So Long Ordinary

Wow! We have been a busy family this past couple of weeks. It's Monday morning and I'm finally finding some time to sit down and say "hi." But it is good to be busy and we're all doing really great. Sean is really busy flying these days since he's the only pilot in Palangka Raya right now. He comes home tired but I also see that little twinkle in his eye that tells me he's having a blast. I love that my husband loves his job! English Club is so much fun! I'm writing a more informative post about that soon, so stay tuned! My niece just graduated from high school! Ack! I can't believe Catie is a high school graduate. I am SO proud of that girl and the beautiful person she's become both inside and out. I felt terribly homesick this past weekend, knowing I was missing out on her big day. We are getting so excited for our upcoming MAF Kalimantan Family Conference. We get to go to a new-to-us city, stay in a nice hotel near the beach, an...

I don't really like doing these update lists instead of more in-depth stories about our life but the reality is that I'm SWAMPED these days and can barely come up for enough air to make a simple list.  But there are some things I'd like you to know and items for prayer as well.  So here's what is going on... I had a terrific Mother's Day weekend!  I got to have a few hours at the local spa with some friends and came home to a new kitty!  She's so pretty and sweet.  We named her Princess and she very much has that kind of personality.  One of these days, I'll get a picture of her - she's an Angola cat.  I've never had a such a fancy cat before but I have to say, I really like her.  (Sean found her at a pet store because it was the only way he could find a cat that had a full tail and wasn't missing an eye or something.) Our other pets have not been fairing very well at all.  Snowflake, our little white bunny died.  We got two more and the...

If you haven't figured it out yet, we're explorers! One of our favorite places to go is to the swamp. We take Duchess (our dog) and plan on getting good and wet. I didn't feel like getting wet (because it was pouring down COLD rain when we got there) so I played photographer while Sean and the girls played. My cute little Paige hung out with me. She was pretty cold and the deeper water was making her nervous. Sean found and then stole somebody's boat. I guess it served him right, then, when he jumped in and the whole thing just sank underneath him. (Oh, I wish I hadn't left the camera in the car to go out and lecture him about stealing people's boats. It was classic. I am telling you. Classic.) These little boats are seriously wobbly and you have to be very careful about where you sit and how you go about it. Apparently big guys should NEVER sit in the very back without anything in the front to counter their weight. The boat was very narrow as well. B...

Our whole family really enjoys animals.  If you know us at all, you knew it wouldn't be long until we began acquiring pets.... First we got Duchess, our beloved Javanese Golden Retriever.  (No that's not a real breed...though it probably should be.)  She's a great family pet and we all really love her.  She's not quite full grown and still acts like a puppy much of the time. Her favorite pastime is catching stuff - huge locusts, frogs, small birds, geckos, rats, shrews, butterflies - really, anything that moves. But she's sweet - those animals she's catching are meant to be her playmates and she doesn't really mean to bite them in half!  She also serves as a great guard dog.  You probably think I'm joking but I am very serious.  People here are terrified of her!  I mean really, really terrified. This is good for two reasons - 1) nobody will try to enter our yard to steal something and 2) nobody would be brave enough to steal the dog for their dinn...

A few days ago, I gave the cashier at the store the wrong amount and spent 10 minutes trying to convince her I knew what I was doing until the bag boy slowly, carefully, in broken English counted all the bills out for me. Two days ago, I tripped foolishly on my way out of a store while a crowd watched. Yesterday, I got in a snarling fight with a dog on the street only to discover the old man watching me with amusement from his front porch. Living in Indonesia has been a humbling experience. Okay, a humbling experience on steroids. I am humbled and often humiliated in some situation pretty much daily - even if I don't leave home. Today, I asked my helper to wipe down the inside of a kitchen cabinet that was smelling bad. I was hoping it was just mold but it was bad enough I couldn't rule out something dead. Pretty soon, she came to me with an awful and smelly container full of black, putrid mold. Then I remembered the pancake mix that I had put in the container and stored...

Over two weeks ago, our family made a fun discovery in the area - a little nature preserve complete with rescued and rehabilitating orangutans!  We knew such a place existed, but we didn't know it was open to the public - and it only is open on Sundays and holidays...we happened to show up on a day that was a holiday!  Admission is totally free, though, and they have a little hut with windows for viewing the orangutans playing in two huge cages.  You  can just take a seat and observe their antics to your heart's content. We were able to get pretty close but we had to look through a dirty tinted glass so pictures didn't turn out great.  These animals are so docile and human-like.  At one point, one of the orangutans must have been able to see us through the glass and it plopped down, rested its chin on its arms and just watched us like we were watching it! This center is the same one that eventually releases rescued orangutans on islands upriver for a s...