haphazard musings

Summer Round up

Well my goodness, I didn't realize how long it had been since I last posted.  I have missed it - I'm sure you have too. : )

So to catch up, here are some pictures and short stories from our random trips and events throughout the summer.

    

After two days on the lake, that's me on the left side of the tube, we went to the outdoor wedding.  We were so HOT and sweaty and sunburned.  Obviously, I also have a squinty eye...probably from too much sun. : )

We also took a fun picture of all the Frasier ladies (one soon to be a Pope and and the youngest holding the 3 week old baby of the bride's sister). 

Out in Colorado we went to a wonderful bridal shower for Ryan's sister Kelsey and her fiance, Ronny.  It was time of day themed.  Pretty funny!  I was the picture lady (but not on my camera!  I got to use Cindy's fancy one!).  So here are a couple of my favorites from the day.  The bride and groom to be had to dress according to the time of day. Ha!

 

Morning: Can you see the groom has shaving cream on his face and the bride has rollers in her already styled hair?

  

Daytime:  Here we have June Cleaver and Frank Sinatra.

  Speaks for itself.

While we were out there - we went to a Colorado Rockies Game.  It unfortunately rained a lot of the time...but the game was still fun!  And the Rockies won.  Sadly they also beat the Cubs a few weeks later...Ryan and I won't ever see eye to eye on this one...hmm....

The Crew: Emily, Ryan, Me, Kelsey and Ronny

We, Ryan and I, also went to the Newton Demo Derby with our friends Sam and Justin.  I think they are hilarious!  Ryan loves them for the strategy.  So I guess it works out.

   Walking Tacos.  Yum...

  

So that's it.  A few little tidbits of the summer. 

Happy Fall - I love fall.  Last night was almost like fall - we went for a walk in a long sleeve t-shirt because it was a little chilly.  It was awesome.  And that means its time for football, coffee, sweaters, and my birthday!  :)

An eventful night.

So it was an unusual Wednesday night for the Frasier house here in Newton.  We were fast asleep and dreaming our dreams, it was nearly midnight, when the phone rang...

I don't know about you, but personally whenever the phone rings so late, my mind immediately goes into the always-fun-full-on-panic-mode!  I instantly begin to think of every possible worst case scenario.  Especially when the caller replies to my "Hello" with "Yes, this is so-n-so with 9 1 1 dispatch."  Ok so a little panic for sure.  Then she said "There is an officer at your door waiting to speak with you."

Seriously - WHAT!  Ok, plan of action, wake-up Ryan, find glasses, figure out how to get to the front door (seriously in a daze), look out, make sure this isn't a prank or some sort of scam.

He says, "Your garage door is open."  I'm like "Seriously you made me panic and wake up for an open garage door."  I am sure my face said it all - ask Ryan I am not a good liar.  My poker face = not good.

So he began explaining there have been several garage robberies in the area lately and that we need to be more careful.  Ok got it. 

Just for the record, we don't usually leave the door open - it was a fluke officer, I promise. :)

Then after I finally quit hearing every weird noise the house has ever made, I went back to sleep.  Oh yeah, I also made Ryan go check that all the doors were locked and that no one was in our house, while I remained safe and secure under the blankets.  I am such a a five year old.

Then at 2:00 am - the alarm was buzzing.  Unfortunately, this was a planned event.  We had decided to get up in the middle of the night, or morning depending on how you want to look at it, to go watch the meteor shower. 

I was just a little confused as to what was going on, I think I even asked "What is that sound?  Why is it so loud?"  If I could have seen him without my glasses, I am pretty sure the look I got after asking those questions was something like "You moron - its the alarm."

On to the rest of the story...

We went here.

 

And laid under the stars like this.

 

And watched the meteors burn up as they feel towards the earth.  They were so cool.  As we drove back to the house at

 

in the morning, we began to discuss how amazing God truly is and the power he has.  The stars and the heavens are so much larger than we can imagine and he has dominion over it all.  He planned it all perfectly.  "All that is good and perfect comes down to us from God the Father, who created all the lights in the heavens." James 1:17.  All the lights...wow. 

"Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens..." Psalm 36:6.  Think how big that is.  The light we saw from the stars and the planets had been traveling for years to reach our eyes that night.  That is how big his love is.

Next time there is a meteor shower, take the time to wake up and go watch it.  It kind of puts it all in perspective.

On to Mokopane...

For the final leg of my South African journey, my buddies and I rented a car (again the world's smallest) and drove on the wrong side of the road in nightmarish traffic to visit a couple different places. 

From Lesotho we took the Baz Bus again to a near by town, back in South Africa, and caught a national bus line that would take us back to Johannesburg.  We had time for lunch at this little Afrikaans dinner/restaurant where I was able to have an interesting conversation about Barack Obama and the US government situation with the local folks.  It was really quite a hilarious conversation - mostly because they knew more about what was going on and cared more than I did. :)   They were quite emphatic about their opinions!  

After we got on the bus (that finally came like 45 minutes late), we drove for several hours and made it to the bus station in Joberg around midnight.  It was a little scary to be waiting for our pick-up from the hostel in a deserted bus stop - we were also praying we were at the right bus stop.  Luckily, we were so we got back to our room and crashed - hard.

Our next day took us to the Community Chest (a version of United Way) just outside of Johannesberg.  They were wonderful people who took us on a tour of some of their projects and their partner sites.  It was amazing to see that with the equivalent of 80,000 bucks they could accomplish so much.  People there (Africa) really understand how to work on a budget!  We went to a school for handicapped children, a bakery and finally and AIDS orphanage. 

That was so hard.  The school and the orphanage.  Wow.  Seriously.  You have no idea.  The children were amazingly cute and had such sweet personalities.  They loved seeing the white girls and wanted hugs and love.  We gave them as much as we could in a short time.  I truly wanted to bring them all back in my suitcase and might have if it was, you know, legal.  Unfortunately, the South African government doesn't let you do that - and neither do loving husbands! : )

We stopped at a giant mall (larger than any in Wichita) outside of Pretoria, the capital city, to buy toys at a store called Game.  We bought so so much stuff!  The money we were able to bring from the gracious donations of friends and families went so so far.  The kids at the disabled school were ecstatic.   

     

We were also able to get this stuff

  

Gardening supplies.  People grow a lot of gardens their to help them eat healthy foods.  Fruits and veggies can get pretty expensive there (just like here obviously).  

 

All the kids.  Kristen (who lives there) is on the left.  I am in the middle (duh).

 

These are the splendid women who work at the school, posing with the garden supplies.  They were all so grateful.  It was so so cool.

 

This picture I wrote thanks with the chalk, to show the kids how to use chalk (it didn't take long for them to get the hang of it).  Then let them decorate it.  So thanks to everyone who helped us by bringing toys or donating money!  It was great to be the givers.  The next several pictures are the kids enjoying the new stuff!

   

   

 

I just got left in the soccer dust.  Yep, they were crazy good soccer players.  Isn't that little guy adorable!?!

Thanks again to all of you who helped out!

Wahoo Wednesday!

In lieu of my absolute inability to maintain the order of something like the Flashback Tuesday or whatever I was calling it - here is Wahoo Wednesday.  Basically no idea what that means, but it is what it is and I am what I am...

So I thought I might continue posting about my trip to Africa, mostly because I think its important for me to remember the details before they get too fuzzy and I start making up memories.  Did you know people do that? 

I do.

Anyway...when I last left my little tale, we were on a trail.  A horse trail, in a van.  Trust me, this is not the best way to travel.  Many heads were bumped and many stomachs tossed in the course of an hour's trip.  I think I even remember our guide saying "welcome to Africa." 

 

This is Lesotho (Le-soo-too).  It is the other country (along with Swaziland) that is inside of South Africa.  This one is very small.  It is 12,000 ish square miles with 1.8ish million people.  (For comparison - Kansas is 82,000 square miles with 2.8 million people.)

