Breslar Smith adventures

tropical fruits

No broccoli here (unless you want to pay $15 a head for imported) or nectarines or peaches or berries.. but look what we get! Passion fruit, great tomatoes, mangos, and mangoustine!!

Agatha was getting soooo big, we thought that she was going to have like eight babies! Friday morning, Jaffa went upstairs to feed Agatha and Owen and found TWO! They were all furry with their eyes open. A little disheveled, but BEAUTIFUL!!

We gave them a few days to relax, and then today we snuggled them for the first time. One of them looks very much like Owen (including the nose!), and the other like Agatha--and even has a few white furs on the same place on her head.

They are very sweet, small (but bigger than we thought they would be).. but still long and not chubby. We'll work on that! They did start eating lettuce yesterday, at just two days old! In a few weeks we should know whether they are boys or girls... we'll keep you posted!

The awesomest pizza oven

What Zeric really really really wanted for Christmas and Hanukkah and his birthday was something he's been wanting since the early days in Jakarta: a pizza oven. As soon as we got here and found the best pizza place, he started asking about people who build wood-fired ovens, and so he found Alexi. He arranged for Alexi to come the weekend after Christmas to build it. Apparently, constructing a pizza oven needs to happen in all one shot, so we had guests for 24+ hours.

Then.. ta da!!

And so we had to have a few friends over to try it out..

And.. it worked GREAT!! YUM!!

Come on over, and Zeric will fire up the oven :)

squashed Clement

Same as Flat Stanley.. but the French version. It was Eben's homework over the holidays. While some of his classmates surely have some pictures of skiing in the Alps or the Eiffel Tower, we have some great ones at home in Kin!!

[yawn]

making pizza

with Owen. How's it goin'?

Blu [heart] Kevin

A little holiday love

Mango worms

So I think this is the grossest thing I've seen in a long time. For real.

They tell us to be sure not to hang our clothes outside to dry, but rather use the dryer.. or iron everything.. BECAUSE we have mango flies here. Mango flies lay eggs in places where they can get into your skin (for dogs, that would be cool dirt pits). The eggs or worms or whatever then burrow into your skin until they are ready to hatch. You don't know they are there until a day or so before they are ready because you get HUGE bumps on your skin.

Blu had TEN. When the bumps got really big with a yellow head on them, I put Vaseline on them which suffocates the worms and they practically jump out of your skin (though I did do a little squeeze). They were like huge pimples--except that the worms were ALIVE.

The remaining hole in Blu's arm.

They were big. And then I killed them all.

YUCK!!!

Christmas in Kin

Lots of Christmas spirit here... we had a great show at school, and then some nice times with friends--and just amongst ourselves. It was great to have a bit of a slower pace for a few weeks as we finished settling in.

For the school celebration.. the kids said they lasted about 3 seconds!

The kids all got together, and each class sang a holiday song.

They were great, and in three languages!

goofball, center

They each had to choose a flag of a country for their world peace song.. some guy (who ended up not coming to the performance) took the US, so Jaffa chose the next best thing!

(with a shout out to the Simpson-Ergens!)

Once the performance was over, the band just kept going a la Congolaise. I hope you can see this quick video!

We had many debates about what kind of tree we would have (having left the very very very heavy wood one in Jakarta).. and we decided to go with a real, live, tropical one! It's tall.. it took over the car!