And the Tree Is Up!

Here's a smattering of pictures to give you a glimpse into our last few weeks!

A couple of weeks ago, we were able to spend some time
with the Kenny's while they visited Rwanda.  We're looking
forward to seeing them again in January--this time in Nairobi!!

Another interesting bug spotting!!

On November 17th, KICS held their Fall Festival (which was fun!), and it was Caleb's first public performance on the trombone!!

There have been quite a few short term mission teams come through over the past weeks.

We had a pretty busy American-Thanksgiving long-weekend.  One of the big events was hosting another Nerf war!  While our downstairs room is getting filled up with furniture, the upstairs room is still pretty much empty!


All set up and ready to go!

 

Another fun thing that we did was get together with the Gaskill's to play some games!  We had a blast!

Dutch Blitz!!

We have an annual Christmas tradition that sometime in November, we use old Christmas cards to make posters to put on our doors.  Mom & I both brought a little stack of cards, and Nanny B. sent some with us too, so we had plenty to use this year!!

The final products!

Through some connections we heard about an Italian grocery store, that also sells ice cream (we haven't found any other ice cream that is a treat!).  So, we had fun treat and each got a "single scoop."

Malcolm & Patty Card have been in Kenya, and while Malcolm teaches a course, Patty has come to Rwanda for a few days.  We went to church with her this morning, and then tried out a new restaurant for lunch.  It is a Mexican restaurant, has virtually no wait, good service, and good food!  We think we'll be visiting that place again!

 Finally, today we put up our Christmas tree!  We were able to buy one from a family that was leaving a couple months ago, and Dad designed a stand that we had made (from the same people who are making our furniture).  We each brought around 5 ornaments, we were able to buy 10 balls at the same sale we got the tree at, and we made some Lego ones to fill in the gaps!

Carrying out our traditional jobs -- Dad & Caleb bending down
and fluffing the branches, while I check out the lights for bad bulbs.

What was Mom doing during all of this??  Working on our
Christmas cards--going to be mailing them in the next couple
of days!

Putting on the lights...

 

Tinsel time!!

 

And ornament time!!!

The final product!!!

 Our Indonesian nativity scene is packed away on another continent, but we've added an African one!

Have a blessed Advent season!!!

Football, Cloth-Shopping, Spirit Week, & More!

The Varsity Football season is winding down, but the JV season is just starting, so Caleb is continuing to get lots of experience!

Dad & Caleb practising some skills in the back yard:

Caleb's first JV game (they got their kits last week!):

KICS was recently fully accredited, and they've also been building a new building containing a library/media lab and a science lab.  The grand opening was a couple weeks ago, and it also included the presentation of the official accreditation documents.

It was also Spirit Week that week, so there were a couple of dress-up days:

Wacky Tacky Wednesday!

 And here he is dressed up for Young Life (similar to intervarsity):

I've been working on a couple of projects this past week.  Here's some of my Physics project being done:

 

Another adventure we embarked on the other day was trying to buy material in order to make outfits for all of us (Christmas family photo coming up...).  Laurence (Pastor Andre's administrative assistance) took us to a couple of stores that are literally totally filled with stacks of cloth!!!  The patterns are generally very bright & colourful, so trying to find different ones that would match (or at least look OK together) for the picture was a bit of a challenge.  Then we went to the place where another friend, Janet, works as a seamstress [Janet is Damascene, who works for the Soucy's, wife].  That was also an adventure!  The room was only about 2 meters wide with sewing desks lined along the sides and an aisle that was only about 50 cm wide!!!  And it was packed with people!

 

Caleb has his last Varsity football game tomorrow, and the Kenny's are arriving for a few days this morning, so we are going out for supper with them.  And I'm enjoying having a week of school that is "normal" without any studying or projects!

Here's a cool picture to finish off with (or at least I think it's cool!).  We've seen these a couple of places...can anyone guess what it is?  [There are some pretty big clues in the picture!!].

 

Have a great week, everyone!!