Six more irresistable family photos plus a quiz photo at the end

Tessa looking cute in Jack's circle of trains


The station master surrounded by those he loves


Ok, before any of you pitch a fit be informed that Dusty only takes the kids for slow rides around the small loop in our compound, which is a private dirt road. Even I find no harm in it, and they love it! He does insist on them wearing "protective" eye gear and footwear.


Dusty uses his "piki piki" for going to the office as it uses far less fuel than the truck (recall our fuel prices are astronomically higher than in the States). He also uses it to stimulate his mind and talents as it seems to always be begging for a repair or two, or three...


Waiting for a ride on the piki piki all geared out


After her turn on the piki piki, Tessa said, "Thanks for the ride, Pop!" We have no idea how she decided to call Dusty "Pop," but it was as cute as she is!


The QUIZ photo: Anyone who can tell me what type of lily this is will win an all expense unpaid trip to Musoma, Tanzania, a glass of fresh lemonade here on our back porch, and a lily bulb to take back through customs. The lilies have a very sweet and strong fragrance, and the leaves are broad and flat and grow up to 4 feet high. Each stalk can produce up to 12 flowers. Any guesses??

Some photos of where we live and work

This is a view of the Lake with our roof visible (barely). If you can spot the round building near the center, then look just to its right, you will see two roofs. Ours is the one in the back. From our house, we actually have a great view of the lake, and you're welcome to come see it anytime!


Musoma has tons of these rock outcroppings; they're very common around Lake Victoria. I recently discovered this one near our home and scrambled up it with our dog, Ellie. It's a great place to hang out because the tree gives shade on the top, the rock is flat at the top, it has a great view, and there are monkeys and rock hyraxes!


Dusty is currently the construction manager for our new office building. This is the plot of land where, God willing, we will be building the new translation office.


Dusty in his office talking to a friend of ours from church. This is the mission control center! Well, it is for Dusty anyway, and for operations, construction, and linguistics. All hands on deck!


Finally, here is a shot of the newly renovated administration building, and the linguistics building to its right, where Dusty's office is. Renovating and building are difficult anywhere in the world, but here we have many challenges. Dusty somehow manages to use his skills, education, engineering experience, and Swahili to rise to meet them all. When he leaves the house to go to the office, I frequently tell him, "Go build the kingdom one brick at a time!" And he does. Other days I say, "Have fun storming the castle!" which you Princess Bride fans will appreciate.

What We're Doing These Days in Photos

The disclaimer is that we had to downsize the photos significantly in order to upload them, so my apologies for the poor quality.


Tanzania has gone Obama-crazy. Can you tell what this is? While walking down the street, Dusty saw this box of bubblegum. Do you think this product was officially sanctioned by the Obama Administration? We see his face everywhere, on all kinds of products and vehicles. Popular guy in these here parts! We'll keep an eye out for other funny items.


One thing we do around here is fix stuff. Including vehicles. Even the kids get in on the action. You can never start them too early, right?


We like a little teamwork. Sharing is Caring. Solving puzzles together. Fixin' flats.


Nothing like a little grease under the nails, eh? A working man's hands look good paired with wooden Dutch shoes. Oh yeah.


With some spare time, Dusty likes to take out his bow and arrows and practice in the backyard. Here he's teaching a friend the ropes. Don't worry - we keep the kids far from the line of sight. And the dog too. But if a screeching ibis got in the way? Well, we wouldn't be shedding any tears about that.


When it's not rainy season, we like to pretend that it is. Or is this a fairy hiding under a toadstool?


Goggles really do make running through the sprinkler much more fun. Even when they're so fogged up you can't see anything - maybe that's where the fun is!


Dusty exchanges high-fives at a church dinner. The kids love engaging with us and learning about us. And following us, and touching us, and staring at us, and asking us questions...


How cute are these kiddos? They love seeing their image on the camera display after I take a picture. It's easy to draw a crowd of kids with a digital camera. Behind the kids you can see the way the Tanzanians cook. It was a pretty good church dinner of beans, rice, goat meat (I passed), and greens. Unfortunately there were no spoons or forks, so this was the first time we ever tried to eat rice with our fingers. We were a little messy, but our kids thought it was fun, and it was!


Can you guess which ones are ours? That is our new church building behind the kids.


