Photo Friday [163]

When all three insist on "helping" to frost the birthday cake.

  The finished product, for a little girl who loves monkeys.

 Kate started off her birthday with one of her favorite things - playing in the bathtub.

 The brothers came up with the idea of having a tea party for Kate's birthday, so we poured hot chocolate into little plastic cups, they spooned ridiculous amounts of sugar into them, and then drank while eating small food.

A very proper young lady!

 

 Happy birthday sweet Kate!  We had no idea what a load of cuteness, love, sass and determination we were unleashing on the world two years ago.  We wouldn't trade you for anything!

This week I got to help with a Scripture checking party for the Menya New Testament.  This is when a group of proofreaders come together to go over a newly-typeset New Testament to look for errors before it goes off to the printer!

Menya is an agglutinative Papuan language, with a grammar very different to English... so, good luck reading this section of Phillipians!

  For a checking party, each book of the Bible is laid out separately on tables.  Each person is given a specific job, such as checking page numbers, formatting, cross-references, illustrations and the table of contents.  We take red pens and look through all of the books, initialing a check sheet after completing each book.

My job was to check section headings, and I also checked a few cross references.  I only found one error, but I know from the red pen marks on the pages that many more errors were caught.  Now they can be corrected and the finished product can be sent to the printers.  It's a privilege to hold these pages, which represent so many years of work by Carl and Pat Whitehead and the Menya translation team, and to think that next year the Menya people will be able to receive the printed New Testaments!

Some teeny-tiny eggs.  I didn't even see the fly with my naked eye until I looked at the photo, it was so small!

 

I must have been craving green, since this is what I bought at the market this morning!

I know it's Thanksgiving in the U.S., but it looks like I've already got a Christmas elf hiding in my cupboard.

Until next week!

Photo Friday [162]

Boots and umbrellas.  That about sums up the weather this week.

A little visitor in our kitchen.

 And when I say little, I mean really little.  You can just barely see him on the edge of the sink on the left side of the picture.

This little girl is turning two in just two days!

 

Playing cars on the couch.  With little boys in the house, it's rare that we actually get to sit on it.

 

 A dad who instigates a spontaneous pre-bedtime dance party in the living room to mom's Zumba music.

I see a lot of bananas in my near future.  And there are two more bunches growing besides these ones!  Hope they don't all ripen at the same time.  That's what you get for having 30 banana trees in the back yard...

Until next week!

Photo Friday [161]

Finally got a macro lens (Tamron 90mm if you care about that sort of thing), and have been giving it a workout  both with close-ups and using it to take portraits of folks.

Kate made the switch to a big bed this week.  It's gone smoother than I expected, perhaps due to the fact that she sleeps with the door closed, and doesn't know how to work door knobs yet!  The quilt on her wall made by great-grandma Simmons.

Caleb is a good sport playing with the dollies.

Kate lookin' classy in some new clothes before church.

Knowing that Brian had yet another international trip coming up, for his birthday I got him the nice Bose headphones that he's wanted but is too practical to buy for himself.  Of course I had to try them out.  Umm... he knows that these kinds of gifts are meant to be reciprocated in kind, right?

Photo Friday [160]

This week:

I just had to post a picture of this guy... my father-in-law's new friend.  While working on our fence, the family was commenting on the size of the spiders.  Oh, those aren't big spiders, I told them... and then I found this one in a tree to show them.  Should have included something for context, but he's easily as big as your hand with legs included.

No, it's not a jungle... it's just our backyard.

 The grandmother from next door volunteered to help us clear out the plants so that we could install the new fence.  I'm happy to say the fence project is done, and done well.  Thanks everyone!

There was some playing this week too... it was the annual Carnival at the High School.

My kids' priorities:  bouncy castle, cotton candy.  Everything else is superfluous.

The water maze was fun though...

 

 ... and wet!

 

Speaking of wet, Darin paid to put Brian's face up here so that we could throw wet sponges at him.

 

"Sumo" wrestling.

At one point, Brian ended up with his wife's and his mother's flowers... and his daughter's hair bow.  had to take a picture of that.

Good cousin time:

 

 

Kate in a new Sunday dress from Aunt Becky.

 We made a trip to the local coffee plantation:

 Kate was not too interested in learning how coffee beans are graded.

 On Sunday night Becky gave a concert, performing some of her original compositions.  Her worship album is on iTunes and Amazon.)

And then all too soon it was time for them to go.  Thanks for visiting!