Thanks to the generous luggage space of the Crowson family I have my new camera! Actually, let me back up – thanks to my very generous dad and family, plus the luggage space of the Crowsons, I have the camera! Ellie Jo is having fun posing and I’m having fun shooting pictures again! Thank you to everyone who helped out!

This monkey was at our lunch location on Wednesday. In fact, I think he was brought out of the back room specifically for our enjoyment. Ellie Jo got a lot more enjoyment out of the little critter than I did. For some reason monkeys really creep me out.

This monkey was so fascinated by Ellie Jo that he actually fell off his chair at one point. That made him a little less creepy.

We went stock-up-to-make-Christmas-treats shopping today. Caroline caught this picture with her iPhone. Ellie Jo was waiting on top of the ice cream cooler for me to pick up meat for dinner. In the background you can see wheels of cheese, boxes of Rwanda tea and tin trays of Sambaza (tiny dried fish).

We bought an abundance of butter, sugar and vodka. The vodka is to top up our bottle of homemade vanilla. It floors me how quickly we go through vanilla in this house! I guess that is what happens when the vanilla beans are fresh from Zanzibar.

I’m trying to keep Christmas treats available in the house for the whole month. Tell me how ambitious I am. Right now there are Russian tea cakes in a tupperware. Tonight I think we’ll make snickerdoodles since those are Jacob’s holiday cookie. I bought biscuits to use for a “graham cracker” crust on pumpkin cheesecake. But that adventure has to wait until I made cream cheese from this week’s milk.

Off to bake!

This year we settled on what we hope will become our family gift-giving tradition. Each child and adult will receive: something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read. This gives us a way to focus our shopping and to simplify our expectations.

We were stumped this year for Ellie Jo’s “want.” Robin kept saying, “How are we going to know what she wants for a gift?” It turned out to be really easy.

Our main Christmas shopping event is a big Christmas market at one of the hotels in town. It was held on Sunday and our little family wandered the aisles of vendors, bought cute gifts and chatted with friends. Toward the end of trip I stopped in front of a booth to talk to someone. Ellie Jo made a beeline for a little child-sized banana leaf chair, cleared it off and plopped down. She sat there people watching for the duration of my conversation. The only time she got out of the chair was to snag a banana leaf purse that was also for sale, put it around her neck and then climb back into the chair. The vendor thought it was just the cutest thing.

The little chair was just 3,000 francs.

Guess we found her “want.”

N’Dolis (en-doh-lees) is the grocery store where we most commonly shop. They have almost everything except decent meat. I go across the street to New Fiesta for my meat.

Ellie Jo is friends with everyone in N’Dolis. Sometimes she plays behind the counter with the cashiers. Sometimes she stands in an aisle near the produce and plays with the bags of rice while the produce guys watch her. Sometimes she just follows me around and grumps at all of her friends (but makes sure she shows them how well she can pull things off the shelves). It is amusing to watch her interactions.

Jacob is on a quest to build a cob oven in the back yard for the betterment of our pizza nights. The foundation was completed a few weeks ago and this last weekend we all pitched in to make the actual oven.

There was much stomping of sand and clay and much throwing of mud. Except where Ellie Jo was concerned…the girl couldn’t stand the texture of the mud! She stayed far away.

Can’t wait to test out the oven. We have to wait two weeks for it to dry and then – pizza, pizza!

We have three Thanksgiving meals to attend this year. This photo shoot was for the Saturday meal. The dog is named Squanto – so naturally…

Pumpkins are not in season right now. That is making me sad. I want to make pumpkin muffins and breads and cheesecake, but am generally stymied. The tiny pumpkins that Theo finds at the market are hardly enough for a decent pot of soup.

The weather is changing from cold and rainy to hot. That means we have mornings that start out cool and sock-suggesting which move into blistering afternoons and cold, rainy evenings. It’s hard to dress right, but I’m glad to still be able to snuggle during the night.

Life has suddenly picked up in Kigali!

On Robin’s side of things: ISK has officially opened their candidacy for accreditation and Robin is the leader of the steering team for the whole process. Over the next 17 months he will help organize a complete assessment and documentation of everything at the school from the mission statement to the curriculum to the way the school incorporates aspects of Rwanda into the school culture. He’s doing all of this work in addition to teaching full time and starting a Model UN program. He’s one busy guy!

On my side of things: I now have two violin students and I’m tutoring math one day a week. This last week was declared “Soup Week” in our house and I fixed a different type of soup every night. We had: veggie soup, beer/cheese soup, creamy tomato soup and black bean soup. They were all a big hit.

We just found out that Chelsea and Marcus will be visiting over the Christmas holidays so now we’re *especially* looking forward to the break. Being busy will make the time pass more quickly!

Ellie Jo just gets busier and busier! Every day there are more things to dump out and more messes to make. She loves to grab the peanut butter jar and bring it to someone – then stands there expectantly, patting her chest to say, “please open for me!” She wants to read books over and over. Her baby book is a special favorite. She seems to spend most of her days finding me, grabbing my hand and leading me to some new activity. Some days we just push the umbrella stroller around the house and take her baby doll in and out of it.

Still no recognizable words although she babbles all the time. She is starting to make “buh-buh” sounds for ball, baby and book. Guess it’ll be a race to see which word actually comes out first.

Really, she’s just cute! It makes the busy days easier. I can be totally frustrated that she’s dumped every toy (and kitchen item) out on the floor, but then she starts giggling and I’m ok. She makes some of the weirdest scrunched-up nose faces and she has the best laugh.

This house came with shrink-wrap on every doorway and every door. It is printed with characters and attracts the eye of every person who enters the house. “What is on your doors? Did they come like that?” It is also a PAIN to peel off.

This afternoon, Ellie Jo walked up to me, grabbed my hand and led me to a doorway. The plastic was peeling at her eye level. She pushed my hand toward the plastic. “Oh, you want me to start peeling this so you can grab it?”

She set to work. Her fingers dug into the plastic, her jaw clenched and she puuuullled. The plastic snapped off. She caught her balance, dropped the piece onto the floor and went for another piece…over and over and over. It was an industrious 15 minutes in the life of Ellie Jo.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to fit “Shrink-wrap Time” into our daily routine!