May 15, 2010

• Saturday morning shines brightly through the side french door window onto my desk where i’m having a few minutes of “quiet time” while Judah plays with Asher and Josh has gone on a flight. I’ve managed to make two cakes (spice and chocolate), all that remains is the icing. I’ve also made two batches of ice cream (vanilla bean and rich chocolate), which taste heavenly, but i’m quite certain they wont stretch very far with the group we have coming this afternoon for Josh’s birthday (which was yesterday). Ah well. It’s the cake the matters anyway, isnt it?

  Josh made a fire in the fireplace (he still loves playing with his slow burning insert) this morning because our living room was a chilly 11C. Brr.

  Yesterday on Josh’s birthday Judah was at school for the morning, so Josh enjoyed his day off with reading and relaxing. They also spent holiday Thursday scrubbing the deck and cleaning up the old firewood we’ve had sitting by the side of the house for 2 years (we missed last winter because we were in Kenya), which have since disintegrated somewhat due to the harsh sun and torrential rains. After 3.5 years of nagging Josh now buys wood in summer and stores it in the garage so it’s mostly dried out in time for winter, instead of buying wet wood at the end of autumn, which causes no end of frustration when we want to burn it. Anyway, back to Josh’s birthday: we went out for lunch at one of the newer restaurants that has popped up on our end of town due to the flash new American Embassy that’s just across the street from our church’s property. I’m not sure how to explain the restaurants here in Madagascar (for the most part) except to say that they’re french and dont have much in the way of imagination or creativity. But this Combava has a lovely atmosphere with a beautiful garden and the mousse au chocolate is to die for! not to mention the chocolate fondant (which is like a warm moist pudding-y cake, not the fondant they use on Cake Boss!) I asked for a tour of the hotel rooms, just because that kind of thing amuses me and besides, we DO get guests from MAF that at times need to stay in a hotel and it has been my job in the past to reserve a room for them. So i reckon it’s part of my job to check out the rooms for future reference. Pretty nice, relative to Madagascar that is, although the price is outrageous in comparison. Anyway, we had a lovely lunch there sans enfants (our house help came early to garde Asher while we were out).

  There has been another new cafe open up just down the road from where we live. We walked down there the other day to check it out (since we’ve been waiting for years for a nice cafe around our end of town with a) nice ambiance, b) good food, c) good coffee.) The owner told us that should we have suggestions of what she could add to her menu we should just tell her. This is a huge mark in her favour since, if she caters to what her patrons want (namely the n.americans who live around here) she’ll have no shortage of business from us. I reckon our first suggestion will be to change the brand of coffee she uses and perhaps that she should go visit the Cookie Shop across town to get an idea of what we would LOVE to have over here! Yep. It’s all about investing in our community on this side of town. Perhaps after a while we’ll have fewer reasons to make the trek over there for a good meal and a great cuppa. 

   
  Asher is eating voraciously all manner of solids. One of my top to-do items is to start making some baby food recipes so he can move up from cereal and apple sauce.

  
  Judah is working not only on his french and pre-math at preschool, but also doing math workbooks at home. So far he’s done a fair bit of addition and is just starting to learn about subtraction. This, above, is Judah doing his homework while Asher has his evening meal.

  Judah’s nose problem, whose name i can never remember, is finally clearing up thanks to some antibiotic cream from Dr. Aaron. Josh has been so good at remembering to apply the nose cream three times a day and the psoriasis cream to Judah’s foot twice a day. bah. what a drag that is! I hope his skin problems get better with age rather than worse!

  

  
  I have finally, a month past due, completed the lamba quilt i made for a friend. This is the finished product. I’m going to take a rest from quilting for a few weeks before i try that again. For those who are interested in the details: i did the outer pattern a la main, and the inside rectangle with machine. I just did wavy lines that followed roughly the contours of the bridge across the whole picture area, with the exception of the trees (Madagascar travelers palms) which i machine sewed the outlines. The trees looked really cool on the reverse side.

  

  I’ve far surpassed my grace period for quiet time with two boys begging for attention, so that’s as far as i can write today.

  • 2:44 am
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