2019: a whirlwind

I have not blogged in a year. A year of miracles and struggles, laughter and tears, diapers and potty training (!!), traveling and staying put, teaching and learning, and a lot of eating.

I have written dozens of posts in my head, but when I think about logging onto my computer, writing, editing, uploading and posting...I either a) get distracted or b) get overwhelmed (and then post a picture and quick caption on instagram, instead-- follow us there at @ashbyandabram).

2019 was a hard year, to be honest. We have made very little progress toward Kai's adoption. Abram's father died in February, but we were able to make it home in time to say goodbye, thankfully. (We wrote about this on facebook and in our newsletters, so I will assume you already know this. If you want details, let me know.)

We also lost one of our Bible students, some of our friends left the mission field, and in June, James was diagnosed with epilepsy.

Sometimes I look at life from one angle and think: what am I complaining about? Why am I so sad and tired? Our family is relatively healthy, we live comfortably (by village standards, if not by Western standards), we have a good community here, we have a lot of support from home. There's so much to be grateful for!

Other days I look at this list of burdens, from losing our son two years ago to losing Abram's father this year, and all the losses and hardships in between, and then add full time ministry, adoption stress, and an epilepsy diagnosis on top of that...and I am proud of myself just for getting out of bed each morning. (I'm only half kidding. Getting out of bed is hard. Why do kids wake up SO EARLY?)

In between the challenges and losses and triumphs and celebrations, we have very ordinary things like cleaning up toys, changing diapers, homeschooling David (kindergarten this year!), teaching at the Bible college, and making dinner every. single. night. (Why is dinner so relentlessly persistent?)

All this to say that this year has been hard, but we are grateful. Grateful that we made it to Canada in time to say goodbye to Abram's father. Grateful that we are only a short flight away from an amazing children's hospital that was able to diagnose James. Grateful that we still have custody of Kai, even if it's not permanent (yet!). Grateful that our boys are happy, and have so many people who love them, and that we always have enough to eat. Always.

I mostly logged into this blog this morning to upload pictures. So here is a quick glimpse of daily life in our home. (Minus Kai...if you want to see his gorgeous face, email or message me!)

Being three is hard.

So eternally thankful for a chance to take family photos with Abram's dad before he died. 

If you need amazing photos, and live in the Ottawa area, look up SnapHappyottawa.ca. You won't be sorry.  

A day at the beach in October. (Does your October look like this? It could, if you moved here!)

Our nanny, Mary, with Isaiah

The boys on Easter morning

Isaiah and Mama

This was at the airport. Flying with kids is hard. I cannot emphasize this enough: it is so hard. 

This is our incredible, life giving, reason-we-are-still-on-the-mission-field nanny, Mary

Sometimes James smiles for the camera! 

Abram and I do not take enough pictures together. 

James is too cool for school

David doing some schoolwork. He is excelling in math. 

After going to Canada in February, we got to spend a few days with my (Ashby's) family before coming home. Here are two of our American cousins! 

James and David are either best friends or worst enemies, with very little in between

Isaiah

David's first day of school in September 

Settling In

We are finally home, after 10 flights, 20 hours in the car, and four thousand disposable diapers (gross).  Now I'm attempting to blog, nurse David, and upload photos on a very, very slow internet connection. Why didn't I make time to blog while in North America, Land of the Fast Internet? Why? Why, Ashby?

In the past few weeks, we visited friends and family in four different countries. We went to a rehearsal and dinner for a wedding in Kenya, we celebrated Thanksgiving in America, we celebrated Christmas in Canada, we celebrated New Years back in Kenya, and we drove from Nairobi back to Tanzania without air conditioning. (It's summer here!)

We spent New Years Day with the VG kids. Precious, Peter, 

Jane and Mariano were unsuccessful in fixing our A/C.

This is Canada. It is not summer in Canada.

As soon as we got back to our village in Tanzania, we all three promptly came down with bad colds. Welcome home!

Our time in Ontario and Oregon was wonderful, exhausting, overwhelming, went by too quickly, and will be cherished forever- I got to meet my nephew, you guys. And Abram and I got to go on a date. ALONE. We miss our families already, but we are glad to be back home, too.

Because I was sick and in bed for much of the time, it took me at least a week just to unpack our (many many MANY) suitcases. I wish I could say I enjoyed the process of sorting through all our wonderful gifts, but between the heat, the fussy baby, and the sinus infection, it was mostly a blur. BUT. We are feeling so blessed by our friends and family: our suitcases were full of clothes and diapers and toys for David; natural/gluten free/whole foods for Abram and I; books for all three of us; new (!!) clothes for me; etc. We may not come back to the US or Canada for a couple years, so we are very excited to have all this stuff to help make our home feel more homey.

Speaking of homey, I have on my to-do list to give you guys (that is, my sister) a tour of our house! Stay tuned!

Abram has a busy term ahead of him: in addition to research and interviews for his dissertation, he is teaching three classes at the Bible college here. I am auditing one of his classes! I leave David with our friend Mary on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings for a couple hours and get to sit and listen and learn things about the end of the world (dun dun dun...). It's exciting to get out of the house a bit, I've wanted to learn me about this subject for a while, and it's a great opportunity to get to know some of the students a bit more.

Besides taking the class, my goals for now are to get settled into our home, raise David well, support Abram in his work, fine-tune my Swahili (my grammar is getting worse...in English AND Swahili. Mommy brain, anyone?) and be a blessing to the many, many visitors we have on any given day. Last week I counted, and we had seven different visitors in a two hour period. In other words: right now, my ministry is our home. (Almost every day, someone observes me feeding David WHILE answering a knock at the front door WHILE cooking dinner, and then asks, 'so, what do you do?')

 

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, etc. 

I am going to try try try to update our blog every couple weeks. This is mostly dependent on fast internet, so I can't promise anything!

Happy January, friends!

Here are a few more pictures; mostly of Canada: 

frequent fliers.

David, as it turns out, is a very good traveler. He did really well on all five flights we were on last week.

We are in the US now and it's wonderful and crazy and exciting and exhausting and sad, because we only have two weeks.

Here are some snapshots from Kenya and Oregon and Canada and over the Atlantic Ocean.

After a few pretty rough nights due to travel, jet lag, change of schedule, change in weather, etc, David started sleeping through the night this week! Last night I slept for 7.5 hours in a row, which I haven't done in at least a year. I feel like I can do anything now, including dishes.

My sister had a baby in May, and it's been wonderful to pretend to be sister wives together. My nephew is as adorable as I expected him to be, and we have big plans to smuggle him back to Africa in our suitcase.

David smiles now, which is amazing, and I spend most of my time trying to make him smile, and trying to catch it on camera, or talking about how great it is when he smiles.

Next week we go to Ottawa to spend two weeks with Abram's family, and then we head back to Kenya and Tanzania just after Christmas. 

It's pretty hard to find time to update my blog these days, even with a fast internet connection! So don't expect anything until the new year... a very cozy and merry Christmas to you and yours, dear friends.