Most of the time I am pretty content living here in Africa. I really have everything I need and since moving to South Africa things are even more readily available.

I miss my family and friends – those things are irreplaceable. And I miss my home church. We got to Skype (video) into the services last weekend for the announcement that we’ll be planting The Life Church Durban. That was so fun! But it made us miss being there. (Check out our other blog for more info about that)

But the thing I really miss the most is not sweet and tender, but practical and efficient…my dishwasher. I really didn’t even like rinsing the dishes and sticking them in there when I lived back in the States, but that seems like such a little chore when compared to hand washing, rinsing and drying dishes. I know there are plenty of people in the States who don’t have automatic dishwashers, but I was never one of them. (Go ahead and call me spoiled-I know) I even have a friend whose mother’s dishwasher dry-rotted because she preferred hand washing! I wish I could get there.

So I’m about to go and tackle the pile of dishes in my kitchen. I’m trying to keep a good attitude.

Wrote that first part about a week ago…attitude really is everything! I’ve turned over a new leaf regarding this dreaded chore and it’s not so bad. I’ve decided apply some tactics that will work with anything you don’t want to do, but really have to:

1. Tackle it in small bits - I hated it so I would avoid the kitchen till the dishes from the whole day would pile up and I would spend SO LONG washing! But if I just go ahead and wash after each meal, it takes me less than 15 minutes each time.Anything you are dreading can be better taken in small bits. A friend once told me, “You can only eat an elephant one bite at a time.”

2. Don’t put it off – Do it right then! I got a great tip about keeping your kitchen clean from Simple Mom about cleaning as you. I’m not there yet, but I’m trying. Procrastination can make any task grow. Washing dishes can require a lot more elbow grease if the food has dried on the dishes. There are a lot of other things that can be harder once they’ve been sitting there for a while – bills can pile up and add finance charges, stains on clothes can become permanent if not washed, or cars will not run right with neglect – it’s much better to do it when it needs to get done.

3. Find things to enjoy while doing the chore – With my attitude adjusted, I decided to take advantage of the mundane task and let it serve a double purpose. I can spend time praying. I can put up Bible verses on note cards hung in front of the sink so I can practice memorizing. I can listen to podcasts and get encouraged and filled up! It makes the chore fly by and instead pouting, I’m enriching myself.

What chore do you dread… and how do you make it more bearable?

This posts is part of a blog carnival over at WeAreThatFamily – check it out for more holiday tips.

After the days of Santa Claus were over, our family continued the tradition of stockings on Christmas morning. I just love the little trinkets, candy and stuff you get in a stocking. This idea could get the whole family involved with stuffing stockings – you set parameters like only homemade items, or a certain dollar amount, or, like my sis and I did one year accidentally, only things you can find at Wal-mart – which is about everything!  The creativity is really fun!

Here it is:

1. Agree that everyone participating in the stocking stuffing will give gifts within a certain parameter – such as under $10 or only homemade, etc.
2. Everyone shops or prepares their gifts prior to Christmas Eve.
3. Christmas Eve, just before everyone goes to bed, place everyone’s stocking in his/her own room, or other designated private place.
4. Everyone rotates visiting the rooms and stuffing the stockings EXCEPT their own room and stocking.
5. Once the rotation is complete and everyone has stuffed the stockings, take the last stocking you stuffed and put it in the designated stocking spot – under the tree, at the fireplace, kitchen table, etc.
6. Everyone goes to bed! This way no one is tempted to peek at their own stocking and the surprise is kept till the morning.

The other night, I found myself in prayer – the worry prayer. I’m sure we’ve all done this from time to time. Something is weighing on your mind and you know you should trust God with it, so every few minutes you offer up a prayer to Him about it. While talking with God is definitely a good thing, this type of prayer must really frustrate Him.

Here He has adopted us as His sons and daughters yet we worry about money, sickness, our children, our future, everything. The Bible does tell us to be persistent with our prayers, but I don’t think that this was what it meant. In fact, by continuing to worry “prayer” about it, I demonstrate my lack of trust in Him instead of my wholehearted trust.

Message version – Matthew 6:25 “If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body.26 Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

That’s where I decide to live – careless in the care of God! What a wonderful place to be! Forget those worry prayers – make your requests known to God then live without a care!

