green bananas, blue cupcakes, pink eye

Green Bananas 
There are so many things that our children are going to grow up with thinking is "normal." And to them, it will be perfectly normal to see goats or cattle on the road or children running barefoot around their bamboo huts yelling "hello!" as we wave and smile at them from our tuk tuk.

One thing that will be strange for Wes is to someday hear that bananas are yellow. Here, the BEST bananas are green! They are so sweet and almost melt in your mouth. And yes, they're green. The yellow ones just don't taste the same. 

So, someday if you are quizzing Wesley on his colors and you ask him what color bananas are, humor him and his upbringing by going with the flow when his answer is: "Green!!" :)

I was wondering if letting Wes eat SO many bananas was a good idea. 

He just LOVES fruit! Apples, bananas, 'baby' oranges, watermelon, mango...not too big on papaya yet, though. The thing is, he can eat 7 bananas in one day. Or 10 'baby' oranges in one sitting. He'll go to the fridge and find chocolate cupcakes (see photos below), get them out saying, "cake!" and then eat an apple instead. This must be why he's so healthy! 

I was wondering if fruit in excess is a bad thing, and then I read this article about bananas that has been circulating on Facebook and then I changed my mind. I'll just let him enjoy his fruit--and the many health benefits--that go along with it!

Blue Cupcakes
Last week, one of the boys, Biktu, turned 10! I found this out on the same day I found out that his mom left their family 6 months ago and his dad is re-marrying, so he'll have a new mom and new siblings soon. These types of things we find out gradually since we can't just sit down and talk with most of these boys. So THAT is why he hangs out at our house so often! I offered to make him a birthday cake, but his grandma kind of took offense at that and told me that she's giving him a birthday cake. He had already gotten excited at the idea of me making him a chocolate cake, though, so I decided just to make cupcakes. Wes and I carried one over to his place with a candle for him to blow out. They were having a nice party for him! I was so happy to see that! It was fun to participate in a bit of the festivities for him! He's such a sweet and polite boy.

Here are the blue cupcakes we made for him!
Wes enjoys "helping" me bake these days! He says, "stir! stir!" and drags a chair over beside me and helps me stir. We have fun together and ended up with blue icing over a lot more than just the cupcakes!! haha

Pink eye

Friends of ours here have a baby boy who just turned one! We were so excited to be invited to his "superhero" birthday party! We were all supposed to come dressed as superheroes! This is Wesley's costume: my little homemade superhero. So cute!

However, the night before the party, THIS is what happened to my eye. Sorry if this picture is TMI. :(
Thanks so much for praying for me last week! It was really difficult for me to care for the children and do everything I needed to do while having only one eye. Pink eye is REALLY contagious so I really appreciate you all joining us in prayer protecting it from spreading to the children, Joey, and my other eye. It was a miracle! The infection was contained, and after 5 days of wearing a patch and about 7 full days of my eye being really red and swollen, it is now back to normal, and NOBODY else caught it!! PTL!!

So, this was the reason why I haven't made a blog post in a little while. I've got a lot more to share! We celebrated American Thanksgiving this week, PLUS we put up our Christmas tree tonight and had a little party with the neighbor boys!! So, more photos coming soon.

We are full-fledged in the Christmas spirit here and busy planning our trip to Vietnam, which is where we'll be spending our Christmas. We are really looking forward to that!

As I type this, my lovely sister-in-law, Anna, is getting into her wedding gown and preparing to walk down the isle! We were happy to be home over the time that she and James got engaged, but are now sad to miss their special day. HOWEVER, we're going to try to Skype in at about 3 AM this morning to view the ceremony! I'm super-excited about that!!! So, I'd better get to bed.

lovies!