I am thankful for….
Friends. Near and far, old and new.
(and that baby Hazel and Ellesmere survived the ‘silly’ photo)
My family. These amazing people and those that we did not get to celebrate with this year.
New babies
Delicious food in a beautiful setting
Great traditions
And maybe not so much the wolf spider (?) that joined us with all her babies on her back
A second Tanzgiving in Lengijave
Glow in the dark bocce
And the barn owl that keeps coming back to visit us
HAPPY TANZGIVING
When a student in Tierney's class completes a reading log they get to choose a "Superhero Award" (I think it equates to 10 1/2 hours of reading). There are things like sit at the teacher's desk for day, sit under a tree for lunch, etc. I think she’s completed four or five reading logs now, and this time Tierney chose "Spotlight" which usually means one or two other kids write about the student. Here is what Tierney's class had to say about her. (I stole this from their class blog.)
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This morning's shout out goes to Tierney and was collectively written by P5/P6:
Posted 2 hours ago by Chelsea
For any of you that have come to visit, I’m sure we’ve brought you to the Arusha Maasai Market to buy gifts before you left. It’s a crazy mess of almost 200 stalls that sell all sorts of curios from paintings, to maasai beadwork, to wood carvings. But late on Monday night into the early hours of Tuesday the entire craft market burned to the ground. This is made even more tragic by knowing that the market is mere meters from the main fire station. Hundreds of families lost their livelihood as all of their inventory is now gone. Most (all?) likely don’t have insurance to cover the loss. Of course the rumors in a small town are rampant, but I just feel for all of the families impacted by this. So sad.
(fire picture linked to video)
And now it looks like this:
A few people have asked me if there are any funds being raised to assist these families. I haven’t heard anything official yet, but I will update if/when I hear of anything.
Friday night both girls had their first recital of the year (and Ashlyn’s first recital ever). We are so proud of both of them. As a side note, you’ve gotta love a school/community where the music recitals are BYOB.
Umoja Recital November 7, 2014 from Lisa Coyle on Vimeo.
Straight from the performance we went to celebrate Guy Fawkes night at one of the other international schools. Great kids night with Khan’s BBQ and giant bonfire followed by fireworks. Thanks for a great evening, Braeburn. The full moon was stunning as well.
Last Sunday the kids and I went to ISM to enjoy a picnic lunch by the pool. We were surprised to find thousand and thousands of toad eggs in the pool. The kids accurately described them as looking like a necklace. Super gross and oddly fascinating. We spent a fair amount of time pulling them out of the pool so that it wouldn’t be closed later that week due to a tadpole infestation (which has happened before). The next day at my early morning swim lesson we had to fish a couple of toads out of the pool that were…ummm…trying to make more eggs. Apparently the toads can predict the weather very precisely because the rains started that day.
Jacarandas in full bloom. So pretty.
And we had this cool visitor to our garden recently, too.
P.S. – Happy Birthday, Dad. We love and miss you.
Matt’s out of town. So, of course, that’s the perfect time for Ashlyn to spike a high fever (103.7) on Thursday night. The other two kids had slight fevers earlier in the week, so the fever wasn’t unexpected, but when it’s dark out, and you’re alone, and she’s crying because she feels so miserable, and the fever doesn’t come down with ibuprofen or cool baths it does get a little frightening. The most scared she got was that she might miss out on all the Halloween festivities. She didn’t.
Our neighborhood hosted the trick-or-treating this year. This is not a celebration in Tanzania and our askari (night guard) thought the whole evening was hysterical. Because it was our neighborhood hosting and we don’t have a huge amount of houses, I did feel obligated to stay at home and hand out candy. Luckily we have amazing friends and the Fischers stepped up and took the kids around for me. If the gate was decorated then that meant they were participating in the trick-or-treating. Ours had fun and took their job seriously.
Neighbor’s gate decoration
Anderson helping carry my beer to meet up with our friends
T pre-makeup
She wanted to be a scary leopard (hence the bloody chin), but I told her she can’t really pull off scary with a smile like that.
My view for the evening
The spoils
Saturday was a very full day. Along with normal Saturday activities (Ashlyn’s guitar and Anderson’s soccer), Tierney had an all day track meet followed by a piano performance at restaurant in town.
800 meter
Long jump
Shot Put. (Yes, T was chosen for shot put. I couldn’t believe it either)
We were only home for just over an hour from 9:15 am until 9:15 pm and spent the day out in our summer heat and sun. They are Rock Stars. And that evening Tierney was literally a rock star. Umoja had a performance at Blue Heron where they performed Sam Smith’s Stay with Me. Tierney (and Amelie) were on piano with voice, drums, and violin groups also participating. It was fun to watch.
Video and sound quality are not premium, but this is mostly for the grandparents anyway 
Umoja at Blue Heron from Lisa Coyle on Vimeo.
Because we were out on the town already on a Saturday night we pushed the limits even further and went out for sushi afterward. Sushi. In Arusha. Risky? Likely, but it was worth it (and so far so good).
The kids and I are looking forward to a very lazy Sunday.
Enjoy the extra hour of sleep today (except for those of you with little kids because we all know they don’t know you’ve changed the clocks). And remember that means you are now an hour further behind us (EST 8 hours and MST 10 hours different now).
