - Last day

Our last night in Tonga we went to a viewing
of a woman that some of my parents friends knew
quite well. She had a disease since birth where her
right leg kept growing and it was enormous. It
got where she was unable to walk for the last
year of her life. She was still young and had
a 1 year old and 3 year old. She also had her
first born child die very young from a heart defect.
On her last c-section she wasn't allowed any
medication, including an epidural or anything
else to numb her. She had to endure it all. I
will not complain again about getting c-sections.
These 2 women wore the full outfit because
they knew the woman well and were honored guests.
They even laid out palm leaves and tapa cloth
to sit on. They were all sitting "indian style"
and singing songs. It was beautiful to hear
them all singing.
This is the kings palace. It is like the parliament
where work is done. He lives in a separate palace.
This building was built in the 1800's.
The hospital OR
The waiting room
Random wires hanging down
This is a main hallway.
We then went to the Tongan cultural center.
It was really neat. The museum had mostly artifacts
from Captain cook. He gave the king a tortoise
as a gift on his last voyage and it lived until the
1970's. They have it preserved here.
He is holding up what the bark of the tree
looks like before and after when made into
the Tapa cloth.
They still make the tapa cloth by hand. The
women make it all. They bang it with the large
wooden mallet until it is a certain width. You can
hear the banging around the villages all day long.
Some newly planted banana trees
Weaving a mat
Showing us how to cut open a coconut.
Shaving the coconut, it was so yummy
Of course some singing and dancing.

Enjoying our refreshments afterwards. A fruit
plate with some coconut water.
Here are some random shots around town.

The minced meat sold at every little store. They
love it.
A little store by my parents house. The students
go to the Liahona school across from my parents.


More shots of the stores



This is the mission office and you can see the
temple in the distance. It is just across the street.
On the left is the mission office and the white
car is in front of my parents house.
My parents house. They have an avocado tree
in their front yard.

For my small handful of readers, I hope you
enjoyed seeing about our trip to Tonga. We had
a great time and I am glad David insisted we go.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Oops!

I will post our last day in Tonga tomorrow.
Had a little accident today, will blame it on
pregnancy. I was running errands and parked
the car at the end of the driveway and ran in the
house to grab Charlotte for dance. About 2 minutes
after I got into the house Dave and I heard a crash.
I apparently left the car in Drive and it slowly drove
itself the whole length our our VERY narrow driveway
without hitting one thing and ran straight into the garage.
His new car has no damage, but, we definitely will need
a new garage door. My car was trapped for awhile while
David crawled inside the garage and got the dents straightened
out. I feel beyond lucky because it could have been so much
worse.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Trip to Tonga day 7

We went on a bike ride in the morning and rode
around some different villages and then down to
the blow holes.
Here you can see the water coming through the
blow holes all the way down the coast
This is when the water is calm
You can see it starting to come through the
holes below
Then it just shoots out. It is hard to tell
from these pictures, but it is so beautiful to see.
The sign appears to be pretty new
The women all walk around with umbrellas
to block themselves from the sun
The health care center
We gave these kids some skittles. Notice the kid
holding the CD's. These are his toys. He was
rolling them down the street. They run over
and say "bye, bye, I love you" They do not beg
or ask for anything. I am sure it is because
Tonga doesn't have any tourists.
The village church
A farm
Below is what it looks like all over. It reminds
me of "Where the wild things are"

Notice the Mathematical Instruments, and yes,
we bought it for Simon
This is the only store near my parents that you
can walk into. It is the big store. All the rest
are concrete buildings that have just a couple of
shelves and you point to what you want.
No, she is not pushing anyone in the wheelchair
it is her walker
Someone selling bananas
They just had them hanging out front
Then my dad took us to the "land bridge"
You can see where the water is coming
underneath.
This is just above the land bridge



We then drove down to another beach. Below
is a typical cemetery.
They decorate the graves with old beer bottles
and sea shells
This grave is more elaborate
This was a beautiful beach.
We gathered a ton of sea shells. A lot still
had crabs living in them.
There were a lot of trees like this in this area


This car was in someone's yard. It had plants
growing out of it.
Kids playing some ping pong
This area is always flooded

We saw a lot of old boats like this, just sitting
out in the water.
Tongan flag
At the pier playing ball
Selling some fruit
What is Kentucky?