Two Weeks of School

Angie and the kids have finished their second week of school and it seems like things are going well. Angie has been working really hard and putting in lots of extra hours. She is the first one up in the morning and the last one to go to sleep. When she is not teaching, planning, checking, cooking, cleaning, or shopping she is meeting with friends that come to the house almost daily. She is teaching English to a lady once a week in the evening. I made her take a nap on Wednesday and I was the substitute teacher on Thursday. She enjoyed the nap and the morning on the main island on Thursday. During school on Thursday, I sent Angie a text message that read, “Wow this is hard work. Enjoy your day. You are appreciated.” I am not trying to sound like the hero here, but just wanted you to know (as if you didn’t know already) what great wife, teacher, friend, mother and leader my wife is. Kyndal didn’t seem to mind the substitute on Thursday, but Braden said I was way too hard.

“Ok, now I am sending.” You gotta do the Indian head wag as you say it. If you dont know what that is, you are really missing out on some culture. – Side note: Come see us and we will fix that. “Ok, now I am sending” is what the head laborer has said all week when I would call him about leaks in our new flat. For about the last ten days, our bathroom has been out of commission because the tile is gone (from a broken water pipe in the floor). Every day (sometimes twice a day) I would call the head guy to ask the status of the work and he would respond, “Ok, now I am sending.” I thought that meant that he was going to send the workers to my place to begin working. I would go to the house, wait and then wait longer. Well today he actually sent and the laborers are here now fixing the tile. Yippee!

In one of the latest care packages, we received the movie “Cars.” All of us think that Mader is the best character in the movie. All of the voices on the movie remind us of being in Oklahoma and Texas. Mader reminds us of the poor soul in Oklahoma that had lost his trailer house in a tornado or the west Texas pig farmer from my alma-mater. I think Kyndal does the best Mader voice around here. She loves the line… “Tuh-mader without the tuh.” She also got us all saying the couple of lines when the policeman scolded Mader for talking to Lightning. He said, “Mader, what did I tell you about talking to the accused?” Mader said, “To not to.” So now its a famous line in our house. If at dinner, I said to Braden or Kyndal, “What did I tell you about chewing with your mouth full?” they would answer in their best Mader vernacular “to not to.” We all laugh and the locals dont know what to think about us. Well you cant say we are not bringing a little Texoma to the other side of the world. We are trying to give them as much of our lives as possible;-)