It is August 1st, and that means it's our anniversary; we have been married for two whole happy years! It is strange how things seem to go so fast, and yet I feel like I've always been married to Ceej. You can see our first family portrait here.
This year Husband surprised me with a bed and breakfast stay in Columbus, complete with a trip to Cosi (science-y stuff geared towards kids, but right up my alley). The pics didn't turn out (iPhone in the darkness), so you'll just have to trust me that it was great! Imagine Husband lifting a car, animatronic dinosaurs, champagne pear flavored ice cream, dinner outside during a huge thunderstorm, and the best double chocolate cookie man has ever made. It was the perfect celebration of our quirky preferences as a couple.
Did you know that the 2nd anniversary is the cotton anniversary? Functional!
I would choose this for my 2nd anniversary cotton gift :
Have you every looked at 30 pictures of your head all at once? Neither had I...
BOOM! 30 Lisa Heads!
Not gonna lie, it's a little creepy.
But this is the result of my 30 Days : 30 Dos experiment...which I loved! I feel more confident in working with my hair, and I have a repertoire of styles under my belt for multiple occasions. Do you have any favorites? Any "lisa-don't-do-that-again"s?
You can find links to the individual hair styles here.
Here are some links to ladies who have either tried one of the dos, or who are doing a hair experiment of their own! Check them out!
Task : Pick one single word to describe our Haiti trip. Answer : Orphans.
In one square mile around the guest house where we stayed, there are 150 orphans living. I don't know if that is typical for a square mile in Haiti, but it implies a massive orphan population.
I wish you could feel their sweaty, cushy cheeks as they lean in for kisses. I wish you could hear 30 small orphans singing a Kreyol welcome song, shouting Good Morning in broken English, and rushing to you in a wave for no other reason then to hold your hand, receive a hug, to play. I wish you could see them beaming and laughing in the 105 degree heat, in a concrete room, in unwashed clothing.
Oh they are so precious. Little souls with no family to protect them or hug them. Many of them struggled to survive alone in the street before being found by a willing Momi(House Mother) or Pastor.
We had the privilege of meeting 30 orphans in Gonaives, Haiti between the ages of 4 and 12. They are scraping by. They maybe eat one meal a day, sleep on the roof of a concrete house with no railing, and can't go to school, but they still take their shoes off before going inside. They still sling their arms around each other while listening to a Bible story. They still wait in line for food and listen to their Papi.
I'm writing a newsletter report of our trip that will tell the whole story of the discovery of these struggling orphans among other parts of our trip. If you want to receive it, shoot me an email at makinghomehomemade@gmail.com.
We're going to try to do something for them. It is so so so tangible and attainable. Stay tuned for more. Of course, no pressure at all, but if you think you might want to help, please let me know...it's going to be all kinds of fun and meaningful!
All right people. Voting begins for the most delightful brownie recipe. We will be making whichever recipe gets the most votes at an upcoming social event...so choose wisely!
Vote to the right. The letters coordinate with the following photos :
WE ARE BACK. And now we can tell you the most fundamental reason we took last week off.
We went back to Haiti! Beautiful, lovely, distraught Haiti. I'm once again in an internal battle on our return...what can I possibly leave out?! how can I begin to describe it? how do I write it all?
Before I get too overwhelmed, I'm just going to start. This post is about the beauty of Haiti. There will be others following that have more about our activities!
Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere. The streets reek with trash fires and smog; the stores are ten foot portable shacks; the national highway is pocketed with car-sized potholes. The rivers look like giant cappuccino spills in which people bathe, defecate, and wash clothes. Children lug jugs of water from the village well to their homes made of broken cement and relief-effort tarps. Even the well-off in Haiti don't have air conditioning or washing machines. Oh and it's 100 degrees every day.
And yet it is so beautiful!
Look at these children!
The clear water beaches are just one beautiful part of the Haitian terrain. There are rice patties and mountains and rivers...all lined with mango and avacado trees.
The favorite Haitian meal is chicken with beans-and-rice, all doused with some sort of tomato sauce. These are the remains of one of my meals, supplemented by a huge, fresh avocado bought at the street market by our friend and guide Papitass. If you've been reading long, you know how I feel about avocados, and this one was everything good and more.
A typical Haitian market is crowded booths with shades strung up too low for most Americans to walk under. Meat is slaughtered there every morning; fish are brought in from the ocean side, and hundreds of vendors sit in the heat, awaiting a sale. Maybe I was the only one to find beauty in this, but it was so saturated with culture!
And Haitians love to dance! A ton of my time was spent with these two ladies trying to teach us to move like Haitians. We learned the song above from them too.
So. Haiti = Lovely. For so many reasons. There's a lot more to come...consider this a preview.
;)
You can check out my favorite photos from last year here.
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