Through the Seasons

Amazing how many things we make from scratch these days.  Here’s our first batch (ever) of strawberry jam:

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You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.  ~Polish Proverb

Okay, so 3 days a week at the office isn’t working.  Not only do I feel my attention is now divided between Asher and work, getting ready for work, getting home from work…..the worst part is that Asher isn’t sleeping as well at night.  Which means I’m not sleeping as well at night.  Which means Jonathan isn’t sleeping as well at night.

And besides all that…..I have heard from a few women on a variety of subjects and the resounding theme is that your kids grow up entirely too fast.  Even the hard seasons we go through are only seasons.

That’s when it hit me.  I have the chance to watch Asher grow up one time.  He’ll be 5-months old one time.  He’ll be going through this season one time.  And trying to work and take care of him is messing him up.  And it’s just not worth that.  Nothing is worth that.

So I have stopped going to the office 3 days a week.  We’re still discussing options of me doing some of the finance work from home as it fits into Asher’s schedule.  That would be better as I would be able to totally focus on Asher, take care of him, and as time allowed I’d be able to help with the accounting.  We’ll see what we come up with…

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One of my mom’s friends keeps a list of the 40 meals she makes most frequently to help her quickly plan each week’s meals.  I think I’ll do that too.  Of course I have about 5 meals that I make most frequently (which really makes meal planning simple – haha) but I plan to add to my repertoire. 

This week’s menu (minus the chicken since we still haven’t found any):

Monday – Tacos

Tuesday – BBQ, Rice, Green Beans

Wednesday – Burgers, Fries (homemade from potatoes – yum)

Thursday – Beans, Rice, Veggie (not sure what I’ll get from the market yet)

Friday – Pizza, Salad

Saturday – Sloppy Joes, Salad

Sunday – Clean Out the Fridge Day

Things I need to do this week:

Make Buttermilk

Make Sour Cream

Not sure how to do that exactly but I’ll figure it out………..why can’t we just get it here!?  Oh well.

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I have found the coolest thing.  Tassels.  Have you seen these?  I love this site:

www.thetasselhouse.etsy.com

It’s called The Tassel House.  These are handcrafted so each one is unique!  You can put them on lamps, doorknobs, furniture, or use them to pull back curtains.  I love them!

If I could, I would get one for each holiday and season.  You can even submit a custom order! 

Here are a few of my favorites.  Check out the website to see more!

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I love me a spreadsheet.  Love, love, love.  And I just made the prettiest Excel workbook for budgeting purposes.  There’s nothing like a set of organized, logical spreadsheets to make budgeting your money fun!

The sheets link to each other allowing us to keep track of multiple things.

Such as…  The society here is run almost solely on cash.  We don’t write checks or use credit cards.  We use cash.  Always. 

So I gave Jonathan a nice (organized – heehee) little notebook that he keeps in the car with him and records any purchases he makes or any gifts he gives.  The idea is that each evening he’ll come in and I’ll post these transactions in my pretty little spreadsheet.

Doesn’t life just seem so nice, orderly, and in control when these plans come together?  Aaaahhhhh…

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Guess what we found!  Guess what we found!  Guess what we found!

Turkeys!!

There’s a man in town who has a few turkeys that he sells!!!

Why is this so exciting?!  You can’t buy turkey here for nothing so we were prepared to have a turkey-less Thanksgiving.  Now we don’t have to!!

Although there is a catch.

The man likes to sell the turkeys young.

If we want to eat a turkey on Thanksgiving, when do we need to buy a young one?  Now?  Will it be ready by Thanksgiving?  And, if so, how will we know?

Not to mention the fact that we would be the ones getting it from a live turkey to a cooked bird.

Yikes.

Can anyone offer some help on this?

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Lately we’ve had the chance to learn a bit about how Tanzanians approach school. Not many people here get to go to secondary school (the equivalent of middle and high school) because of the high costs.  Those who do get to go, study day and night.  They take it very seriously because they see it as a huge opportunity – one not to be wasted.

We have been talking to Mama Imanueli about how much the school costs are as she has 4 children.  The school costs for her oldest son are $235 per year.  The costs for her daughters are $125 a year each.  (They send their sons to better schools as they need a better education than girls do here.)  Her youngest son will not begin secondary school until 2010 so his annual fees right now are about $10 to help pay the school’s water and electricity.

On top of these fees are books, school supplies, and uniforms ($7 for a pair of pants and $5 for a skirt).  The school year is from January through December with a month off in the summer and the month of December off. 

You can help a child here have the rare opportunity of an education!  You can personally help fund a portion of the school fees for one of Mama Imanueli’s children!  If you’d like, you can even send her or the child you’re sponsoring a card or letter and we’ll give it to her.  They will also need school supplies and I know it’s “Back to School” time now in the States so a care package sent to us for them would be another wonderful way to help them out.

To put into perspective how much these costs are for her, having 2 children in secondary school and 2 in primary probably amount to about 70% of her annual salary.  This new school year, she will have 3 in secondary.  She isn’t working to put her children through school.  This money has to come in on top of what she already makes.  We asked her how she has afforded it so far and she said she doesn’t know, that she thanks God because it’s all from His provision.

If you want to make a direct impact into the lives of a family in Tanzania, leave a comment or email me and I will give you the details of how to do it. 

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We get our milk fresh from a man here on the compound who has a cow.  He brings a liter on Monday morning and another on Thursday morning.  I have seen Jonathan pay him $3.50 and figured that was per week.  I was making our budget and found out that we get that milk for $3.50 a month.

THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS PER MONTH!!!  FOR TWO FRESH LITERS OF MILK A WEEK!!!  DELIVERED TO OUR DOOR!!!

Now not everything is that cheap but it’s wonderful to have a few of them.

We plan to start a garden and use his cow’s poo for fertilizer.  Let’s hope he never finds out us Westerners would pay for it if we had to.  He’d probably be amazed that he could sell such a thing!

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There is no chicken.  At all.  Anywhere around here. 

So my carefully planned menu needs to be tweaked.  At the moment I’m just moving everything up to replace the chicken day.  That means instead of chicken or pasta salad we’ll have egg salad. 

We heard of a place to get good pork so Jonathan will go one day this week and get some, in some form or another…  That may replace the chicken. 

We could also send Mama to the market to get boneless beef so we could do some sort of stew.  We may save that for next week though.

The man in town we affectionally call “the cream cheese man” (because he’s the only one around who ever has cream cheese – and even that’s rare) has fish so we may get some from him sometime and have that as well. 

But those things will come.  The more flexible I remain the better off we are and the better prepared I am for whatever peculiarities come with life here. 

I mean no chicken?  Anywhere?  Wow.  I couldn’t have seen that one coming.

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