Slave Castles, Jungles, and Crocodiles (May 7)

We woke up fairly early this morning to get an early start on one of the busiest and most jam-packed days of the whole trip, gallivanting around the Cape Coast/Elmina area of Ghana.

Our first stop was the Cape Coast slave castle, one of the few remaining castles in West Africa. Ghana has 3ish left: Cape Coast and Elmina are both used as well restored museums, while one in Accra is used as the presidential palace (odd way to use an old slave castle…). A few partial ones are scattered along the coast.

Wupatki National Monument (May 23)

We spent the night in Flagstaff so that we would have time to stop by Sunset Crater and the Wupatki National Monument in the morning. The visitor's center for Sunset Crater was very interesting. Rachel's favourite part was the seismometer—they had a pad you could jump on and it would record your own personal earth quake. 

My favourite part was a sign that said something like, "Whether the natives found it terrifying or fascinating, they no doubt wanted to find out what it was," as if the quality of being terrified rules out the possibility of being fascinated. I submit that it's possible to be both terrified and fascinated at the same time. 

Pokey the Tortoise (May 22)

We didn't have church until 12:30 in the afternoon. We were ready by 10:00 in the morning, complete with Rachel getting her hair curled by Grandma. Can you tell we've acclimatized to having 9:00 church? We hardly knew what to do with ourselves.

We took a few pictures of Rachel with her curly hair and then I sent the girls outside to play for a minute if they "promised not to get dirty" and then brought them back inside, literally, after a minute because they went straight for the dirt.

We love to see the temple (May 21)

You can't tell from the pictures we took (because we didn't take any) but today was wonderfully hot (not too hot but hot enough to warm the pool up quite a bit) and we spent hours by the pool. We didn't venture outside until after lunch, but then we spent a good solid five hours swimming. It was fabulous.

Children's Museum and more Russia friends (May 20)

We went to the Children's Museum in the morning; but barely. We made it there by 11:00, which was just in time for story time. They made an announcement to tell people where to gather for story time and since my girls love reading we headed on over. 

It was possibly the most boring story time I have ever gone to. As you can see my children were not very interested in the telling of the story. The staffer was standing on the complete opposite side of the room and read the book haltingly, without much enthusiasm. Rachel was polite enough to sit through the whole story. Miriam, on the other hand, tried to run away. Twice. 

Un-cousins (May 19)

Arizona does not observe daylight savings and so even though they're right underneath Utah they're an hour behind Utah. That means that my dear children were suffering from a mild case of van lag—Rachel decided to wake up at 6:30 in the morning.

The upside was that I was able to work for a while before anyone else in the house was even awake. The downside was that I was on vacation and was up working before anyone else in the house was even awake. 

Fortunately, Aunt Marci babysits Barrett during the day and he was due to arrive at 7:30. Barrett is Andrew's cousin Therena's son. He turned four today, I believe, so he's just a couple of months older than Rachel. They met for the first time at the family reunion in October and were best buds; the minute they saw each other they picked up where they left off in October (ie. best buds).

Unfortunately, Barrett had to leave for preschool about an hour after he arrived.

Fortunately, Cyndle and Sterling, the children of Andrew's cousin Bethany, showed up soon after he left, this time providing playmates for both Rachel and Miriam. Rachel is two months older than Cyndle and Sterling is about six months older than Miriam. They had a grand old time.

They rode the "Ranger," a dune buggy of sorts (maybe; I don't actually know what it is...) with Uncle Rulon...

Through rain and hail and sleet and snow... (May 18)

I could live in Arizona. I don't think it's any secret that I'd rather sweat through the summer than freeze through the winter. And, seriously, we drove through rain and hail and sleet and snow to get to some nice, warm weather, which I find a little ridiculous since it's the middle of May!

I hate snow. 

I know a lot of people hate hot weather, but I much prefer jumping into a pool to cool off than shivering under the covers. And, as Uncle Rulon says, "You don't have to shovel heat!" 

