Sour Puss

Hahahah!! This pic just cracks me up! Ben was the one who snapped it, and when I was going through the camera I saw it and LoL'd! Faith Ann was bugging me for candy, so I gave her these sour skittles to have. Just typing that makes my mouth water! I hate sour candies...ack! Faith Ann could eat those things with a straight face! Obviously, Drew could not!

Uh-Oh

That would be Faith Ann's hair...and yes, also her gum. I am not sure how it happened, I just know that she came into the parlour crying. It definitely could have been worse! I tell the kids all the time to keep their gum in their mouth, but she claims that it just fell out - which happens all the time believe it or not. I finally made a rule that if your gum or candy falls out of your mouth...too bad, so sad. I have no idea how stuff falls out of their mouth all the time! I did see it happen the other day though. Faith was showing Emma the color candy she had...and it fell right onto the floor. So, that must be one way they end up losing it. Somtimes it pops right out when they are attempting to blow a bubble too. Oh well...thankfully she didn't lose too much hair. Of course she was more sad about losing her piece of gum than those pieces of her hair!

Beautiful Butterfly's

We do get some beautiful butterflies and moths around our house. We also get some HUGE ones. The other night I went outside to talk to our nightwatchman, and I seriously thought a bird was dive bombing me! It was a gargantuous (is that even a word??) moth! I shoulda taken a pic! Oh well. I did get a picture of this beautiful moth/butterfly (I can never really tell the difference, but I do think this is a moth.) Isn't it pretty? The kids love to go critter hunting, and moths and butterflies are their favorite thing to catch. Recently Kate has become pretty adept at catching crickets and grasshoppers. The neighbor kids have taught her how. So, when Rex hasn't eaten well in a couple of days, Kate and Drew will go around the house looking for grasshoppers and crickets. Kate will catch them and hold them in her hand until rex zips his tongue out there and nabs it. It is so funny!

I totally forgot to write about this on Sunday, but we found another new and unique creature (the rainy season must bring them out...I tell ya!). Here is a picture of it:

It looks like a snake, doesn't it? The one in the picture is obviousy very tiny, but the one we found in our yard, was about a foot long! So, imagine our thoughts. The girls come running in the house screaming that they saw a snake. Chastity, the girl that was here over the weekend, has the thing strung over a stick. I told the girls to get in the house and stay in! Ben went out and investigated. He was pretty sure it was dead, but to be sure went to cut the head off. Well, as he began examining it, he found that it was quite hard to determine where the head was because it had no mouth! So, he reasoned that it must not be a snake after all. He came in the house and googled it, and quickly learned that is called a snake worm, or a blind snake. We never got a picture of the one we caught, but I found this shot online so you could see what it looks like. Wierd, huh!? Wierd and cool all at the same time. Our friend Hillary told us that he's seen them before and that one variety is a beautiful bright blue color.

You just never know what a day will hold when living in Cameroon...

The Bees Knees

Our house is surrounded by tons of gorgeous bushes, plants and flowers. Because of all the amazing flowers we have, we also have a ton of birds. I hear the most amazing melodies around my house. Today, as I was in the kitchen, I heard one bird singing out in the courtyard I think...it sounded like a beautiful recording! Not only do these birds sound so amazingly beautiful...they also look amazingly beautiful. They are all shimmery and bright! We've tried to get some good photos of them, but nothing ever turns out clear enough for me. One of these days, I'll post some beautiful photos of my birds. Well, our family has turned into bird lovers, and we came up with a great idea to make a bird feeder. These birds we see look kind of like hummingbirds, but they are bigger and land, rather than hover. We thought however, that if we tried making a hummingbird feeder of sorts, with the colored sugar water, that they would like it, and it would also give us a place to watch them. Ben found a chicken feeder, and I boiled and colored sugar water and we placed the feeder right outside our parlour window, so we could literally eat breakfast while watching the birds. Well, our little plan didn't work exactly as we had imagined. Take a look: And here is a closer look: While I do appreciate bees and all that they do for us, this is definitely not what we had in mind. In the end, we had to take down our ingenious bird feeder. Evidently the hummingbird feeders you buy in the store are designed to keep the bees out...and ours obviously wasn't. In fact, several of them drowned in all that sugary goodness!

Sleeping Beauty

We enjoy our family day Monday. Today was chilly and rainy...and I loved it! Ellen and Chastity headed up to Sabga first thing in the morning to help transport a bunch of tables and stuff at camp. Thank the Lord she had her keys :D So, we asked her to join us for lunch at our favorite hamburger joint and they decided to go ahead and eat with us and then continue on their way out of town. We had a yummy meal. The Asa-Neh restaurant is the fastest one I've ever been to in Cameroon...so we love it, and today was no exception. The food came out quick and we had a lot and it was yummy!