Happy Birthday to Dusty! Someone recently told me that she recalled me to be a maker of "pretty cakes." I quickly reminded her of this winner (and yes, this is the final product before it had been cut), which required slicing off all the burned parts before I poured on the glaze. Regardless, it was still tasty, even with all those candles on it. :)


Tessa has learned how to do things the Tanzanian way. Here she's washing her doll's clothes. It was a dull day, so I filled the bathtub (yes, that's our bathtub) with water and soap, gave her a tutorial, and let her have some good clean fun.


Jack, on the other hand, is not so good at "good clean fun." On this day we went down to visit some friends who live near a beach. I greased him up with sunscreen, which acted like a magnet between a boy and dirty sand. This is one of Jack's classic expressions.


And finally, here's what I like to do with a little paint and the kids' naptime. This bulletin board used to be a dart board, and the wall looked pretty sad with all the chunks taken out by stray darts. This was my solution to hiding the holes. AND, if you send us your Christmas cards this year, we'll get to look at your gorgeous faces all of 2010! Here's our address so you're officially without excuse.

Dusty and Kim Hill
Box 1235
Musoma
Tanzania

Back in Africa

Every now and then, during the course of everyday life in Africa, something odd will happen which will prompt Dusty to say, "you should put THAT on the blog!" The first time those words were uttered since our return was for the new toilet seat.

Because our toilet seat cover has been broken in half for a long time, we put it on the to-do list to get an entire new seat. Dusty went to town and came back with a new seat and cover. He promptly put the new seat on the toilet the next evening. By the following morning, the seat was mysteriously cracked in half! It had not cracked beneath either of us, so who who-dun-it?

Such is the quality of products we can purchase here, and returning purchases is basically unheard of here.. In the end, Dusty went back to the shop, and the shop owner gave him the display seat which he has not installed yet. I haven't seen it, but he says it's pretty banged up. I guess that's better than split in two though!

Regardless, we're happy to be back in our own home after a year of traveling and living out of suitcases and borrowed drawers. We've been welcomed warmly back into Musoma and are adjusting back to African life. We're amazed at how long it is taking us to settle back in, and are relearning how to cope with things like unreliable electricity, mosquito nets, and filtering the tap water. The kids are gratefully handling it all in stride.

Here are some pictures of our travels since we left America, in reverse order (sorry for the odd formatting).

1. My birthday party in our house. It was a team effort: Dusty made the cake, I made the icing, and the kids helped with the sprinkles.



2. The tunnels and tents my grandmother gave the kids for Christmas - set up for the first time since Christmas, and in our own house in Musoma.



3. Our annual family photo on the beach of the Indian Ocean.



4. The kids at Turtle Bay, the location of our annual branch conference in Kenya.



5. A painting shop in Zanzibar selling traditional Tingatinga paintings.



6. Having lunch while on a day-long safari in Ruaha National Park in Tanzania.



7. The tent where we all lived for one week during our two weeks of Swahili refresher course near Iringa, Tanzania. It was crowded and very cold! We were thankful to move into a cottage/hut for the following week.



8. The kids waiting at Heathrow airport for our flight to Tanzania. Amazingly, Jack fell asleep in the rental car and stayed asleep through unloading the baggage from the car onto the trolleys and continued sleeping for about an hour in the airport. What a blessing! Between Dallas and Musoma, we had an incredible amount of travel, airports, flights, rental cars, countries, and luggage.



9. Tessa and Dusty went out one morning in England to explore the canal system and it's locks. We visited several of our friends for about 4 days in England.



10. The Netherlands, where we visited our good friends for 5 days and visited the Outdoor Museum with traditional windmills and other historical monuments.

About Leaving

Worst things about leaving:
1. Packing
2. Stress
3. Saying good-bye over and over
4. Cleaning and constant laundry
5. Anticipating all the things I'll miss (food items, family, friends, fellowship...)
6. Waiting for Tessa's passport to miraculously appear in the mail
7. Forgetting to buy something and rushing out to get it
8. Finding out the airline only accepts bags 10 pounds less than what I packed in each bag
9. Making odd meals from the bits and pieces left in the fridge/pantry
10. Struggling to be a good mom while feeling stressed and emotionally fragile

Best things about leaving:
1. Anticipating being done with packing
2. Hearing from friends how much they appreciate us
3. Lots of meals out with friends and family
4. Having friends help out with cleaning the house
5. Looking forward to being in our own home again!!!
6. Getting rid of things we didn't really need
7. Happiness at Dusty's finishing his master's degree
8. Grandparents taking care of kids while we pack
9. Well, I can't seem to find 2 more things for this list.

See you again after 14 airport visits, 6 countries, 6 weeks, and 400 pounds of luggage miraculously delivered somehow to Musoma, Tanzania in late July.

