Update...

I guess it's time for an update on our family eh?
Hugo's gotten really busy now that the plane from Aceh has come in for the avionics upgrade. An avionics tech from MAF US in Nampa, Idaho has come as well to help out and another guy will be coming next week as well. They are doing some major upgrading so it's a huge project that will take many weeks to complete. Hugo has also started to play hockey twice a week.
I'm just doing the housewife thing, a little busier now that Rita is off for her forty days, but that's okay. The truth is I don't really need to have her, I like to have her as she has become a friend and she is someone that I can learn a lot from both cultural-wise and language-wise. Plus, she really needs the job. So I've started teaching preschool twice a month now. All the parents of preschool age kids here have gotten together and started our own preschool. We do it at the home of whoever is teaching that day. The kids are used to a routine and do great. You don't even notice that you have 9 preschoolers in your house! I still also play hockey twice a week with a bunch of expat ladies. It's a lot of fun. I'm also enjoying trying to make new things from scratch. The other day I made homemade noodles for chicken noodle soup and lasagna. They sure were tasty! I also regularly make my own salsa and tomato sauce for on pizza. You can't buy them in the store so you don't really have a choice. Today my neighbour and I ground our own ground beef. The ground beef that I buy from that hole in the wall place has no fat it in so when you try to make hamburgers they just fall apart even though I've put egg in it. Another responsibility that I have is to provide breakfast and lunch on Wednesday's for any visitors that we have coming through. And sometimes we provide a meal on a weekend as well. I'm also responsible for compiling the news from all the MAF Papua bases each week and emailing it out. There is a Tuesday morning Bible study that I go to as often as I can. Brynnie has been sick since last Wednesday, so I didn't go today. That night she threw up every hour. Real fun stuff... She had fever and then the runs and she didn't eat from then until basically yesterday when she nibbled a bit. She drank quite a bit, but didn't want to eat anything. So she's lost quite a bit of weight. I sure hope she starts eating normally again as she's been quite clingy and cranky...
The oldest three are back in the swing of school. They all enjoy it, thankfully. Christiaan has a new teacher as his old teacher, who is from Northern Ireland, is in Bali awaiting the birth of their first child. The new teacher is from Nova Scotia! Christiaan's FM cord and one of his FM boots that attaches to his hearing aid broke this week. Thankfully we have spares... That's really the first time since we left Canada that something has actually broken. I'd say that's pretty good! Mikah is just sailing along in school and most times has her nose in a book. She has some good friends that she likes to play with too. Aidan has improved in his reading a lot. We had him assessed by a school psychologist as I was concerned that he was struggling so much with learning to read. But according to her he does not have dyslexia or any other learning disorder, he just learns slower. But he scored really high on the IQ test. Too funny... Marc is so easy to have at home. He just plays and plays and plays. He's never bored. He loves to play with the neighbour girl and they make up great stories. Preschool has been really good for him too.
Well, that's the long and short of things from our end of the world! Love to hear from yours! You can always email me at hfeunekes @ maf dot org