Africa Trip Post #2...Life With The Whitfields

One of the best parts of this trip was just being able to do life for 10 day with my best friend! Elise and I met when I was her nurse when she delivered her 2nd baby, Emma. And it just happened to be on my birthday! At that time she was attending a different church, but shortly thereafter started coming to the church I where her hubby's family attended, which is my church home. They were invited to come to a small group Bible study we were apart of and we became fast friends. Over the years we became inseparable. You can imagine what emotions I went through when she first told me they were praying about being missionaries in Africa! I kept telling her the Lord was telling me that she wasn't supposed to go! Totally untrue and selfish, but I was desperate! I'll never forget the night before she left. I had taken her kids to my house so they could get some last minute packing done without three kids underfoot. I brought them back at bedtime and Elise walked me out to my car and we hugged and bawled. I drove home and walked in the house and collapsed into a weeping pile on the couch. Brian said, "Kori, she didn't die!" While he was right, she was alive and well, I was really was grieving her leaving, and it was several days before I wasn't having multiple breakdowns a day! Well over the 4 years she has been gone I slowly weaned myself off my Elise dependency which allowed me to open myself up to many other wonderful women that were right in front of me, and I have been SO thankful for the friendships that bless me on a regular basis. When Elise was in the states, we did life together. That has been one of the hardest things in her absence, is not knowing what life looks like for her on a daily basis. That's why getting to live with Luke and Elise and the kids in their home, and do life with them for 10 days was such a huge treat! I'll share more about the day to day soon, but I wanted to post this video of just a snippet of our 10 days with them. Here's just a couple things you'll need to know before you watch the video...

1. Those of you who dont know the Whitfields... They are Luke and Elise, Macie (10), Emma (8), Payton (6), ChiChi (5~adopted since they have been there) and Marley Ann Taziona (3) who goes by Tazi, but we called her Emily because she reminded us SO much of our Emily. By the end of the trip, if you called her Tazi, she would look at you and say "I'm not Tazi, I'm Emily!"

2. Gifts from the USA. Brian and I were allowed 3 checked bags each. We brought 1 suitcase for the two of us and 3 additional suitcases and a 45 pound box full of gifts from family and friends. The first words out of Tazi's mouth were "did you bring candy??" The kids were so patient! They just kept eying the suitcases on the side of the living room. Finally one of them blurted out "Can we please open the presents now????!!!!!" It was so fun to watch their excitement!!

3. Our authentic meal. Vincavulla (caterpillars), Nshima (a cream of wheat type dish, and a staple food), ifisashi (pumpkin leaf with ground nuts), Rape (kinda like swiss chard), and chicken. You take some of the nshima in your hand and squish it around a bit then you use it to scoop up the chicken or greens. Here's my take on the meal. The Nshima had basically no flavor but with the chicken in ifisashi was good. The caterpillars were NASTY and the rape was bitter. We also had another staple food called a chapate (cha-potty) which is essentially a tortilla and was DELICIOUS!

Africa Trip Post #1.....LONDON

Brian and I went back and forth about what to do with our 8 hour layover in London on the way to Zambia. I was kinda set on staying at the airport not wanting to get lost or return to the airport late and miss our flight. But at the same time, how do you sit in an airport for 8 hours when you are minutes from and AMAZING city that you have never visited before???? We decided we would do a tour and were thrilled when Brian's boss hooked us up with a guy who had given them a tour a few years previous. Eddie, picked us up right at the airport and took us on a 5 hour tour of London and had us back to the airport with even a few minutes to spare. It was a whirlwind of a history lesson (not much of which was absorbed, since we had very little sleep on the overnight flight from Chicago) and we saw WAY more that we would have on any "touristy" type of tour. Eddie was a wonderful guide and we were really thankful for the opportunity to spend a bit of time with and see his beautiful home city! Here is a video of just some of the sights we saw...

Thanks for voting, but I went on my own! =)

Thank you all so much for your input and help with my fabric choices! In the end, I went in a different direction than I was originally thinking because of one of your comments (you were anonymous so let me know who you are so I can thank you!) This was the comment:

Anonymous said...

hmm, what style of furniture do you have in the room? are there any other fabrics in the room? Ie pillow or carpet? be careful scale is important to..( how big the window is ) I agree with Miriam on the fabric selection.

