10 Days in Cairns

At the beginning of this month Matt, Julianne, Elijah and I got to head down to Cairns, Australia for a few days away.  Matt went to attend a Typesetting training workshop.  The two youngest kids and I just went to have a much needed holiday.

We got in lots of mornings of shopping and getting supplies to (hopefully) last us the rest of our term here in PNG.  And we got in lots of swimming and playing and spending time with friends.

It was just really nice to have a little break, and to be in a 1st world country again for a bit.  I loved getting to wear shorts, blending in with everyone around me, and having some of the treats that we don't have here in PNG:  restaurants, parks, swimming pools, coffee shops, malls and movie theaters.  Oh, and Ice Cream!  Can't forget that since we really splurged on it!

Here are a ton of pictures from that week:

Checking out the scenery on the flight to Port Moresby

We spent hours in the water:

Muddy's Playground was another favorite:

This is my only child to not mind getting his head/face wet.  He just would walk over and stick his whole head into the fountains, or walk under the curtain of water pouring off the structure.  He loved all the water play-time!

My handsome explorer

So. Much. Fun!

So was the Lagoon:

All worn out from a morning of playing at the Lagoon!

When we weren't in the water, there were trips to the mall, restaurants and re-connecting with several Cairns friends.  We enjoyed a bbq at the house of some friends, tasty Moroccan food at the home of others, and a special treat of a meal out with a third set of friends.  We feel really blessed by the friends we have made over the years!!!

A special treat was a chance to get out for a movie date for Matt and I to see The Hobbit.  We're so grateful to Sue for volunteering to watch our kids for us that evening!

The kids LOVED all these little 'rides' at the mall.  Cheapo Mom wasn't about to fork over the $2 for the rides, but several times they were treated to rides by other parents who were paying for their kids (on the bigger, more-kids ones of course)!  On one mall trip we had to stop and sit for a few minutes on every. single. one. of these attractions!

 

 

The highlight of our dinner out was the balloons the waitress gave the kids!

10 days flew by way too fast.  I was ready to get back to my other three kiddos in Ukarumpa, but I have to confess that it was really hard to leave the comforts and such of the 1st world.  I don't realize what a stress it is to always be so drastically standing out and always be being watched by others until I can go somewhere where I just 'blend in' and am 'normal'.  I could almost literally feel the tension/awareness melt away when we landed in Cairns!  It was a little hard to give that up! 

But it's good to be home, and have the whole family back together again!  I felt like we 'hit the ground running' with just jumping back into life as a family of 7, and school events and homework and all that life entails.  But life is good!!!!  And I'm very thankful for the holiday.

Just Because it's Been a While

Since I haven't done an Elijah post in a while, I thought it was high time!  He is growing and changing so much.

 
So where do I begin?  Well, in just a few days he will be 15 months old.  He is a busy, but tiny little guy.  Julianne always set the records in our family for being our tiniest baby.  But last Monday I weighed Elijah and he was only 8.3 kg/ 18 lbs 4 oz!  That's noticeably less than the 19 lbs that Julianne was at roughly the same age!  But despite his size, he looks healthy.  I'm just working now to try to find more foods that he will be interested in eating!

Elijah LOVES LOVES LOVES to be outdoors!  We have a constant battle going on because I have to latch the screen door to keep him from just running off, but then the older kids (or parents!) who are outside and needing to come in find that they are locked out.  If I turn my back for too long, I'll usually find him outside, getting muddy in the sandbox or investigating Daisy, our guinea pig.  Did I mention he loves the mud?

His new fetish for the week is shoes!  Some days I find multiple pairs of dirty, muddy, grassy shoes scattered all over the house (we never wear shoes inside the house... they come off at the back door/laundry room... it's hard enough to keep the house clean even with this habit... if people wore their shoes inside, there would be no hope!).  He just can't help himself... he LOVES trying on shoes.  Just yesterday he was seen wearing Matt's slippers, Nathan's crocs, his own shoes, one of Matt's flip flops and a red, high-heeled dress-up shoe from Julianne's dress up clothes box.  (not all at the same time, of course!)

so he put the hat on this way all on his own!  he actually had the shoe on properly, but as he tried walking in it, it kept falling more and more off!

I would have to say that Elijah is the least verbal of all my babies so far.  I take that back.  He jabbers on constantly.  But as far as having "real" words that can be understood, well, he doesn't really.  He says, "Mama", "Dada", "Uh-Oh" and something that sounds like "Nigh Nigh" (night night) when he wants to nurse.  But that's about it.

Elijah is a ham when I pull out the camera.  He puts on his goofy face.

