Month: March 2021

Don’t mind me. I’m just over here living my fake prairie girl life while the world decides how we’re going to handle covid as we enter year 2 of this disaster. Wake me up when I don’t have to wear a mask anymore.

I’ve always thought gaming was antisocial, staring at a screen when in the same room with other people, but I am seeing the light. When I’m driving a group of 3 boys (breaking the law btw, because we are only allowed to have people from the same family in the car OR no more than 2 passengers) and they all have their heads buried in their phones, it seems like such a waste. But when you’re in a game with other people, I can see how it’s a social activity within the game, even as it looks completely useless to someone on the outside.

I ran into Josh while he was waiting for a carpool pickup and I was home with Camille. I’m in the green hat and he’s sitting across the campfire from me. I texted him to say, “I spy you in the game!”

So we’ve been that family recently — out to dinner, huddled around our phones, probably causing people to lament about the demise of the family in this technology driven age. But what they can’t see is that we’re collaborating on our town. Yes, we all made it down the trail to the frontier settlement, bought plots of land and then moved our settlements into one town. So while it looked to an outsider like we were in our own worlds, we were in one world together: “Mom, do you have 5 hemp fibers? I need to upgrade my house.” or “Go to my shelves and take the bags I made and put them in the warehouse and I’ll take them at the same time so we get double credit.” or “You have to go through all 10 levels of training your dog to fetch before they start picking up trail items for you.”

Josh and I live next door to each other, but I’m the mayor because my house is the biggest. (That would be because I had the most time to play and upgrade my house while we were on remote school and he was busy working.)

Now that we’re back in school in person, I have much less time to work on my frontier house, but yay for being able to have kids back at school! The only thing I don’t like about being back is having to wake up at 7 every morning instead of sleeping until 8:10, waking Camille up, and having her roll into class online at 8:15 in her pjs with a school sweatshirt thrown on over the top. Right now Camille goes every day, but Caleb goes 2-3 days per week because we don’t have enough space on campus to have all grade on campus with students spaced out to the distance required by the district.

We have one more week until Spring break and I’m thankful that school has remained open for 6 weeks in a row. We don’t have any travel plans (not even within UAE) as Josh is saving his vacation days for our trip to the US in June! Yes, we are coming to America — June 16th. God bless Texas and freedom and liberty and a whole bunch of other things that I’m missing these days. While we’re traveling in the US I’ll be on the hunt for my future real little house on the prairie . . . someday.

Dear Lord, I pray for breakthrough with the coronavirus — whether it’s through a vaccine, holistic medicine, a miracle, whatever form eradication may take, please send it our way. I thank your for your faithfulness throughout this past year. For all those who have had covid and recovered. For all those people working to bring an end to this sickness, both through service and research. I thank you that our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made and more complex than we can even imagine. I pray that you would protect us physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and socially, from all the effects of coronavirus on our world.

I pray for the economy here in Abu Dhabi, that it would recover and rebound. That the leadership would take steps to make tourism possible once again. That jobs that have been lost would be regained and that those who have been on reduced pay would be made whole again. I pray for peace for those who are living with the uncertainty of whether their visas will be renewed or if they will lose their jobs. For those who are trying to support a family back in their home country and don’t see a future without this source of income. I pray that you would be their encourager and provider and that you will open and close doors to bring them closer to you and meet their spiritual needs along with their physical needs.

I pray for Expo 2020 this fall, that it would be able to go ahead as was originally planned. I pray that as the government opens the borders for other nations to come and visit and as they are in the global spotlight, that human rights initiatives and religious tolerance that has been started would continue and flourish. I pray that the churches that are all waiting for approval to be recognized by the government would have their applications fly through the process, that all the needed stamps would be issued, and that there would not be limits put on where and when they can meet. Please open all avenues for ministry to these congregations and I pray that they would bring the Good News to this country in an uninhibited way.

I pray for breakthrough in personal relationships. That we would be free to interact with each other outside of our immediate family unit. That gathering in each other’s homes would once again be allowed and that mandated isolation would end. I thank you that we have been able to be with others at work and at school, but I pray that we’d be able to open our homes once again. I pray that those who are looking for personal connection will be drawn to our family and that we’d be able to introduce them to your family. I thank you for the ministry opportunities that we have been able to have over this past year and I pray that you continue to open our eyes to those in need. Please show us how we can be your hands and feet in spiritual and physical ways.

Help us to not grow weary in doing good and help us continue on so that we may reap a harvest at the right time (Galatians 6:9)

After reading my post about my newfound proficiency with a slingshot, one of my sisters said she had been wondering why I hadn’t been blogging. It’s nice to know that when I don’t show up here, there are one or two people who miss it.

I told her that one of the reasons I haven’t been writing is because the most interesting/exciting/ridiculous thing to happen to us lately is it’s cat mating season so our sleep has been an interrupted mess as the cat yowling sets off the dogs, wakes us up, we yell at the dogs, try to fall back asleep, and repeat. All. Night. Long.

I’m positive I’ve written about this before . . . probably each year around this time, but there are at least 20 stray cats on our street. At any time of day I can walk outside and spot at least 6 lying on top of cars, under cars and in driveways. Well, this time of year they “fight” all night, filling the air with yowls and shrieks. The dogs hear the cats, jump up and run back and forth in our bedroom panting, wanting to get outside to chase them. The other night it was so ridiculous that Josh went outside at 2am and aimed the garden hose in the direction of the noise and broke up the cat “fight.” At least that seemed to shut them down for the rest of the night.

So far the only solution that has been mildly successful is playing cat meowing and hissing noises throughout the day to try and desensitize the dogs to cat noises. Thanks YouTube for providing a video library of cat fights to choose from. Of course that means I have to listen to cat yowling and fighting in the daytime, but desperate times. If it means we can sleep at night it will be worth it.