Back On My Feet

Well, after suffering a mystery illness that kept me in bed for ten days and after taking a couple weeks to really recover, I am back on my feet and finally feel like myself again.  I'm trying to catch up on several things like homeschooling and blogging and drinking chai.  In light of playing catch up, the photos in this post will seem random at best, but they are still a glimpse of relatively recent days at Tenwek for us.

We had the great joy of hosting some of Eli's cousins here at Tenwek this fall!  Ben and Ryan arrived in September for about a week and helped us celebrate Asa's birthday and go on safari and just see this life of ours.  It was such an incredible blessing to have them come all this way and jump into life with us.  Then, just a few weeks ago, Zach appeared for one night.  He was working with a ministry about an hour-and-a-half from here and was able to escape his duties for a night to come see us.  I was sick at the time but it was so wonderful to have his company even as I laid on the couch.  We felt truly spoiled to have family here with us this fall!

I rediscovered these photos on my phone recently.  They were taken during the week of Harvest Festival, when I ordered 21 pumpkins for people to carve for the pumpkin-carving contest.  They were delivered to our yard and sat around until everyone was able to pick up their pumpkins.  Our boys were very excited about the pile of pumpkins, and Asa chose to literally roll around with the pumpkins and snuggle up with 'em :)  This boy melts my heart.

Speaking of Asa, this boy loves a good mess.  He finds messes, he creates messes, he enjoys messes.  This particular day he escaped outside after it rained and, well, a mess ensued.  Because it's not possible for a little boy to be anywhere near a mud pit and not create a mess!

And because we have three little boys, we often have triple the mess!

While I was on the mend, I asked Eli to take our boys and find a Christmas tree.  They'd been asking if it was Christmas time yet, and I was feeling Mama Guilt for having missed all of Thanksgiving and then missing the start of the Christmas season and offering nothing to our boys in the way of Christmas merriment.  So Eli made the time on a Saturday to head towards the river with a machete in hand and little boys in tow to search for a makeshift Christmas tree.  We did this last year as well and loved it, so we are continuing this new family tradition of finding a random tree branch to serve as our Christmas tree.  The boys were very excited and I felt some release of the Mama Guilt as they put ornaments on the tree and turned on the lights.

We had some friends come over to help with decorating since I was still mostly on the couch and certainly didn't have the strength to stand up and help string lights.  It was wonderful and encouraging to have friends here to start the Christmas season with us!

And even though I was slow in moving around and not doing much, I was sitting up and had a smile on my face :)  It was a good day.

And by far my favorite photo of late is this one.  A little boy fresh from the tub, so excited about the tree that he came right out to see the lights again before bothering with underwear, let alone any other clothes.  I love love love this photo.

So that's my recent miscellaneous photo collection.  I'm so thankful to be back on my feet and hopefully will have my camera in hand a bit more, especially with Christmas upon us!