Lesson: Two weeks is too long for daddy to be away, but you/we/I can survive.

 

No worries.  I can take them to the pool all the time.  Who cares if they get skin cancer.

Or not if the rains come for the first time in three months. But we need the rain or they ration the electricity more.

Don’t leave them alone too long while you are on the internet or they find ways to stay active.

Or give them USA projects- this is digging for gems.  It lasted 15 minutes of play and one hour of clean up.

 

Don’t have the fight with Birch for the 100 time that the flip flops are dead- until dad comes home  with new ones.

Dad finally home and football outside in the lawn.

 

And then when mom making dinner dad…. looking at the birds he missed while he was in the USA.

Lesson: When you invite non USA families to a Halloween party- explain more and don’t have on election day

We decided to celebrate a good old American tradition- Halloween.  We ordered kids costumes from America, and David and Lisa collected them.  Cole was green lantern and luckily Birch was a Viking from How to Train your Dragon.  We ordered Birch’s costume 2 months ahead but it didn’t make it to David’s office so we had to reorder, but it was out-  ughhhh but then back in so we reordered and luckily Lisa came back one day before Halloween.  Internet is so great but then can cause quite a lot of problems if you order and then don’t get because its not like you can just reorder and get a month later unless someone is travelling.

Back to the party.  Many other expats were very nervous about this whole costume plan.  Everyone thought it had to be a scary costume and they were nervous for their kids.  No shops in town with costumes for the season.  So after lots of explaining at school that it was not all scary and that any costume would work people decided to come.  But… it was election night for the president and so people on the other side of town got nervous about driving through town on an African election day.  Turns out that night was calm and no rallies were until the  next day and really nothing worse than the US. 

About 15 families came.  We had a tent of terror with a home made coffin and guts and stuff to feel.  I made eyeballs for our bloody Mary's and blood vodka punch out of Lychee that I injected jam into.  We did apple bobbing and balloon piñatas ( which David sat up on top of our lava rock driveway- no worries there about kids diving into candy on the lava rock) and a trick or treat treasure hunt.  Too much sugar for everyone and Cole had quite a tummy ache, but survived to ask for more candy the next morning. 

Now we are settling into November, hoping the rains come soon.  everyday it threatens but no luck.  David is in the USA for two weeks.  We started the morning off with both kids running to the toilet for diarrhea, but they seem fine now.  I hope that darn giardia parasite has not made it into their little intestines again.  We will go swimming today and watch an “ali baba” movie we bought in town on the street tonight.  We can get kids movies even earlier than release date in US sometimes but sometimes on those movies you hear coughing or the screen loses the tops of the heads of the actors or it gets dark and then light- but it feels like a movie and we love movie nights when David is gone. Peace