Some Italian taught her about style.
At the coast with cousins
My brother and family visited from Portland. We made a day of it at the Oregon coast.


Peach butter
Leaving Basel
Slides and fun
Nigerian truck stop
Butte’ing in Nigeria
Snake in the bathroom
This evening Blessing said there was a snake in the bathroom. It was certainly a snake. I’m not sure exactly whay kind of snake it was. What is more interesting is that no one seemed to be able to identify it by species either.
It makes me wonder what or who holds the species knowledge in these communities.
Learning to carry water
Katja has been learning to Cary water. She has ample opportunity as we don’t have running water in our house and we have ample examples on how to do it.
Swimming
The story goes, I was two years old and my dad put me in a life jacket and tossed into the middle of the pool and told me to swim to the edge. They say that my mother stood to the side panicked, but my dad was full of confidence that I was up to the task. To this day I still get up early in the morning to go swimming when I can. There’s something exhausting and refreshing about being in the pool. Today, I bought Katja a life jacket and took her to the pool for the first time in Eugene. We’ve been to a pool once before and shop housing when she was about 18 months old. Now that she is 21 months old, she loves going down the waterslide, she kicks her legs when I hold her trying to teach her how to swim, and she loves jumping off the edge into the water!