He always wants to be climbing up on things.  He's forever unpacking my pantry and trying to stack up cans and stand on them (not a very good idea!) or the tupperware cupboard and attempting to step up on various containers.

actually in, rather than trying to stand on a container!

At mealtimes when we hold hands and pray, he grabs the hands of those sitting next to him, scrunches his eyes closed, pauses for like half a second and then is pounding the table with his spoon, fork, plate, whatever is closest for him to grab.  We'll keep working on that one!

Following the pattern of most of the Taylor babies, Elijah is not a great napper.  He's currently trying to go down to just one nap a day.  So sad.  So a few times a week, after several days of just one nap, it catches up with him and he will just crash in unexpected places!

Wiped out after a busy day of trying on lots of shoes!

So, there you have it.  A few glimpses into Elijah's oh-so-busy life! :)

I'm SOOOOO Excited

One of my favorite places in all the world is Cairns, Australia.  There is just something perfect about its  tropical-climate-meets-first-world beauty.  You get the gorgeous tropical flowers and trees.  The lush green everywhere.  The BEACH!  The warm weather (I am so not a cold-weather person).  But also the shops, the restaurants, the Esplanade.  I could go on! =)

Over the past 8 1/2 or so years of my life I have spent almost an entire year living in this beautiful place.  Of course, almost every moment of those months has been when I have been in my monstrous, 9 1/2 months pregnant state, or else with a brand new baby.

So I looked like this:

And felt like this for most of the time:

Ok, so I never was THIS cute, but I like the 'so exhausted that he just crashed on the desk' picture!

 But now (in 13 days, 11 hours or so) I will be arriving in Cairns for 10 wonderful days! Can I just say, if I had no restraint, like Julianne for example, I'd be jumping up and down or wiggling non-stop in my chair out of excitement!

Granted, amidst all the excitement of looking forward to a holiday in Cairns, I must admit I do have moments where I feel like an awful parent.  "Why?"  You might ask.  Well, because while I am in Cairns, 3 of my 5 kiddos will still be here in Ukarumpa.  Matt and I will only be taking the 2 littlest ones with us.  Because of school, and because of how much it would cost to take everyone along, Kaitlyn, Nathan and Justin will be staying with several dear friends during the 10 days we are away.  I feel guilty because I have never left my kids for this long before.  Or if I have left them, they've been with Matt for the time I was away.  Never with non-family members.  And unlike taking a holiday back home, I will be in an entirely different country!  So, my overactive imagination sometimes gets going on all the "what ifs" of what could possibly go wrong.

But lately, I've really been feeling the need for a holiday.  There have been a lot of stresses in the recent months:  the stresses of homeschooling challenging kids in the village, the frustrations of having several thefts recently, sickness after sickness in our family.  So the thought of 10 days in Cairns is wonderful!  I know I'll still have the two little ones with me, but hey, when it's only two kids, when I'm used to having five around all the time, well, that in itself sounds like a holiday to me!

While I'm busy holiday-ing (read:  swimming, shopping, swimming, eating ice cream, swimming, hanging out with friends, reading books, swimming.......) Matt is actually NOT going there for a holiday.  Monday - Friday, he'll be sitting in a conference room, learning all about how to typeset (basically, how to take the translated scripture portions/New Testaments and get them from the translated stage to the printed form).  Poor guy.  He'll come home every day to hear stories of my adventures with the kids.  I'm sure he'll be jealous about the playing, but he'd much prefer sitting in a conference room to shopping for everything on my list!

Matt will have a weekend on either end that we can play though!  We're hoping that 'The Hobbit' will still be in theaters so that we could get out to a movie one evening.  And of course, we're looking forward to the chance to eat out at a restaurant.  And oh, boy!  Have I been dreaming about ice cream.  I honestly can't quite remember when I had ice cream last.  It's been a while.  Oh, I can't wait!  Maybe I can convince the family to just skip dinner and we can have an ice cream cone for dinner every night!  Well, I guess that wouldn't be all that healthy, but it would be yummy!

And hopefully the kiddos won't get too sick of me dragging them around to the shops!  My shopping list grows by the day!  But living in a country where shopping is rare, and conditions are hard on shoes and clothes especially, well, I'm looking forward to a chance to re-stock for the next 1 1/2 years of our term in PNG.

Well, now I'm down to about 13 days, 10 hours or so until the plane touches down! I can't wait!

VBS

Last week I had the opportunity to help out at the annual Tok Pisin Vacation Bible School here.  Often, we are not in Ukarumpa at this time of the year... or if we are, I'm crazy busy with all the prep that's involved in taking our family of seven out to the village for a couple of months.