We said our goodbyes and headed home to relax. It was a perfect day to do that too...dreary, cold, rainy. I put Faith and Emma down for a much needed nap, while Drew and Kate quietly watched a video. I couldn't resist catching a shot of my sleeping beauty:
Ok...so I'll be honest. I snagged a couple of sleepy shots for a scrapbook page I was working on. :) lol! But they still are super cute. I got another one of Emma too. Seriously though...I need to get Faith Ann to quit sucking her thumb! All three of my girls have been finger suckers and I've had to break each of them. I thought I'd never break Kate. She was the worst one of all of them. She sucked her pointer finger, and she sucked it all day long. Thankfully Faith only sucks her thumb in bed. So, she is my next project! But she still looks so sweet!

Happy Sunday

We had a great Sunday today. Ellen Doyle and a friend of hers, Chastity, were still staying with us, so they rode with us to all the church services. Kind of a funny story...not so funny for Ellen but we can look back and smile now. She got home pretty late after Felix's and Evette's wedding. She has a nice big truck, so she was helping return rental chairs and do a number of other things. Well, she got to our house so late, and was so tired after a long day (long week really) that she locked her keys in her truck. Well, her truck is really nice, so we considered getting someone to try and pick the lock, but she didn't want to ruin her truck and I don't blame her. So she had another set at her house in Foumban (about 3 hours away) and we got someone to send it "voyage." With the "voyage" system you can send just about anything across Cameroon...they just add it to the public buses that are coming your direction. It cost Ellen about $3, so it isn't too expensive. Anyway...all that to say, the car was packed today, but thankfully Ellen got her keys back and was able to unlock her truck tonight! :)

Ben got this adorable picture of Faith Ann singing out of the hymn book. She is always so adamant about having one...and I'm not sure if you can tell which direction it is facing...upside down! She always tells me she is going to read to me. And I humor her...I tell her to go ahead and read to me. Because of that she believes that she can read. Every once in a while I'll catch the kids saying, "Faith you can't even read!" and she'll respond, "Yes I can...Mommy said so!" So, naturally if she can read, she should have a hymn book on Sunday.

Wedding Fun

Well, today was the big wedding day for Pastor Felix and Evette. It started out rainy and dreary, but by the time Ellen and I drove down into the valley of Bamessing it was clearing, and while a bit cool, turned out to be a beautiful day! We had to get the cakes to the church to set up before 10. So, Kate and Emma were our helpers, sitting in the backseat with the cakes to make sure they didn't tumble upside down. While still on our driveway, before we even got to the tar road, Kate let out a big..."Oh no...Mom!!" and she just burst into tears. I was like, "What in the world did you do!!!!!!" She said Emma had told her to look behind them and Kate, without thinking, put her hand on what she was probably thinking was the seat to turn around, but what was actually a cake! Ahhhh!! That girl is SO blonde sometimes. So, one of our cakes had Kate's big handprint in it. Poor Ellen...all that work, and one of my girls has to mess it up. I just felt bad, but it truly was an honest mistake on Kate's part. She just wasn't thinking...she really was trying to take her job seriously and I know she felt awful. Oh well...Ellen is such a good sport and so easy going about the whole thing. When we got there we tried to repair it, but it wasn't really working. Kate managed to just smoosh one side, so we turned that part towards the back wall and the only way you could really see the problem is if you were standing behind it, or directly over it. Most people probably had no idea. It all worked out in the end. Ellen made three box cake mixes...she saved an 8-in round for the groom and bride and cut the rest of the cake to serve over 200 people. Imagine how tiny a piece they got! haha! But that is how they do it here...you just get a teeny tiny bite! Unless, of course, you have big bucks, which most people do not have.


Susan and I just told the kids to stay outside and play during the wedding. They weren't disturbing at all and that way 6 seats were free for other guests, and they weren't crammed in a stuffy room for two hours. Before the ceremony even started, Kate found this amazing critter...one that I've NEVER seen before: Here is a closer shot (and you can always click on the image to make it even bigger):
Isn't that the wildest thing you've ever laid eyes on? It was the hugest caterpillar I've ever seen in my life and there was no way in the world I was gonna pick it up. We managed to get it on that stick to get some good photos of it though. The kids also found a big lizard that they played with, saw a chicken eating a frog, and also a chicken laying an egg! What an educational day they had! haha!

The wedding was very similar to last weeks. The differences were the processional time. This one went much faster. Ben also had a different role this week...he officiated the wedding and gave the vows (his very first wedding in Cameroon!) and Matt was the one who preached the message this week. Everything went great and it was a big success. The gospel went forth and I think the entire day brought glory and honor to God! Here is a shot of the bride and groom during the recessional
What a good looking couple!!