Have fun.

January 21, 2011 7:10 AM

Well what jumped out at me was "be careful scale is important too...". It is a pretty large room, there is nothing on that wall but the window, and I knew I wanted to do floor to ceiling so I wondered if the smaller patterns would start to look really busy and then I kept being drawn to the lower two options of the 6. Their patterns were so much bigger that you couldn't see the full pattern in the small swatch. So once I was confident that I wanted to try something a bit bolder, I ordered a half yard of each of the larger patterns. Then we took a family vote and it was unanimous!

View from the kitchen

View from the living room...yeah, I coulda cleared the table and pushed in the chairs, but this is more how I roll....it's life baby!

I LOVE them!! It totally changes the feel of the room! AND I painted all the baseboard and window trim white as well! It looks so clean and updated (even with uncleared table!)! Come visit me and we'll sit and chat in my new fancified dining room!!

Glorious Sunshine

One of the very first things Andrew does when he comes down stairs in the morning is check the weather on my cell phone. This morning he was certain that something was wrong because at 7am it said the temperature was 38 degrees! When I told him it was correct, you would have thought it was the first day of summer the remainder of the day! They didn't want to bring boots and snow pants to school, they didn't fuss at all that they had to walk home from school, they came busting in the door asking if they could play outside, and immediately dropped all their belongings and half on half off winter coats in a heap on the kitchen floor when they got approval. While Nathan was napping, Emily and I had already been out, clearing parts of the driveway that have been covered with ice for weeks that were now slushy from the warmth of the sun. But we were eager to go out again, so we grabbed Nathan this time and headed out. No jackets, no hats or mittens. Only snowboots and sweatshirts. It was chilly, but we were making it clear to winter that we are done with it!! The older two even wanted me to get their bikes down from winter storage! We are SO ready for warmer weather! They pulled out a few of their chairs, the baseball tee, a bat and ball, and a basketball. Nathan went after the baseball gear like he had been waiting all winter to do so. We didn't stay out long....but boy did it feel great!

glorious sunshine.......

I thought he might burst with the excitement of being able to PLAY outside

he didn't stay in one place for more than a few seconds

so we obviously need some instruction on which end of the bat to use...but I thought that for a 19month old, it was pretty impressive that he knew the tee, bat and ball all went together!

takin a seat to rest from all the excitement!

i love how the kids drop what they are doing and go running when daddy comes home

When we had the Blizzard of 2011, Brian's brother in law Rod cleared our driveway with his plow and we had this giant pile of snow at one side of it. Brian had spent several hours one afternoon digging out a path and a "room" in the pile including a tunnel to get into the room. It was shrinking fast today and Andrew decided to start breaking it up...The girls had climbed on top and I asked them to give me their best King of the Mountain poses......

I said...come on...those are sorta whimpy! So I got this!

Andrew made a little window in the pile and everyone wanted a turn peeking thru

It was a good day! I'm going to refer back to this post when I feel like complaining because it's rainy or muddy or too warm. There are parts of every season I love....but winter is for sure my least favorite! My babies were born to play outside, they are at their best when they can...I'm thankful they got to be at their best today!

An exciting opportunity!

I am excited to be a part of Blogging for Books with WaterBrook Multnomah Publishers! They send me a book and in exchange I write a review! So be watching for my first book review to be coming soon!

Need your opinion....

Thanks so much for all your sweet comments here and on facebook about our room! We also painted our dining room between Christmas and New Years and it totally changed the look and feel of the room. At first we didn't like it. No, that's too nice. We couldn't stand it! It is the same color as the kitchen, which we love, but with different light and different flooring it looked NOTHING like the kitchen color. We changed the lightbulbs to "daylight" bulbs and that did help, enough that we decided to live with it for a bit and see if it grows on us. It's slowly growing on us, especially in natural light. Hanging some fabric on the windows has also helped and thus where I need your help. I'm torn on my drapery fabric, so I thought I'd put it up to a vote. I'm not guaranteeing that I will be going with the results, but hoping it will help me in my decision! ;) These are not the greatest quality photos, but I am hoping it gives you a bit of an idea. Oh, and a before and after too!

