Birthday Party

Happy (belated) Birthday, Matt!

For his big day, we celebrated with a party set up local style, but with chicken enchiladas and rice and beans as the main course. Yummy! After last year's attempt at hosting neighbors with chicken and dumplings and it not going over too well, we weren't sure what would be best this year. So we still settled for something without too much spice or flavor, since we haven't had a meal here that has just "wowed" our tastebuds, but something that we wouldn't mind having a lot of leftovers from. That did not turn out to be an issue this year though!

Meet my neighbor, who was the mastermind behind creating the spread. She set up things in such a way that when people walked in, they immediately felt comfortable. And now I feel more comfortable setting a spread of my own without assistance (though the company is always welcome!).

And here is the spread before the main meal was brought out. There's fruit, candy, cookies, and a cake that my friend above brought. Since the cake she brought said Happy Birthday in English, I decided that writing it in the language we're learning on the cake I made would be appropriate.

This says Рузи Тавалуд Муборак (pronounced Roozy Tavalood Muborak).

 Here's the birthday boy relaxing with a few friends. Looks pretty comfortable to me!

It was a great day. Though there were plenty of dishes to wash, a couple of the gals jumped in afterwards to get everything cleaned up and to entertain Michael. We definitely live among some great people and love being here.

Two Surprises

Yesterday was Mikey's 4 month birthday. We're definitely grateful he's such a joyful and overall easy kid. Thanks, God!

So today we went to the clinic just around the corner to get just a couple basic things taken care of. When we returned home in January, we brought his 4-months and 6-month vaccinations with us. We have a cooler box in the car, so they stayed refrigerated the entire time. Then they went straight into our fridge. So we took them with us today to the clinic hoping to get him weighed, measured, and shot up.

The first 2 were easy. Then she checked his heartrate, asked if he was getting vitamins (apparently babies around here have more hair than Mikey, so she was concerned about this), and made sure we didn't drink alcohol. Then it was time for the vaccinations.

The local baby-weighing method.

We explained to her several times that we had the vaccinations with us and that they have always remained cold. She asked why we weren't using her vaccinations. Well, we didn't know what was there, and these are already paid for, so we needed to use them. Finally, we just got it cleared up that she wasn't comfortable giving them to him since she didn't know herself how they had been handled and she didn't want them to backfire on him and make him sick. Gotta say, that if it's either that extreme or putting anything in a needle, I'll take this cautious approach. So surprise #1 was that the clinic wouldn't vaccinate him. Fortunately, we think we may have found another way to get them given to him. So don't worry...it's all under control.

Then, as we were taking our walk around the neighborhood, we stopped in to see a good friend who we hadn't visited in a while. Her mom had been out of town but recently returned, so we figured today was as good a day as any. Surprise #2 for the day? Our friend's sister had her baby! They had just returned from the hospital this morning, so Mikey and I were invited in to see mom and new baby. This boy was 3 kg at birth, just like Mikey. Crazy to see by comparison how much he's grown!