I felt the need today to remind myself of the many ways God has blessed me. I know Thanksgiving is still a month away, but this is something we need to do all the time. I’m so blessed yet sometimes I feel myself falling into the trap of wanting more. So here’s my exercise of thankfulness – off the top of my head, in no particular order:

1. Thankful for a roomy house where we can host guests.
2. Thankful for my two lovable dogs.
3. Thankful for my husband who provides and cares for me in more ways than I really even realize.
4. Thankful for the food I have – help me steward it wisely.
5. Thankful for the food my dogs have. Being able to afford to care for them makes me wealthy in this part of the world.
6. Thankful for a church in Memphis that loves and supports us.
7. Thankful for my family that are coming to visit – my sister and her husband and my brother.
8. Thankful for my dad and step-mom and their generous gift of stroller and car seat.
9. Thankful for my computer.
10. Thankful for friends who sent me a bunch of maternity clothes. Don’t know what I’d be wearing right now without them!
11. Thankful for all the people who came to my Skype baby shower back in Memphis – and gave generous gifts! Can’t wait to see all the gifts when my family gets here.
12. Thankful for a season of rest as we prepare for the new baby.
13. Thankful for a healthy pregnancy (even at the age 36! Don’t believe everything you read. )
14. Thankful for this new life that will soon be here!
15. Thankful that God knows the future and continues to direct us step by step.
16. Thankful that for a great hospital and doctor here in South Africa.
17. Thankful for friends back in Swaziland.
18. Thankful for new friends that we’re making here.
19. Thankful to be pursuing the God-dream in our hearts.
20. Thankful to be alive at this point in history!

What are you thankful for?

A necessary widget to have on your desktop when you live in a foreign country is a currency converter.

When we first moved to Swaziland – whose currency is tied to the South African Rand, the US dollar to Rand ratio was 1:10. It was nice and easy to understand how much you were paying for things and we got a lot for our dollar.

It has since balanced back out to about 1:7 – which is more normal – but makes our budget tighter.

Today I had a momentous occasion! I had to convert from US dollar to Rand to understand how something compared to what we spend. I think I’m acclimating!

Kristen, over at We Are THAT Family blog is celebrating her 2nd blogaversary! She has an awesome blog with hilarious real-life stories that inspire, make you laugh and comfort you at the same time! Love reading her blog. So I thought I’d link up for her celebration.

At first I didn’t think we qualified to be a “THAT family” since we are just now expecting our first child. Then one of my puppies (dogs, but I like to call them puppies) just broke his leg and I remembered. Umm, as furbaby parents, we are still “THAT family!”

First of all, we live in South Africa. But our dogs are American. We brought them over when we moved on the plane. Quite an ordeal. There were lots of hoops to jump through and extra expenses (thank goodness for garage sales for funding) but we really wanted our dogs with us.

But the main thing that reminds me that we “THAT family” is the number of times we’ve visited the ER vet just with our puppies! Before we got the two we have now, I had a dog when I was single that came to live with us when we bought a house as a married couple. Since joining “THAT family” she got to see the ER in the middle of the night twice!

Then we got Cocoa and Sugar. Sugar hadn’t been with us a week before she required an ER visit for contracting Parvo before she has come to us. She was in quarantine for 3 days and we were the fur-parents who came to visit her. The vet said, “You can’t visit a dog in quarantine!” But she let us look through the glass at her anyway. We think it’s a reason why she recovered so quickly – that and prayers for the will the live. She got that- she’s sassy now!

So she came home as a little pup and recovered nicely. But loved to try and keep up with her big brother. Two weeks after the Parvo ordeal, she jumped from my husband’s arms to catch her brother Cocoa and landed wrong on our deck. Broken leg. Another ER visit. By this time the ER and our regular vet knew us quite well!

We’ve gone a while without an emergency visit – a whole year – which is good because we lived in Swaziland, Africa and not sure what type of ER care they have for dogs there. But less than three months after we move to South Africa – just around the corner from a very good vet hospital – we have another broken leg. This time Cocoa while running through the yard tripped on stone steps.

Cocoa lounging and resting his broken leg.

So, I started thinking… if all this happening to our puppies, what will be like when we have children? I personally have never been to the ER for myself. I asked my husband…umm, too many trips to the ER to count. Great!