Before... Not a great before...but it's the only one I have! It was a darker brown color.

Now... (We are going to paint the trim white) This doesn't show the color very accurately, but you can see it's much lighter!

This is pretty close to what the color looks like

Okay and for the fabric choices.... They are all black and white (yeah, my white balance is way off on these!)

Here's what I started with (ignore the fabric that all the samples are attached to...it's one of my photography backdrops)

I think I've narrowed it down to these three (but feel free to chime in on one of the others)

OPTION ONE ~ lets call this swirls

OPTION TWO ~ damask

OPTION THREE ~ lattice

I'd love your opinion! Either leave a comment here or on facebook! Thanks!!

Bedroom Makeover

When Brian and I got married our VERY FAVORITE gift was an amazing log bed made by Brian's high school friend, Kirk. He is an extremely talented craftsman (you can see his work here (he specializes in custom pool tables now). I had always loved "lodge" or woodsy decor, and so a log bed had been a dream of mine! Over the years my tastes have changed a bit, but in our room I felt kinda trapped with the woodsy feel because of the bed. While I wanted to be done with the decor, there was NO WAY I was even considering being done with the bed. When we redid Andrew's room (you can see that here) we had to add some walls in our room and so it has needed to be painted for a year, but I was really torn on what to do. Well we finally bit the bullet, and I got Brian to agree to some major changes, so 2 weeks ago we packed up our room because that bed, well it's HUGE, and our room is small and there was no way to work with the bed together. We moved our mattress in with the girls and our dressers and night tables to the hallway and got to work! I think it was the fastest we have ever completed a project! I am SOOOO please with the results!! There is still work to do...I need to make drapes, and get some photos up, but I couldn't wait to share!

Here's the before's

And now =)

This makes me happy!

For the drapes I am going to do white floor to ceiling flowy fabric on a black rod with pretty finials, and for photos....well I have a gazillion ideas running around in my head...I'll be sure and take another photo when it's really done! And the opening to the left of the bed is a closet...doors being painted white right now!

Making Memories

We've had a long week! We were all discombobulated because Brian and I moved out of our room and in with Emily and Kelli because we had some work to do to our room (before and after photos to come soon!). So we've been up late, not sleeping well and then I unexpectedly became the speaker for our moms group this week because the scheduled speaker had an emergency appendectomy, the kids didn't have school Friday, which was also Andrew's birthday, we promised him we would watch The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe with them (2hr and 15 min long and we started at 815), today was Andrew's first basketball game, Grandparents came for the game and then over for brunch and cake, then Brian left for the evening to go to the Bulls game and I am on the worship team at church tomorrow and teach Sunday School. Yikes! I have to admit, all day, I have been looking forward to 730. I could put the kids to bed, and relax, in the quiet, all by myself. I ordered a pizza for me and the kids tonight. We got really silly at dinner, we were laughing SO hard! I had the blinds open in the dining room and I thought to myself, I would love it if this is what our family looked like all the time if someone happened to be looking in our windows. It's also what I want my kids to remember our home being like. Full of fun and laughter. Full of love and security. I enjoyed that moment, and was happy to participate in the silliness. Andrew and Kelli asked if they could watch a movie after the little ones were in bed. I said they could, but that all the kids needed to get their baths and showers done in a timely manner. I told them I would give the babes a bath and then they could take quick showers. I knew the question was coming, so in light of my dinnertime revelation, I decided to beat them to the punch....."Unless you all want to get in the tub together?", which was met with squeals of delight! I told them the only condition was that I wanted ONE good picture of the four of them in the tub. And I'd say they were very cooperative.....

I was satisfied with my one good picture, so I told them to have fun, but to please not get too crazy, and to try and keep as much of the water IN the tub as possible! And then I just watched, and smiled, and captured it all, for them and for me.....

I love bedtime...love the quietness, love the snuggling, love ending their day with prayers, hugs and kisses (Kelli helped me capture a few of these)....