But this year, when VBS rolled around, I wasn't in the village and we weren't in the midst of getting ready to go, so when I saw that helpers were needed, I really felt like I should volunteer to help out.

I'm really glad I did.  It was a really neat experience.  Yes, I was definitely out of my comfort zone, and yes,  I was pretty tired the rest of the day after my morning corralling up to 70 kids, and thinking, singing, talking and teaching in Tok Pisin.  I mean, I'm pretty fluent in Tok Pisin, but it's just not something I use all day, every day, so it does require a little extra energy to be thinking and talking all morning, every morning in a different language.

Several times during the week I was struck by how much fun the kids were having.  And with nothing.  I think of all our 'polished' VBS's back at our home churches.  With top of the line supplies, crafts, snacks, etc.   The kids here had none of that, but they all enjoyed themselves, with some of them walking an hour or more just to get here and be a part of it all.

The morning started with all the kids lined up outside the Teen Centre, waiting to get their name tags.  The kids were divided up into four different color groups depending on which villages they came from.  And each of the color groups were divided up into three different age groups:  Prep-Grade 1 (roughly 4-6/7ish years old), Grades 2-4, and Grades 5 and up.

After receiving their name tags, they joined another line to get a piece of banana bread and then a cup of water and then they ran around and played until it was time to go inside the Teen Centre and get started.

VBS opened up with singing, led by a great group of mostly teens from the International High School here in Ukarumpa.  Then it was time for a short puppet show, followed by the lesson and accompanying dramas.

After this time, we split up in our groups.  I was working with two national teenage girls, Leah and Rachel, to teach a group of (some days) more than 70 Prep and Grade 1 kids.  We worked on memorizing the Bible verse with them (Ephesians 6:11-18) and doing various activities and games to help them remember the verse, and enjoy learning it.  Of course, sometimes it was hard to get the younger ones to participate, and there were a few of the boys who liked to fight and mess around rather than listen.  But I was impressed with them.  By the end of the week they all knew the verse, along with the hand motions which accompanied it.

When the verse time was over, we tried hard to get all the kids in a straight line to walk out to game time.  Sometimes the straight line happened.  Sometimes the walking happened.  Not always though!  Outside there were four groups of teenagers (again, mostly from our High School here) who were leading the games.  They wisely played lots of games that required running around and using up energy!  And none of the games required much in the way of supplies.  Again, I couldn't help but compare it to the 'fancy', 'top of the line' supplies any VBS program back home would have.  Here, we used 'sock balls'  (old socks rolled up to be used as balls for tag games, for throwing into a bucket, etc.  For the flags in the tag game, long grass (like cattails) were used.  Cardboard squares cut from boxes were the shields in a few other games.  And the rest simply relied on the kids legs as they played chain tag and other such games.

notice the cattail coming off the boy with the red shirt for the game of flag tag

 This next one isn't my group, but it shows some of the action and kids during game time!

Oh, and I can't forget the mud.  It's rainy season right now, which means that it rains every day.  A lot.  Coming from California where we get excited if we get 10 inches of rain in a year, well, lets just say that we can easily get 3+ inches in an hour in a good downpour.  So, needless to say, everything is MUD!  And after several hundred kids have trampled around in the grass for a few hours, the game area really became a mud pit.  Thankfully, God provided dry, sometimes sunny weather each morning during VBS.  But the rain definitely was an issue.  Many of the children had to come from a long ways away.  And several of the villages were across the river which was swollen from all the rain.  So there were days that fewer kids were able to come, especially the smaller ones who weren't able to get across the flooded rivers.

Our last 'station' of the morning was the Application time.  The group leaders were in charge of doing short object lessons or activities that went along with the lesson from the morning (we were learning about the armor of God).  This was one of the areas that I felt the most stretched.  Because our group of kids was so large, it just didn't work for only one of us to stand up and give the lesson.  So Leah, Rachel and I would divide the group up into three smaller groups.  This was challenging to me because while I feel fairly confident in my Tok Pisin, I don't really use Biblical terms and teaching very much in my day-to-day use of it.  So there were days when I had to teach the kids about prayer and different ways they could pray, or explain the gospel using the PNG flag (who's colors are black, red, gold and white).  But overall, I think I was able to communicate fairly well, and it was a good experience for me.

The morning ended with the whole group of kids coming together one final time for more singing and a final drama and closing.

Here are some of the kids from my group:

I'm glad I stepped out of my comfort zone a little and got a chance to help out last week.  And I'm thankful for Matt, who took off work so he could watch the kids while I was gone in the mornings (and did lots of dishes and laundry as well, so I wouldn't have to worry about it when I got home!)