So I scrambled and found I could make roasted potatoes and carrot and chicken strips. We had corn and green salad as well. I kept the bread in the kitchen because I didn’t want to tempt them. Oh and apple crisp with oats instead of flour for dessert. Everything turned out great!

It was a funny day though – you know we have a little injured dog with a broken leg. On top of taking care of him, my other dog decided to fall in the pool and take her first swim ever just before our guests arrived! If you have a dog, you know how they are after they get a bath – tearing around the house. She finally calmed down and thankfully our new friends are “dog people” so everything was good!

We ended up staying up way too late talking and laughing with our new friends! That’s a great feeling!

Ok, so my husband just got a text from our dinner guests tonight saying they can’t eat bread or dairy products.

Umm, currently making homemade rolls for tonight and planning on making a beef, cheesey noodle bake dish.

Scrambling and making up something to cook.

Realizing that we eat A LOT of pasta, cheese and bread. Hmm. Should work on that.

Now, what type of dessert doesn’t have flour in it – that I have the stuff to make?

Cocoa went back to the vet to have his bandage changed – which is really good because he peed on it a couple of times – it’s hard being a boy dog and unable to lift your leg.

They also checked the sutures and said it’s all looking good. He came back with two drugs in his system – one sedative and one anti-sedative. Thank goodness I’m an information junkie – I had just looked up one of the meds and a side effect is that they automatically pee about 2 hours after being given the med. Sure enough, he was just standing there – in our den unfortunately – and he peed. Yikes!

This post has a lot of pee in it for some reason.

A hint I thought share about giving your dog medicine that they hate: get wet food/canned food – we like Pedigree chunks – and hide the pill in the chunks of food. Most dogs, especially if they usually eat dry food, are so excited about the wet food they swallow it so quickly they don’t even notice the yucky pill hidden inside. It’s worked like charm the last few days which is great because the first day we had WW3 getting a pill down his throat.

We had a traumatic evening Monday night. Everything was great – cooking spaghetti and green salad for dinner, beautiful evening, and the dogs were running happily around the yard. Our neighbors pulled in their driveway and our dogs went crazy. They love to run along the fence, where their driveway runs, and bark at their car. All of sudden we heard yelping! I thought our neighbors had hit their dog, then a I realized it was one of our dogs – Cocoa. Somehow in the excitement of running, he must have tripped on steps we have connecting the front yard to the back yard. He was laying in the grass with all his legs up, crying. My husband picked him up and immediately said his leg was broken. I was hoping he was wrong, but he wasn’t.

We rushed to the vet hospital that we’ve passed countless times but had yet to visit since we’ve only lived in this town for 3 months now. Thankfully they saw us even though it was 20 minutes before closing. We don’t even know where the ER vet is located, plus it ALWAYS cost more… don’t we know!

Cocoa was in shock, so they bandaged him, gave him pain med injection, and started an iv. They had to wait till the next day for x-rays, but thought the injury would require surgery. The x-rays the next day proved it would. Dogs have two bones – similar to our forearm – that make up their leg. Cocoa had broken both bones and they were totally out of alignment and would definitely require surgery.

We’ve been through a broken leg before with our younger dog Sugar, but she had “one of the best breaks you can have.” Only one bone broken, so the other one held it in place and it wasn’t even dislocated. This time the vet said this was one of the worst.

So the next day the vet operated and put a metal plate on the larger bone with six screws – three above the break and three below. The x-ray of the completed operation was totally different than the scary picture of his broken leg.

Cocoa lounging and resting his broken leg.

So now comes the fun part of recovery! Sugar recovered very quickly from her little break - only 4 weeks with a splint. Even when she had the splint on she was very active. This time, I’m really cautioning Greg that we must keep Cocoa calm for the whole 8 weeks. His break was so bad, it could easily be made worse by too much activity too soon. Thankfully the rainy season is coming and both our dogs get drowsy when it rains.

Sugar's supportive laziness. She doesn't understand why he can't go run with her.

So we just have to survive the next 8 weeks – then… we’ll have a newborn baby and have to survive those first 8 weeks! I hope we make it! Our own little version of Survivor, only no one gets the luxury of being voted off!