According to wikipedia.com, (my favorite source of information complied by people just like me) 40% of the people live below the international poverty line of $1.25 (US) a day.  Wow.  They also suffer from an AIDS rate of around 23 or 24% - one of the highest in the world.  Life expectancy is around 40 years for men and women.  Its just unreal.  It was so hard to visit this place. 

We did have a great time, we took a walking tour and saw some cave paintings (awesome), and then met some of the local people.

    

According to our guide, these cave drawing were like 150 or more years old (the red part - its hard to see).  They are telling the story of the white man's arrival to the area and also telling where to find animals to hunt.  I wish I had written down the details of this story a little more and a little sooner.  It was such a neat thing to see.

In Lesotho, they don't really have cars (hence we drove in on a horse trail) and no running water or electricity.  So they use flag signals to communicate with neighbors.  White means we are celebrating come join us, green means we harvested our crops come trade, and red means we slaughtered a cow come trade.  We saw this

 

at her house.

 

She welcomed us in and we shared in the "drink" (some kind of beer like beverage) and the food.  The food was good.  Beans and corn and some sort of seasonings all mixed in one bowl shared with everyone (including the spoon).  However the drink was nasty.  I wouldn't recommend it, but we said thank you anyway and drank when prompted. :)  Oh, yeah, it was all out of one community cup.

 

We shared with him. :)

We also got to visit (through a translator) with a local "healer" or medicine woman.  It was such an interesting experience.  They believe that you can be healed through intersession with your ancestors.  She speaks with them and they recommend treatment and she prescribes it.  Luckily, these healers have been taught how to diagnose HIV/AIDS and TB.  She doesn't conduct the test, but she does recognize the symptoms and then will send the sick person to the large city (probably by horse or if they are lucky a van) for further testing and treatment.  Healers no longer believe that these to diseases can be treated by them.  This is her.

 

Finally we visited a school.  We met the principal, the students, and one interesting individual that thinks the United States has a cure for AIDS and is keeping it a secret from Africa (this is an in person story so ask if you are curious).

 

These men and women are making crafts to sell to the tourists so that they can provide a new roof for the school.  The woman in the tie-dye is the principal.  They sing and dance to make the day go faster - or probably just for show. :)   The women on their knees in the 2nd photo are demonstrating a really old dance that involves intricate movements of the shoulders in order to attract a man... it was so cool. 

   

I loved the kids here.  They were so sweet and let me tell you - they loved the white ladies. :)   We walked for about a mile with this little one, who was so excited to have a plastic water bottle.  She wouldn't even let me carry it. 

Like I said, a hard place to go, but such wonderful people. 

101 update.

For those of you who might be wondering - I am making progress on my list of 101 things to do in 1001 days.

#72 - was previously completed, but I wanted to provide a pictorial update.

 

The beans and the tomatoes have basically run amok. (one of my all time favorite things to say - amok.)

#54 - I really like to fall asleep while watching tv.  I have a hard time just going to sleep, I have to zone out if you will, so this one is hard for me.  Spend six weekends completely without TV.  One down five to go.

#59 - Take more pictures - according to Ryan I have become a picture-taking-aholic.  But I love it.  He told me that this weekend when I was randomly taking pictures in the little town of Alma, KS.  They have a booming business in natural stone.  They are in the flint hills and have the most beautiful stone downtown area and amazing stone walls.  You should check them out some time.

   

This house is possibly my new favorite!  I know that's not the best picture, it was hard to catch because of all the trees - but all part of the draw!  Anyway, its completely made of stone and has a great porch and this awesome barn - did you notice the truck - so cool.  Then right across the street...

 

A beautiful corn field.  This was possibly the most picturesque farm ever.

 

The cutest ever church, in Alma, where our friends Amanda and Alex got married.

   

   

A cute little college all of stone and then the great down town buildings.  I love the details on the doors.

And ... the stone wall - love it.

#83 - Visit our grandparents twice.  We went to Topeka on Saturday and had lunch with my Grandma and Grandpa and then spent several hours visiting and showing pictures.