It’s always amazing to me how much a sunny day can make a difference. When it’s cold and grey and drizzly and you can’t go outside, and everything is muddy, and the laundry won’t dry, it’s easy to get discouraged and depressed.
But then, a sunny day comes and everything looks and feels so much better!
Last week we were having lots of gloomy days. We weren’t getting heaps of rain, but just lots of drizzle, and all the paths around were slick and muddy. Saturday was the worst. It started raining during the night, and it just kept up dark and cold (and no power to charge the computers) for the whole day. But Sunday was better. Monday we woke up to a beautiful, sunny day so I decided that it would be a family fun day! After breakfast I got the kids ready and then we headed down to the river (about a 10 minute walk away). The kids played there for a while, building dams, and then climbing all over the rocks, pretending to be some strange animals that lived at the river.
When they got tired of that, we went on a hike. Being Monday, it was a “Community Work Day” here, where almost everyone gets together to work as a group on some project. This day it was cleaning the road to Yalumet. (this involves using a machete to cut down all the long grass, weeds, bushes and trees that have been overgrowing the trail). So we thought we’d hike up the trail and visit with anyone who might be working, and maybe eventually we’d run into Matt, who had gone up to hang out with the men. So we hiked for a ways (almost all uphill, thru goopy mud, and me carrying Julianne piggy-back). Finally we got to the top of a steep part of the trail and I had to stop. I didn’t want to push too hard, being pregnant and all. We hadn’t run into a single person, because they had already “cleaned” this part of the trail and gone on. So we had a drink and the kids had a snack and then who should appear, coming down the trail, but Matt! He had hiked up the trail for quite a long time (an hour maybe?) and passed groups of women, but no men. The men had told him that they were going to be working “close to” the village. But “close to” in PNG definition doesn’t always match up with what we might consider it to mean. So finally he decided to turn around and come back. So while we were having a rest, he met up with us. That was nice because he carried Julianne all the way home.
After getting home and washing the mud off and having lunch, the kids and I baked cookies. Now, I love my kids, and I love baking, but I don’t really enjoy the two of them together! It’s just so much more work and mess to have them baking with me. But I know they enjoy it, so I try to let them help, when I can stand it! This day we made some oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies… good stuff. There were of course, all the arguments over who got to stand immediately next to me and who got to stir and who got to measure and who got to pour. Then it was time for Julianne to pour the oatmeal in. Of course, just at the moment when she went to pour the measuring cup into the bowl, she managed to fall backwards off the chair, taking the bowl with her. =( Thankfully, I was able to salvage some of the flour stuff that flew out everywhere, and that was relatively easy to add back in. So much fun. Despite all this, the cookies turned out great, and we’ve been enjoying them for the last 4 days! =)
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