2009 on the go already

So Squeakums is pretty smart, that’s what everyone says. The lady at the grocery checkout the other day was amazed when he pointed to a poster of a bear playing guitar and said “guitar”. “He has such an advanced vocabulary for his age” she said. At last review, his vocab is expected to be between 10 and 50 words for his age. So this morning I decided to count how many words he can say…I got to 90 without too much effort! So our little “messenger” is a good communicator, as we have prayed for.

Living in our own house is beginning to feel like home. The energy efficient lighting is dim at first, taking 20 or so seconds to warm up. Warming up the house is another issue altogether and I won’t go into that frustration right now. We put the bear rug up on the wall last night, BearHunter doesn’t really want people walking all over it.

He feeds himself well, but likes to put his utensils in his drink and now also likes sloshing his cup around (after watching dad shake up a capped mug). He’ll repeat anything he sees us do. Dad used his leatherman as a hammer briefly, so how Squeakums wants to hammer everything with the leatherman too. He loves vacuums and hammers. Though his yellow blanket has been an attachment object for a long time, he has a new addition: a baby sized rubber football. He sleeps with the ball and takes it everywhere he goes pretty much.

Life revolves around baby so that’s what I primarily write about. I do now attend and sometimes host a ‘moms and tots’ group. Our babies range from 5 weeks in the womb to 3 years old. And one mom is over due one day as I write. I think that’ll be a fun group. I’m really hoping to find a network of women friends that we can all get deep and real together.

BearHunter is super busy and involved in everything right now. The new school has started excellently. BearHunter heads up the weekly community outreach event, trains football receivers twice a week.

All the snow melted in the middle of January. But the last couple of days it has snowed and is so beautiful. I love the fresh white blanket everywhere. Squeakums loves getting out too.

P.S. The island pictures are of some of the kids we got to know while on outreach. The girls dancing are doing ESkimo dancing, which is a community activity available most Satuday nights in Gambell. We just went and watched. Though some of our more bold group members joined in an occasional dance, trying to copy the moves. I just watched!

More Island Pictures

Saint Lawrence Island

Here we are- finally on Saint Lawrence Island! It's been two years that we've been hearing about and praying for the people of this island. There's roughly 1500 villagers living here, split between two towns.
In Gambell we were greeted at the airport by 5 or so ATV's with riders donning full snowgear. There's no terminal to speak of. We just jumped out of the plane and loaded our stuff onto the ATV's (locally called Hondas) and were whisked away to the church. It was a stormy time landing.
Cloudy most of the time, and blowing wind almost always, this is an interesting place. No trees, lots of ocean. We saw whales two days in a row. First time it was a bowhead whale, which doesn't show it's tail when it dives. THe next was beluga whale, which showed it's tail.
Everyone enjoys Squeakums. There's sickness going around our group, but it's doing a slow rotation, so we're not all out at the same time. That's good. We've met some amazing elders in the community with steadfast faith for generations and in the face of many sorrows. Often when we meet people, within our first conversation we hear their number of siblings and children and grandchildren, and also the number of them that have died. Usually the sea is part of the cause, storms, ice breaking through, boating accidents. Death is a big part of their lives, as odd as that sounds.

Aaaaaah, Maui.

Squeakums loved the aquarium, he was so excited running from exhibit to exhibit. It was pretty cool for us adults, too.

Beach was ok, but he was scared of the water! Too much, too loud, too dangerous. If Grammy was there to play in the sand with him, he was fine. But he didn't even like seeing mom and dad play in the water. We couldn't do that much anyway due to BearHunter's torn elbow ligament. So we had to work on Squeakums fear of the water after that. He didn't even want to take a bath. Today he overcame, as we eased him into the pool. He even tried to get in the pool himself...a new danger.

Luau was interesting, great pork and squash. Neat production about the legends and cultural history of Hawaii.

Grandpa and Grammy treated us to a night away. We drove the windy road to Hana while they watched Squeakums. We loved best the Oheo Gulch hike. We trekked through bamboo forest, up to 30 feet tall I'd guess. That was amazing.
Heading home too soon (tomorrow).

October changes

A picture is worth a thousand words. So I'll spare you the thousand words and keep it to a few.

Pictures are: new hairdo, picking potatoes, sad face, dad and baby, mom and baby.

In other news- We had our first snow already. And we started the homestudy process to qualify for adoption. We are hoping to pursue domestic and international adoption simultaneously. Hopefully one of them will work out. I wasn't nervous about the homestudy meeting. Perhaps because I'd met the guy before and I'm confident that we'll be great parents. There's nothing I'm afraid of being discovered that'll disqualify us.

Other exciting news - We were called by the church and asked if we wanted to rent the parsonage.d We've been praying about and looking into getting our own place, even buying something. It would have to be a God thing to even qualify for sufficient loans to buy. But in the meantime this gift drops down from heaven, all perfect gifts are from above. It's a two bedroom home that I've been in often. It's on the same church property as our YWAM base, where we live now. Pastor Dave is getting the monthly utility figures for us. We may have to rent out the loft to help cover the costs of it. I would so look forward to having a house, so I can invite people over for meals or to hangout, a way to meet visitors at church or people in the community.We are both excited about the prospects of living there. It'll be potentially a $500 a month increase in expenditures to live there. So we'll keep praying about it. Our support is not full yet, but we learn to live by what we have. Some months that means no spending money on anything extra. And we're okay with that. But Yahweh, Jehovah Jirah is a God of abundance! It is within his character to provide abundantly. Amen.