Still here!

So, did you miss me? Or did you even notice I went on an unannounced sabbatical?

I wouldn't blame you either way.

We just got home from a trip to Arizona. We left on Wednesday and drove all day and then basically we just relaxed by the pool all day, every day...until today when we drove all day again. I've never been to Arizona, but that's where Karen (Andrew's mom) is from so she has a lot of family down there. We had a blast.

Or at least, I had a blast...when I wasn't working.

That's why I haven't blogged, at least, that's my excuse.

When I wasn't keeping my children from drowning I was working, working, working.

We took a ton of pictures and have a lot of stories to tell but for now I'll just check in before you think we dropped off the face of the planet or something.

Miriam has discovered the joy of apple juice. She's had it before, of course, but she basically lived on apple juice while we were driving. She has come up with her own word for it; it's a compound word: wawa-apples.

Бабушка Таня

Before I left for Russia I met a sweet Russian girl named Alla. She had recently moved to Utah from Russia to study English at BYU and she wanted to send a package home to her parents. Since I was headed to her hometown, I volunteered to take the package for her.

She was one of the sweetest girls I had ever met and completely put my mind at ease about moving halfway across the globe by myself. After all, she had just done it. She assured me it wouldn't be too cold in Voronezh since the weather there is about on par with Calgary, Alberta, and I had grown up there. She told me that her mom and dad were the kindest, sweetest couple and that they would take care of me if no one else would.

Of course, I had a host family set up for me—the family of a little boy, Alyosha, from the school where I would be teaching. They were such a young couple, though, that they said they were more like my host brother and sister and Alyosha was my host nephew. Thus it was that Tatiana became my Russian mother.

She wasn't a member of the church (yet—though both her children had already been baptized) but she would come to church almost every week. Sometimes I would sit next to her and sometimes I wouldn't but always there was a warm, motherly hug for me. 

So glad when Daddy comes home!

Rachel tip-toed into our bedroom early (well, early-ish...it was before 8:00) on Friday morning. She came over to my side of the bed and whispered,

"Mommy..."

Whatever she had been going to ask flew out of her mind when she noticed that there, beside me, was a snoozing Daddy.

"DADDY!" she screamed. 

She pulled herself onto the bed, hopped over me, and leapt onto her daddy, who was now very much awake. (That girl has lungs!)

Daddy helped the girls get breakfast and then we went on a family bike ride to the park. Both girls wanted to swing so I started pushing Miriam.

"Mommy—no push! Daddy push! Daddy push! Daddy push!" she told me.

Rachel had very much the same attitude. She kept asking questions, addressing no one in particular, and if I answered she would say, "I wasn't talking to you! I was talking to my daddy!"

Uncle Patrick stopped by in the afternoon to drop off a movie he had borrowed and he and Andrew had a grand old time swapping stories about Ghana. While he was there, Miriam uttered her first four-word sentence, which was: I kick my daddy. 

She raises vowels* like a farmer raises cattle, though, so all her vowels are very intense. Kick sounds like "keek." It's really cute (and kind of reminded me of Bartok on Anastasia).

When she had finished saying her sentence she walked over and kicked Andrew. 

The girls were excited for their gifts from Ghana. Andrew brought them some "mommy" dolls, complete with a "baby to their back."



Rachel's doll's name is Afua; she named the baby Miriam. Miriam's doll's name is Yaa and the baby's name is Baby. Both my girls are very original when it comes to naming babies. The mommy dolls had "birth certificates" of sorts on their backs so they were already named.

We've certainly been enjoying having our daddy home!

* There's this linguistic phenomenon known as Canadian raising, or as I learned it, Canadian vowel raising. It always made me think of barn raising for some reason; I'm not sure why. Anyway, Canadians raise vowels—which means that my little girlies say "bay-g" instead of "bah-g" when they say "bag" and I couldn't be prouder that I'm rubbing off on them!