 Here are some fun stats from the VBS week:

200 loaves of banana bread – enough for the average of 520 children who came each day, plus one loaf for each volunteer who came from outside of SIL.   (Biggest day, Tuesday, with 575 children registered.)

600 donuts on Thursday

48 Ukarumpa International School students involved in some aspect of the program

24 teachers from the valley from 12 different churches

21 teachers from within the SIL community

20 other adults helping with logistics, photography, videography, puppet team and script recording, food serving, registration, leadership or material preparations.

70 kids/teens who prayed and accepted Christ during the week.

*Photo Credit:  Thanks to Carrie Smith for most of the photos used in this blog! *

My New Years Resolutions

I'm not normally a resolutions sort of gal.  It's easy to set a bunch of lofty goals.  But then when they turn out to be unrealistic, or the craziness of life gets in the way and I don't meet them, I just get discouraged and feel like I've failed.  So, it's easier to not have any goals! =)

But honestly, sometimes I can just get too.... comfortable.  Settled.  And I don't believe that's where God wants me.  It's easy to just become.... well, lazy.

So this year I've decided to set a few goals.  And I'm realizing that one of them has been set for me, whether I like it or not! 

My goals fall into three categories:  Spiritual, Physical and Family

Spiritual:
I'll be honest.  I'm pathetic at doing daily devotions.  Pathetic.  It's just that if I was to have time to get up before any of my kids for a quiet time, I'd have to be up at like 5am.  And when I'm on year 10 1/2 of broken nightly sleep, I just honestly  can't function with even less sleep.  And nights are out.  If I sit down in the quiet of my bedroom (or a chair in the front room) once the kids are finally in bed and the house quiet, I can guarentee I'll be sound asleep within 10 minutes.  So I find I have to squeeze in times in the day:  a rare moment when the house is quiet.  And that just doesn't always happen.
But my goal for this year is to be more deliberate about finding those quiet moments where I can sit down and spend time with God.  Like maybe I just skip checking email and do my Bible reading while Elijah is napping.  Or maybe I can take my Bible to the gym with me and read a chapter or two while running my mile.

Physical:
Ok, this is a little silly, but one of my goals is to drink more water.  I just find I don't often like the stuff.  So I drink more tea or juice or whatever.  I want to try to be more deliberate about drinking water.

I also want to cut back on my sugar consumption.  I'm not one of those people who can give it up altogether, but I can definitely feel the difference when I've been indulging too much.  I just feel sluggish and blah.  And when I exercise, oh boy, it's painful!  I've already started by drinking my coffee with less sugar, so that I feel like "this could use a little more", rather than "this is perfect".

Finally, I have my goal to exercise at least 4 times a week.  I try to get to the gym and run and lift weights 2-3 times a week, and then do Zumba or one of my exercise DVD's for the other couple of times.  I can totally tell how much exercise affects me and my emotional state. 

Family:
Life is busy.  Especially here where almost everything has to be made from scratch, laundry has to be hung and taken down, not just tossed in a clothes dryer.  Kids have to be walked to and from school multiple times a day.  It's so easy to get caught up in the daily chores (cooking, cleaning, etc) and not deliberately spend time with the kids.  So my goal for this year is to deliberately spend time with each of my kids each month.  Maybe do a special craft or project together.  Play a game.  Go on some sort of outing.  Read a book together.  I don't know.  I especially don't want Justin to become that "lost in the middle" third child.  It's hard when the baby is crying and needing to be held, or the older ones need help with special projects or homework or whatever.  But I want to just focus on being with my kiddos.  I know that the years are going to go by way too fast, and I'll regret the time I was so focused on cooking and cleaning and such and didn't spend enough time with them.

Finally, I wouldn't probably have chosen this goal for myself, but somehow it has come to me.
Get out of my comfort zone.  So, so far this year I will be helping out with the Tok Pisin VBS for national kids this coming week.  I'll be one of only a few 'waitskin' leaders.  I'm both excited and nervous about what this week will bring.
Also, I have some how ended up leading/co-leading my womens' Bible study this semester.  We are going to be going through the book Captivating by John and Staci Eldredge together.  I'm not sure how that will go... I mean, I really don't see myself as leader material  (there are several others in the group who I feel are much better/more equipped in that area) but there was a need, so I volunteered.

 

So, now that I've shared these goals with you, feel free to ask me on occasion how I'm doing.  Hopefully I'll be able to tell you that I'm doing great!  And if not, I hope your asking will encourage me to keep trying.