Sharing Dreams

Caleb usually crawls into bed with me somewhere around his 4:30am pee time so we often wake up together and have a little chat time. Sometimes he wakes up and gives me a play by play analysis of his dreams from that night. This morning he was really funny; he told me all about his dream and then cutely looked at me and said "so tell me about your dreams momma." So we shared dreams
His were, of course, ALL about fighting and being a ninja, and even rescuing me and a friend of his from some bad guy named Shredder. He showed me some of the moves involved :) My dream? This would be so easy to analyze. I dreamed about finding money on 3 different occasions and then happening upon a candy outlet store. What does that tell you about me?!

Yesterday was Saturday and I enjoyed a complete day off! It was great. We worked in the yard and made flower boxes. I love sitting on my front balcony drinking coffee and enjoying the breeze BUT I am a spectacle to everyone who walks down the street, so this provides a bit of a barrier to the street traffic.














On today's agenda, enjoy a sabbath rest (with the exception of lunch duty at Caleb's school.) I have reading and thinking to do in preparation for next fall's Women's Bible Study. We are trying to pick a topic and one of the options is character studies of the people listed in Jesus' genealogy. Interesting idea but not so confidant that there is much teaching material given. We shall see what I think at the end of the day. So other than reading all I have to do is another cup of coffee!

Experiencing life as a hampster

Egypt's version of Disneyland

On Thursday Caleb and I and a friend named Gracie went and checked out an amusement park that I want to take the VBS kids to this summer. It was pretty good for the most part but still had that Egyptian touch to it, note the headless caveman and wires dangling from the Longneck's throat.





Caleb had a great time, a bit nervous at first on some rides but in the end he really manned up and did a great job. surprisingly he wouldn't go on a roller-coaster but he did ride this simulator thingie inside where they played a movie and rolled the seats around and he loved that!

The Calm after the Easter Stor

Wow! It is raining yet again, OK not a major rainstorm, but still a cleansing of the sky (only in Cairo does the sky actually need to be cleansed!) unfortunately it reeks havoc on the ill equipped streets, no walking or biking today! Hopefully it will clear up in a few hours as I am supposed to take Caleb and a friend to check out an amusement park this afternoon for my summer VBS program called "One Wild Week." He will not take kindly to canceling such plans! He has been on Easter break for the past week and as much as I try to find fun things for him to do he is a social beast and it is never enough. he wanted to know who was coming over for breakfast yesterday! Seriously we can do breakfast on our own can't we? Only child, single parent...in his book it can't get much worse.

The week after a big holiday and schools on break all adds up to a slower paced work week. Hardly anyone is in the office, and aside from church no other events are on the calendar so I can work on things which lie on the horizon. For good and bad this summer will be lighter than the past 3 because so many plans had to be canceled b/c of revolution fallout. Most of my usual visiting groups and their African VBS' canceled so I am only in charge of one One Wild Week which is more like a day camp the week before the American school starts in Aug. It will be a challenge this year as it will fall fully within Ramadan which means CHAOS! We do more the traditional VBS schedule in the morning and then every afternoon we take a fun field trip, waterpark, reptile farm etc... The kids and parents loved it last year but this year it means every afternoon we will be trying to get back to the church fighting our way through Ramadan traffic. If you have ever been here and experienced the normal Cairo traffic you know how insane that can be, now add in the hunger/anger factor AND the entire city (20 mil) trying to get home at the exact same time in order to be seated and ready to eat at the first note of the call to prayer.
Also on my agenda is an end of the year event for the youth (formerly known as the Hoo Haw until that term was hijacked,) a sermon on Gal. 5:16-21, and a few other odds and ends.
So with all that said I need to get my butt in gear and get on with this day!

Random Happenings as of Late

3/4 of Turlan kids and Caleb and Ramadan's grandkids out at Sakkara. Andrew the youngest participating in our egg hunt.


















Bradley hunting eggs and Caleb assisting Alia in the long and tedious process of hand rolling mashi krom (stuffed cabbage leaves)


Alia and Caleb at the Pyramids. This was her first time ever!

Enjoying the Fresh Air

Happy Sham El Nessim!

I am sitting on my newly cleaned balcony drinking a cuppa and enjoying a lazy start to the day. Caleb spent the night at Bonnie's so I could actually sleep in of course I couldn't get past 8 but it was fun to have the opportunity! I just learned via FB that my Jr. High/High School crush (who never knew I existed) died last year. I don't think I ever actually spoke to the guy and yet it really saddens me. From the tributes and photos it seems as if he was a happy family guy, stayed married, loving kids and lots of friends, and he was good looking as ever.

So with my Caleb free evening what exciting thing did I do? Well, I impressed myself by putting together my new grill with rather obscure instructions. When I all was said and done I had about 3 bolts left over (yet every hole was filled) not sure if I did it right but it is standing! Hopefully will put to use tonight.

Caleb and I spent 5 hours yesterday doing yard work, felt kinda like a Saturday of my childhood except now strangely enough I enjoy it. My house and yard was demolished over the course of the last year while they added two floors to my building. There is no real work standards here nor regulations so they just pitch bricks and rebar off the roof, let cement drip and paint splatter. When they packed up their scaffolding they loaded my grill and patio furniture as well but left ALL the garbage and mess of 10 months of work. The garden is dead but hopefully I can bring some color and life back into to it. We did make some interesting discoveries, Caleb found (and screamed upon finding) a cool caterpillar. It really blended into the dirt but when I touched it, it had a section that flared up (note photos) and we caught a cute lizard both were later released back into the wild.

Just heard today that it looks like the American Embassy will be lifting the evacuation orders and that embassy staff can return. This will affect a number of other companies as well who have been waiting on the embassy for the lead to return. Of course school is out in a month so not sure if people will really return at this point or not but it will create some interesting end of the year issues. We have reduced church to one service and we are quite full, do we add the other back in fr a few weeks? I am kind of in wind down mode planning for summer and VBS'. Interesting as always!

Maybe some of you have noticed I have blogged a bit more as of late (last 3 days :) ) Well I found this gadget that lets you see if people actually read your blog, which is helpful since blogging is a bit of a lonely device if no one ever comments or lets you know that they read it, of course since I rarely posted then people stop coming to visit and it is a vicious cycle, so I am testing it out that if I write more, people will visit more and keep up with me by this method verses FB which I am trying to use minimally.

Anyhow on with the day, blessings to all!

Easter Weekend

Easter 2011

Just returned home from my annual favorite service of the year the Easter Resurrection Service. As always a great energy and air of celebration, a crowd of people who really are so thankful that Christ popped up out of that tomb 2000 years ago.

Enjoyed an awesome weekend of good food, and great friends!

I spent Friday night after church finishing filling 1500 plastic eggs with candy for our 3rd Annual Eggstraordinary Egg Hunt. For the past 2 years my mom has been here to help with that thrilling task but this year I was all on my own. The hunt was early Saturday morning and we had a great turnout considering that most of Maadi is gone either for the holiday or still not back from the evacuation yet. The kids didn't mind as it meant more eggs for all of them!
Later that afternoon off to the Turlan's roof for a pre Easter BBQ where Ben and Sarah won the "Freakin Huge Steak" award. It was a bit of a tight fit on the roof but none the less the kids didn't mind watching their head as the swam carefully next to a giant satellite dish.

Happenings as of late

Caleb earning his first belt in Tae Kwando!

His KG photo

Revolution Celebration

Celebration Maadi style!