VI, reading Jesus, and litte sister

It’s been awhile since I’ve been around here. Sorry about that, life’s been a bit crazy. New city. New jobs. New illnesses. New problems. New apartment to paint and buy cabinets and such. And other stuff too.

But I’m back, and with a new city the material should be flowing. I haven’t had time to put together any long or deep thoughts lately, so here’s some quick hitters:

-I’m beginning to wonder if my son has Voice Immodulation disorder. He says everything at full volume. All the time. And he loves identifying things he knows. One of his favorite things is cars. We go outside, living in a city with thousands and thousands of automobiles, and he will quite literally shout at the top of his lungs “car” at each parked car we walk past. People from hundreds of yards away will turn to look when he cries out.

-Where would your life be without the tooth fairy? Probably at least $2 poorer (unless you’re like a college friend of ours who sold his teeth on ebay for $20). Well in France you’d still be ok thanks to La Petite Souris. Yup. The Little Mouse. In France, there is no tooth fairy, but rather a tooth mouse that comes to replace fallen teeth with treats and money. We have a young friend, American who’s lived most of her life in France, who recently lost her first tooth. We were with her family the night she placed the tooth under her pillow, and she told us all about the little mouse. When asked why there’s not a tooth mouse in America, she responded simply “the mouse can’t cross the ocean, silly.”

-When you live abroad in a modern, western country, it’s often the little things that drive you batty. Take for instance, grocery carts. Here in France, someone decided to make all grocery carts with four fully turning wheels. Trying to wrangle a grocery cart with four spinning and turning wheels through a crowded grocery store is like trying to push a red wagon through a slalom course on an ice rink. It just doesn’t work well. Lock the two front wheels, please!!

-Yesterday while eating his breakfast, Sawyer pointed to his children’s Bible and said “Read Jesus... please.” Melted my heart. I can thank his wonderful, godly mother for that one. She models it for him each morning, reading her own Jesus stories over breakfast.

-If you read this and you think about it this week, pray for a strong easterly wind over the Atlantic ocean. Somewhere in the ocean there’s a ship. On that ship there’s a crate. On that crate is our name. Oh how we long to see that crate. You see, nearly four years ago we packed up our meager belongings (dishes, dresser, decorations, photo albums) into storage and moved to East Africa. 15 months ago we transferred those items into a wooden crate and bought a few new things to add in (couch, mattress, chair). It’s scheduled to arrive sometime in February. It’s not that we’re addicted to our stuff or anything, we’d just like to sit on something other than a trunk and an exercise ball and have more décor than a couple of ikea bookshelves!

-I don’t think I’ve mentioned it on here yet, but it’s pretty official that Sawyer will have a little sister coming into the world in about 3.5 months. We are incredibly excited and can’t wait for her arrival! Name suggestions welcomed, but be not offended when we don’t use yours :). We really don’t have it narrowed down much, still in the brainstorming phase.

Until next time...