Road Trip 2009

We've just finished the most massive road trip that I think I've ever taken, and on top of that, we did it with 2 toddlers! Amazing! It took us 3 weeks to make a full circle of Denver, Dallas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, and back to Denver. We stayed one week in Dallas and at least one night in the other spots. Here are the photo explanations and then the highlights.

Tessa and Jack have been through so much transition that Tessa has taken to climbing in bed not only with her security blanket, but with her security brother as well.

Tessa and Jack chilling in their car seats with cool new sunglasses, which I bought after tiring of hearing, "Aaagh! The sun is in my eyes! Make it stop!"

Dusty and the kids in front of the Corn Palace in South Dakota. They've been building this place for over 100 years with corn. The photos of the old buildings look much cooler, but it was still interesting to see the modern version with most of the exterior decorations made of corn cobs and husks. We didn't visit anyone in SD so we were compelled to stop at this roadside attraction to curb the boredom of the plains and plains and plains and plains...

Mount Rushmore! Seeing this monument was a first for all of us. Dusty's dad saw the picture and wondered if we had aligned ourselves intentionally with the Famed Four, but alas, we can take no credit for the wonder that we are.

Jack in the croup tent in the hospital in Rolla, Missouri. This is obviously not a highlight of the trip. He started having raspy breath in Kansas, and when we went to a doctor in MO, we were surprised to get sent to the ER in an ambulance. Poor Jack couldn't even enjoy getting to ride in the ambulance - normally a very cool vehicle in his books. He was admitted to the hospital, stuck with needles, put in the croup tent, and given lots of breathing treatments through a nebulizer (machine that dispenses medicine as a vapor).
After a rough night, we were released the next morning into the snow with some prescriptions. The friends we were visiting, Bob and Sara Bowers, gave us an extra nebulizer (how great is that?) and after a few more rounds, he was on his way back to health and on toward Wisconsin. We're just glad this incident happened in the States and not in Tanzania where I have no idea what we would have done.

On to the top 10 highlights:
10: DVD players attached to the headrests in the back seat!!!
9: The children's museum with the Caldwells in Enid, Oklahoma.
8: Costume night in Kansas - Tessa as a lion, and her buddy Luke Hunsberger as Buzz Lightyear dueling for top dog.
7: Being thankful not to be one of 4 overturned cars in Missouri snow. We're giving God praise that we had clear roads the rest of the way.
6: An amazing turkey dinner with the Philippi family in Wisconsin and turkey sandwiches in the car the next day.
5: Playing on the snow-covered swing set at the Readers' house in MN.
4: Finally seeing Mt. Rushmore on a sunny day with hardly anyone else around.
3: Going on a double date with the Kroekers in WY and hiring actual babysitters for the first time...ever! (Tessa's nearly 4 now.)
2: Tessa and Jack having so many new friends that they forgot all their names and referred to them as "boy," "that girl," or "the children."
1: Getting to spend some great times with friends across the nation who we haven't seen in years.

All told, it was a great trip and extremely worth while. If I remember I'll post the miles once we do the math. We're now in Denver for 3 weeks before heading to Dallas for 2 months and then back to Africa on June 7. We all got sick after Jack, but we're all now recovering from coughs and colds. Best of all, we're just thankful to finally unpack our suitcases and chill out for a bit before the next transition.

Tessa's handling the transition like a champ and enjoying each new place and friend. It's been harder for Jack though and it shows in his behavior. In fact, while we were in Dallas, he told me "I want go home," and I just have no idea what that even means to him! It's amazing that at his verbal stage he was able to form such a sentence with the abstract concept that is "home." It nearly broke my heart. We will all be glad to settle in for good, although that won't happen till late July when we get back to Musoma.

At this point, that's the main reason I'm looking forward to returning to Africa. For now, we're having too much fun in America.

Sorry for the length of this blog - I guess it makes up for months of no postings.
cheers,
Kim

Fall Fun Festival

Dusty and the kids with the firetruck at our church's festival. The kids had a blast in the bouncing house, on the giant slide, playing games for candy, and petting the animals in the petting zoo, especially the "zony" - half pony and half zebra.

The kids and me at our playgroup, which we love! Tessa misses her buddies in Tanzania, but she loves her new friends here too. Tessa is infatuated with the whole princess thing, so she didn't even think about any other costume.



The pumpkin we carved at our house in 10 minutes. Jack didn't even complain about wearing his hand-me-down costume, which really surprised us. Tessa earned her wand by having dry underwear during naps!