Happy Birthday Tyler!

Just wanted to put out there that today is Tyler's birthday!!! We want him to have the best possible day today!!! Spencer woke up and thought we should do something special for Daddy's breakfast, so we made him crepes (one of Tyler's favorite foods). Tonight we will celebrate more and do presents. But for now...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TYLER!!!

We Love You!

Also we should say Happy Birthday to Dannon!!! tyler's twin brother. :)

the After

So, once we found out where we were going, and were able to have fun with family and friends for guessing where we went next, things are pretty quiet and anti-climatic. This is what we have done with the after of telling everyone we are going next to New York City:....

Yep! not much. We told everyone, everyone is excited for us and they all say they want to come and visit us. Then nothing else exciting has been going on. Next month I promise we'll have more fun to share about living here in Zimbabwe now (we are going to Victoria Falls next month!). But for now, we are just a little boring.

I did get sick a couple of weekends ago, the sickest I've ever been I think. It took me two days to recover and we still don't know what caused it.

Tyler last Sunday hurt his back. We found out that it was a torn disk, so all he can do is rest. Well, Tyler can't rest, he has a very hard time resting. So he is working four hours a day and then coming home to rest, but I really know he wishes he could be there longer working. O-well, doctors orders, kinda. :) This is Tyler resting.

Spencer is having fun at school and learning about silkworms and Zimbabwe. Not the two together, but separately. He has started doing spelling tests this year, and is doing fairly well. He did start going to soccer on Saturday mornings, and he loves it!

Oh yeah, there is one more thing that we did do, night kite flying!!! Spencer got this kite for his birthday and wanted to fly it, so Daddy went outside to help him fly his kite....with a flashlight.

Lastly, here is a spider we recently killed. It's big, and gross and popped.

BEWARE: this is a gross picture!!! EWWWW!!!!

Also a picture of some flowers that are growing in our yard that I thought my mom would think were pretty.

So you see, we really are just plain ol' boring people here. Not much else is going on. I'll write more though after our trip to the Falls. We are planning on going to a couple of the parks nearby to go on safari runs, hopefully a night lion run, and enjoy the country we are living in now. Stay tuned.

NEW YORK CITY!

That is right, in summer 2011 we will be moving to Manhattan.

The winner was Mary, who guessed it pretty quickly. Well done Mary!!

The State department is sending me there to work on United Nations issues. We are really excited to be back in the states, especially to have an opportunity to live in Manhattan without paying the super high rents. We are excited we will have a temple close by, being able to walk around freely, great restaurants, good sporting events, etc... We plan on living in the upper west side, upper east side, midtown, or near the financial district. Visitors are welcomed, but those who visited us here in Africa get priority.

(not taking reservations yet)

A few more clues.

Here are a few more clues.

7. This city has hosted the world fair

8. While many languages are spoken here, English is the main language.

9. The city is 789 kilometers square.

Happy guessing.

Hints 5 and 6

5. Multiple languages are spoken here.

6. It has four separate seasons with 49.7 inches of rain a year.

Hint 4

Look for hints 5 and 6 later today, but here is hint 4.

4. In its history, the city has had more than one official name.

Hints 2 and 3

Due to some pressure, from various people I have decided to speed up the hints, thus I am going to give hint two and three right now and I promise these ones will provide a little more context.

2. The city is in the northern hemisphere.

3. The city is next to a large body of water.

Where in the World????

We now know where we will be going next, but since I like to play games we will have a small contest to see who can guess where we are going next. I will provide one hint a day, with the hints becoming easier as they go along. There will be a prize for who ever guesses where we are going first. So here are the rules, and I will be relying on your honesty to keep some of these rules.

1) Each person only has one guess for the duration of the contest, so if you vote on the first question and get it wrong you are out of the contest. If you have several people in your family, then your family has several guesses, however it has to be each person's proper guess. For example, Layton can not provide a guess for Ryan, unless Ryan can somehow name a city.

2) no looking up the hints on the internet in order to guess.

3) There are a few people who know already, they are not allowed to guess or give other people hints.

