Uncle Kevin

About three weeks ago we began to prepare for a visit from Mommy's brother, Uncle Kevin. For Aden and Wiley, this meant driving their little cars to the airport to pick him up, praying for his safe arrival, and deciding where he should sleep. Finally it was decided that he would sleep on an inflatable mattress on the floor of their room. (This plan changed after the first night when Uncle Kevin woke up to find the mattress deflated and himself sleeping on the floor.) We went into town on the 9th for one last shopping trip, and finally, at the end of the day were able to answer "Yes!" to the question, "Are we going to the airport now?" We loved having Uncle Kevin with us, to experience life with us here. Because of the timing of his trip, it worked out that he was able to help build our crates for shipping things back to the US. Actually, if Uncle Kevin hadn't come, we would probably still be working on building and packing those crates. So for Aden and Wiley, Uncle Kevin's visit meant that we went to the warehouse to get wood, and that Uncle Mike's dyna was parked in our yard for over two weeks.

While the boys didn't really help him much with the work he was doing, they enjoyed the excitement of the day we packed the crates and loaded them onto the truck. That day they helped as much as they could, carrying smaller boxes and items to the back porch to be packed. The highlight of the day for them came in the late afternoon when there were 5 vehicles all parked around our house: 2 cruisers, Uncle Mike's dyna, a second large white dyna, and the backhoe. After a while the excitement was too much, and all three boys went to Uncle Bill and Aunt Marsha's to play while we continued to work (and negotiate with the driver) as darkness fell. We also realized that day was Aden's half-birthday, and we were able to celebrate with Uncle Andy and Aunt Judy later that evening.

While we mostly kept Uncle Kevin busy at home, building crates and entertaining the boys (sometimes all three simultaneously) so that Mommy and Daddy could get some packing done, we knew he really wanted to meet with the local people, so we also tried to offer him a few adventures while he was here. We took him down to the river to go tubing, we toured him around the station, we took him to a 3-hour service for the opening of a bush church, we went second-hand clothes shopping in Banz, and went to town together. One of his favorite outings was going to town, and he actually got on a PMV (public bus) and went back to town the next day! Mommy and Daddy took Uncle Kevin to the colorful Mt. Hagen Culture Show and Daddy took him into the operating theater to watch surgery. Just two days before leaving, Uncle Kevin got to experience the hospital first-hand as a patient when he broke his little finger. Aden and Wiley were anxious to see his picture (x-ray) when he came home with his hand in a splint.


The boys also loved listening to his stories. On his first evening with us he told a story about playing bocce ball at a truck stop recently. For the next few days, Aden laughed as he told a story about his own adventure of playing bocce with a truck driver. One morning when he got up he told a story of finding a large cockroach in his bed the night before. He dramatically shared how he managed to trap the bug and bring it out to the light in the kitchen . . . only to discover that it was one of the boys' small plastic animals. We enjoyed introducing Kevin to our mission family here, as they all already felt like they knew him from hearing all our stories about him. And he enjoyed experiencing the blessing of our close-knit family here.





After two short weeks that flew by, we took Uncle Kevin back to the airport. As we were leaving the station, Mommy said that we would pray. She opened her mouth to start to pray when Wiley spoke up, "I'll pray, Mommy." "Okay, Wiley, go ahead." Wiley prayed a very sweet prayer, "Jesus, thank you for Uncle Kevin to have a safe trip back to America." In spite of having a broken finger and his hand in a splint, we managed to send two of our suitcases back with him. Thankfully, this goodbye wasn't so hard since we know we will be seeing him again in just a few weeks. Noah even enjoyed waving goodbye as we watched him walk out to the airplane.

It's What's For Dinner...

We can easily say without exaggeration that when Aden was a baby, he never put anything in his mouth. It was easy to leave him alone in a room for a while, and we never worried about baby-proofing the house or taking him to other people's homes. Wiley was quite different and put a lot of things in his mouth as he began exploring the world around him; occasionally we would pull something out of his mouth that he had found on the floor and began to choke on. Noah, on the other hand, puts everything in his mouth. Rarely a day goes by that we don't dig some foreign object out of his mouth. It is also harder to keep the floor free of those foreign objects when his big brothers leave a trail of small toys wherever they go. It doesn't help that Aden and Wiley also openly encourage Noah's foraging habits - at snack time Mommy often catches them dropping crumbs on the floor (or more recently, since he pulls up to his feet now, feeding bites into his mouth).

So, yesterday when Mommy was making dinner she was keeping an eye on Noah, who was sitting at the front door, watching his brothers play outside. At one point, Noah reached down and put something in his mouth. Mommy went to fish out the stone or leaf or whatever it was, and was thankful he wasn't choking on it, though he did seem to enjoy chewing on it. She pulled out something soft, then looked down at her hand to identify it. We're not sure if the baby gecko was alive when it went in, but it was certainly dead when she fished it out.