Jomlif

We're in week 2 of our home leave (or as someone wrote in an e-mail recently "jomlif"), enjoying the summer weather and freedom. It's been busy, too, we've picked over 20 lbs. of blueberries total so far, gone swimming at the city pool, shopped for birthday presents and new clothes, visited local parks and playgrounds, explored the children's museum and library, gone to church, played with the train table at Barnes & Noble, and more...! Terry and I are trying to stay on top of some work stuff as well and reconnecting with friends.

Much better

With the tassels, no?

Jet Plane

We're going on Home Leave really soon, Saturday in fact! I'm pretty excited - blueberry picking season! Farmer's Market! We'll still be working a bit but hoping for some fun times. Also lots to do this week before we go.

Gabriel has his first loose tooth, by the way!

And I'm still having fun playing with the Dreamscope app as stress relief:

making things

So I recently finished this scarf, if by "finished" you mean the bare minimum without the final flourish of the tassels that are optional in the pattern. It's from One-Skein Wonders, which has a feature I really like - patterns are organized by yarn weight so it's easy to find something to knit with the yarn that you have. 

untied

tied

I've had one unanimous reaction to it so far: "Is it supposed to twist like that?"

Yes. Yes, it is:

pattern in book

(See the tassels?) Clearly, I used a totally different yarn than the pattern in the book. This is actually yarn from New Zealand that Dot brought me years and years ago, and I made myself a hoodie pullover with a kangaroo front pocket with most of it, and a sweater and a little poncho for Val (see photo below) but I had this one skein left.... Well even after making this scarf I had enough to make a baby hat so I made one, it's more like a hood, and will go to our accountant's daughter. So our accountant will get the scarf :-) I bet everyone will ask her if it's supposed to twist like that...

This yarn has gone a long way!

December 2008

October 2009

Hot-duras

Happy June! This year is flying by, at least since things started to get busy at the end of April. We just got back from a week-long trip to Honduras (or, as the kids called it, Hot-duras) for work meetings with the whole family. Here are some photos of the backs of their heads:

With two of the Guatemala reps' daughters, at the finca where we stayed near Lago Yojoa

On our last day there, visiting a rural school where they were crowning the queen of the flowers.

There was a pool at this place, Finca Las Glorias, so the kids were happy, in and out of the water whenever we were on breaks from meetings. There were hammocks and horses too. One morning after a big rainstorm we found a big brown frog near the pool, and a broken egg-shell that looked as if it had been empty for a while. We saw caterpillars and squirrels, and birds unnumbered. One thing we did not see that I over-prepared for was hordes of mosquitos! I took three different kinds of mosquito repellent and applied it to the kids religiously, because of Zika, but although I got three bites the first night even Gabe who is mosquito crack only got maybe two bites the whole week. So that was a pleasant surprise actually.

I think though we were all happy to be back home in "Cold-lombia" (although the kids staunchly rejected that nickname). We spent the day yesterday doing massive loads of laundry and equally massive grocery shopping trips. Today (Monday) is a holiday so we are home for a relaxing day again although Terry went up to the office just for a bit.

In just two weeks we'll be in the US for our second home leave! I'm looking forward to seeing lots of friends and family and hitting up the secondhand stores for new clothes especially for Val. The kids are both growing so fast, I think Val will soon be out of a booster seat entirely. I'm looking forward to the farmer's market and the library, and sorting through more stuff to get rid of. This trip is timed for just a year before the end of our term so I also anticipate a lot of introspective musing as well, my true spiritual gift :-).