Now the time for the first clue:

1. THE CITY HAS MORE THAN 5 MILLION RESIDENTS

THE helicopter

The backstory:

Spencer was opening all of his birthday presents from his friends last Saturday. One of those presents was a helicopter, but not any helicopter, but one where you had to have TOOLS to put it together. We thought at first that it was a lego thing that was really easy, but no. It was not. I started to put it together, but with me trying to put it together quickly I messed up and had to take apart everything. So then we employed Tyler to fixing this helicopter so it would be done. The work week came and went, and Spencer was begging Tyler to fix it on Saturday and Sunday, but things were just too busy. Today though, being Labor Day, Tyler had it off and Spencer went to school, so it was a perfect time for Tyler to get it done.

This morning Spencer woke up and told me to tell Daddy that he HAD to get it done today. He HAD to put the whole helicopter together before he got home from school. Spencer told me to watch Daddy and make sure that he did it and didn't take too many breaks. He said Daddy couldn't take breaks. Well he could, but only if he was about to die.

Tyler worked and worked on that helicopter today, and he FINALLY finished it! It wasn't without a few sighs, grunts and aggravated noises. Since Tyler had off today then we went to pick up Spencer from school, and knowing how Tyler likes to tease he was telling Spencer that he couldn't figure out how to put together the helicopter.

Here is their conversation:

T: Spencer, I'm sorry I didn't finish your helicopter today.

S: What?

T: I couldn't figure it out. I'm so sorry I didn't even take any breaks. I haven't eaten breakfast or lunch. I haven't even gone to the bathroom yet!

S: Okay, well, when we get back home you can go to the bathroom, and eat something before you start working on it again. You can't do anything else when we get home besides finish it though. And after you finish it you can play with me. What part did you get to?

T: Step 2.

S: No you aren't.

T: Yes Step 2.

S: But you were past that already.

T: No I had to take it apart because we did it wrong, so I'm only on Step 2. But I'll go home and work on it, but my fingers hurt really bad, what if they start bleeding.

S: Well then you can stop until their better because I don't want to get red on my legos.

T: (to me sitting in the passenger seat laughing) oh thanks.

S: You can get a band-aid on it, then come back to work when it's not bleeding anymore.

Here is the helicopter that Daddy built. That he couldn't take any breaks from, and that he couldn't get any red on. :)

Also, this is the outfit that Spencer built...all by himself!

Catch-up and Spencer's Birthday!

When we got back from the States we took a trip with another family here. We decided to take a day trip to Imiri again.

The Lion.

The Lion's big mouth.

Spencer just hanging out with the zebras.

Cute little zebra baby, look at those little tufts of hair on his back. So cute!!!

These rock formations are all over Harare. How do those rocks hang on there?!?

The people behind us got lucky to have the rhinos up close.

Ya know...cows and giraffes hang out all the time.

White rhinos, which are very aggressive, but they left us alone.

I know this is weird, but look at how round these white rhinos are?!? How do those legs hold up that big ol' body?

Spencer feeding the elephants.

Storytime:

So one night we were sitting down to dinner, and Spencer was saying how he wasn't hungry at all. I filled up his plate, because we were having baked potatoes, so he got one of the potatoes. And we had some rice with it too, anyway, this is how "I'm not hungry" looks.

SPENCER'S 6th BIRTHDAY!!!

He was so excited for his party day to come, he invited all of his friends (43!!), and 31 friends showed up with about 10 parents who stayed. We got him a jumping castle with slide and a cotton candy machine (which they call candy floss here) to have at the party. This is Cosmas, our gardener, and Spencer playing with the balls before the party started.

The madness/chaos.

This was only after 3 minutes of having the cake in his hands, how he got it all over his face in that time is a mystery to me.

Opening up presents, he was so excited and always takes great surprised face pictures.

This one was a hard one to open.

Success!

Using his new scissors he got from someone at the party. Surprise, the one thing that is so common is the one thing he has been using the most!!! He loves these scissors!

Daddy getting the candles all ready to blow out.

Happy Birthday to my sweet, darling, incredible, handsome, precious boy!!