Precious Princess Girl

This tiny sweetheart Juliette is one! She is full of life and spunk and we all just adore her! She started laughing at herself lately and her favorite thing is to get the boys giggling at her. She loves reading books and will sit in front of our bookshelf and pull books off the shelf one at a time and look at them forever. All of the books. And she doesn't even put any of them back. We'll work on it. :) She has the coolest dance move where she rotates her pelvis forward, sticks out her tummy, then she bounces up and down in that position while rolling her wrists around. It's pretty awesome.  Ill try to get a video of it and put it on here at some point. She still squeals like a pterodactyl (yes, I had to google how to spell that sucker) when something happens that she is not happy about, but now she also does it for fun and looks around smiling to see who heard. She loves walking around the house with one of Lucy's purses strapped over her shoulder. She sits calmly and happily as I put the tiniest pig tails in her hair.  She pulls our every plastic plate from the kids cabinet in the kitchen and pretends to eat off of each one as she scatters them all around the kitchen floor. She has curls!! When we tell her "no" she looks at you as though she is highly offended and softly squeaks in protest. She really brings all of us so much joy as she is our entertainment a lot of times and we think she is pretty darn cute. Here are her pictures from her one year photo session in the back yard. :) Happy Birthday, sweet little munchkin. You are loved beyond measure!

Whats a one year old photo shoot without a little bit of tears?!

sweet little teeth!!

Eggs!

 There were a few weeks where my kitchen counter had a few jars of random eggs waiting to hatch on it. As I was cleaning the boys closet one day, I found two lizard eggs hiding in their shirts. Randomness from living here, right?! As I showed the boys the eggs, Elliot decided that he wanted to break one open right then and see what was inside. So we dropped one onto the tile and peeked inside to see. Sorry, I know its a little gross, but just chalk it up to science. :) Sure enough there was a tiny slimy lizard wrapped up inside but he didnt survive long but I have to admit it was a little cool seeing it in there. We put the second egg in a jar and decided to wait and see what happens with him.

This is what the eggs look like

first crack

Elliot removing the shell

The lizard still in its sack

If you look closely you can see the tail wrapped up around the head

poor little guy

The second egg in its new home

While we waited for the lizard to hatch, we started seeing these huge moths all around our yard. They were sluggish and clung really tightly to where they were.  We thought they were cool at first, but them we started seeing them more and more and then we got grossed out. I started thinking that maybe the reason they were so sluggish was they were at the end of their lives and about to drop a ton of eggs somewhere and they were extra heave. The kids smashed one one day and, lo and behold, inside there were hundreds of eggs. We thought it would be a good addition to our lizard egg, so we trapped one one day and waited for it to lay its eggs. After that, we jared them up and waited.

This was its alarmed state after we blew on it

The kids opening our trap

success!!

Going to join lizard egg in the kitchen

One day after school Keenan came running out of the kitchen excitedly yelling that our lizard had hatched!! Pretty incredible that he fit in that little egg!! The other egg was one that Elliot found in our living room behind a game. It never did hatch, just got kinda mushy and eventually stuck to the bottom of the jar. :)

Then a few days later, these little guys made their appearance! Sadly, they only lived a few hours even though I put in new leaves in there for them to eat. 

The boys thought it was pretty cool though to watch them for a bit!

 Now our counter is empty and we will have to hunt for new things to watch or take apart. Life with kids! :)

Bouna!

Welp, here we are. Over a year after the last post. Man, I'm so good at this! :) I had a bunch of pictures that have been piling up and wanted to finally get on here to share them! So here they are.

jamming out on the bus

Loaded up on the bus and ready to go!

About a week after we got back with our team, we took a trip up north to a small town surrounded by villages for a mission trip/conference with about 100 students. It was incredible to see another part of Cote d'Ivoire and also a great time bonding with our new team and the students involved. We had times of teaching and training, evangelism, and each evening we sent out teams to show the Jesus Film. At the end of our week there were 700 people who had said they wanted to follow Jesus and that was really exciting! Here are some (OK,  lot) pictures from our week there!

A woman selling sweet bread on the road as we drove up

so artsy. haha! 

These women were the heroes of the week! They cooked all of our meals (for over 100 people, remember) over camp fires. It was incredible to watch as they chopped and simmered and grabbed things from the fire and pots with their bare hands or cardboard for potholders.

They were the sweetest and let me come down with Juliette and help whenever she was fussy!

Of course, Craig needed to try it out :)

Millet ready to be dried and boiled for breakfast

One of the giant pots waiting for things to be simmered

Slicing meat into chunks

There were a bunch of animals around. Baby piggies!

Tons of goats!!

The kids found friends! The conference was held at a church and these kids lived in a house on the property.

They had a blast playing with them!

This little guy was so so cute!

Snuggle bug

cows!!!

Me and my sweet Flora

Some kids waiting for the Jesus film to start

The Jesus Film equipment ready to go and waiting for the sun to set fully.

Another thing that we did was we gave clothing and supplies to a few widows that are involved in local churches. This woman only spoke her tribal tongue so we could not communicate sadly, but everyone loves snuggling sleepy babies!

She had something wrong with her feet and had some handmade crutches to help

Craig with Kouadio and Olivier

This goat was tied to the top of the bus and brought back to Abidjan

Our house help, Ange was able to come with us

Elliot eating some breakfast

In one of the prayer meeting times

Washing some dishes

Some kids from a village

Everyone kept tripping over this root, so they dug it up!

Our kids' sweet friend

Dirty face

Why is she so precious?!

Heading out to show the Jesus Film

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baby yoga

In the village where Craig went to do the Jesus Film showing

The women making food

Craig wanted to give it a try

Lucy greeting a woman

This woman said she needed a picture with her husband, Keenan :)

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The group 

Some of the girls

Elliot found these broken glasses and claimed them as his own

They dug out the drainage system in a couple parts of the town. They had been full of trash and flooding in the rains, so for part of an outreach the guys dug out the junk, clearing a path for the water, making it so there will be less standing water for mosquitos as well.

The kids sleeping soundly in their tent to keep the mosquitos out :)

And there it is. Our whole week. It was amazing and exhausting all at the same time. I am so thankful we all went and grateful for kids up there who played with our kids so well! Hope you enjoyed a little peek of northern Cote d'Ivoire!