While Dusty's been in Thailand, we've been staying busy, which hasn't been hard since we've been sick and have kept up with our home schooling schedule. In between easy meals, naps, and school, we've been playing outside, doing some crafts, watching a few movies, and playing games while we wait for Dusty to come back.

We are borrowing a trampoline from friends who are in Montana on furlough, and the kids are using up great stores of energy on it, which makes everyone happy, especially me. I wish I could get up there and jump like I did when I was a kid, but I'm too nervous about my back.

One of the kids' favorite things to do is to make paper airplanes for them from a book my mom gave us. OK, I'm the one who makes them, but then they color the planes, name them, and have flying races.

One of our garden visitors, and actually this one is on the smaller end. I know all of God's critters are amazing, but this kind kind of creeps me out. This morning there was a slug on the back of our map of the world in the school room. Blech. This evening right after dark while showing the kids a good-sized frog, Jack managed to step on it. Sorry Frog - he did hop away at least.

The weaver birds frequently scavenge from the dogs' bowls. So does our kitten, Tiger. We have so many weaver birds, that it's easy to forget how amazingly beautiful they are. We also have rainbow sunbirds, very blue kingfishers and one bird that is half black and half crimson - gorgeous.

Inspired by a friend in Musoma who did the same thing, we converted one of our ugly Action Packers into a game board and finally found something useful to do with the soda caps the kids have been collecting. Any more ideas for caps?

It's great to see our garden coming to life after planting several new plants while enjoying the ones that were already here. I'm not sure if I'm more happy about having blue hydrangeas or feeling confident that our new dog, Koko, will no longer try to kill Tiger, who can now roam at liberty all day long.

Tessa actually took this photo with our bulky camera. Cooper loves swinging in his swing outside, but he prefers digging in the dirt.