Stretching my Culinary Skills

I had my first experience with gutting and de-boneing fish last week. Reed's language helper brought us a bag of fish for us to try. The fish is native to our city and is the only fish that lives in the lake here.

I was quite scared to clean these things and a bit grossed out. We used to by salmon from Fareway all the time, but that came nicely packaged without the head, tail, fins, and insides still there. The next day my language helper gave me a quick tutorial on how to clean out a fish.

Here I am with quite a mess on my hands.

My technique wasn't as great as my language tutor's, but I managed to get it cleaned and bones removed.

I fried the fish and we did enjoy it. I'm not sure that I'll be making much effort on my own to do it again. It takes a lot of time to clean the fish and it really leaves quite the smell in the house, but it was more about the experience, I guess!

Asher's New Wheels

It has been awhile since I've updated our blog. Today Asher got a new set of wheels. We don't have much for Asher to do around our apartment so we thought maybe having a tricycle to ride around on in our parking lot would be fun for him. He was so excited today. He still hasn't quite gotten the hang of pedaling, but I think it will come.



We enjoyed watching Asher ride around. Reed pretty much had to push from behind the whole time, but Asher is catching on.


Asher wasn't ready to be done when we went inside. We told him he couldn't ride it in the house, so he has been sitting on it in the entryway most of the evening.


And here is Urban. He is a determined little guy. He is pulling himself up on his own and getting into everything these days. He wants to keep up with his older brother!

Urban

9 months old

Easter Fun

We've had a fun week doing Easter activities. Asher and I made an Easter mountain out of playdough and baked it. Asher helped paint it. He has loved looking at it this week and it has been a great visual for explaining Jesus on the cross, being buried in a tomb, and his resurrection. I printed off a little paper Jesus to put in the tomb.


Here is our tomb. It is currently sealed and tomorrow Asher will get to open it and see that the tomb is empty! Jesus is Risen!

We dyed Easter eggs today.

And decorated lots of cookies!

It has been a fun week and we look forward to celebrating Jesus tomorrow! The tomb is empty! We have great hope!

Opening Day

It might be safe to say that we are one of the few, if only, on this side of the globe that are excited for Twins baseball to start today. The Wessman boys are ready today, sporting their paraphenelia. I think the biggest Wessman boy (aka Reed) is the most excited. The game is too late for us to watch, but I'm sure highlights will be watched via the internet tomorrow morning.

Go Twins!

ER Visits and Ice Cream

So far today has been eventful. I am really hoping for a boring afternoon! :) This morning Asher's curiosity got the best of him and unaware to us he was able to open a bottle of children's motrin and drink it. I'm not sure how he got the "childproof" cap off. I'm guessing I must have not put it on right the last time I used it. He came and said to me, " I drink medicine, Mommy". He was right. In the bathroom was the empty bottle. We weren't sure how much was in there to begin with. I was thinking maybe half or less, but I didn't know. So off we went to the ER to make sure he was going to be ok. The doctor pumped everything out of his tummy by way of a tube that they inserted in his nose and down his throat. The procedure was scary for him, but he did really well. It was a hard lesson learned and a reminder to me that maybe I needed to do a better job of talking to Asher about the dangers of medicine and move them to a higher shelf in our cabinet. Today also marks 11 years since Reed and I's first date. 11 years ago we went out for ice cream at Dairy Queen. Well, no Dairy Queen here, but we decided ice cream was in order. I think we all needed a little ice cream after our morning.

Asher is currently cashed out in his bed and taking a much needed nap. We praise God that everything turned out ok and we are seeing God's provision in it all. Who knows how much medicine he actually took, but we are so thankful that he was able to tell us what he did, we happened to have our friends vehicle at our place to quickly go and Urban was on his best behavior (wooing all the doctors and nurses) for several hours.

I think I will go lay down for awhile as well. :)

A Sweet Family

We took my parents over to meet my language tutor and her family one evening. They are such a sweet family. My language tutor is on the far right. I've gotten to know her other sisters (holding Asher and Urban) as well. They absolutely adore Asher and Urban! It was fun to have my parents meet our friends.

Mt. Ararat

We took a day trip with my parents to see the country side and Mt. Ararat. It took about 2 1/2 hours to get there. It was a beautiful day and very clear to see the peak of the mountain.


A small village with a view of Mt. Ararat in the background. These small little villages are a common site along the way.


My parents in front of Mt. Ararat:

We stopped for lunch and this man spotted the foreigners right away. He was a very sweet man and quite the character. He had a tourism business and claimed that he had a piece of wood from the ark that was about 6000 years old, if we wanted to come with him to see it. :) We didn't take the time to find out, but enjoyed talking with him.

Urban was a trooper on this trip. This is probably the 3rd time in his life that he has been in his car seat for a road trip. We don't have our own car, so this is not a familiar way to travel for him. He did really well up until the last 20 minutes of the trip and then he made it clear he had had enough!

It was a fun to get out of the city for the day.

Two of My Favorites

These are two of my favorite pictures. Urban's smile says it all! He is truly loved by his grandparents.

A New Park

So it has been about a month since my last post. This country that I live in has blocked blogspot for an uncertain amount of time so I haven't been able to update my blog or see other blogs that use blogspot. But my techie husband found a way to work around this so our computer thinks it is in America. :)

Anyways, my parents came for a visit last week. It was a lot of fun and we really miss them. We had a fun time visiting a new park in our city. This is a big deal for us. Most parks here have pretty old school equipment. This park is pretty fancy for here. It has many plastic slides and a rubbery ground surface. It is pretty tall and has many tall ladders that aren't suited for Asher at this point, but there were a few smaller slides that Asher went down by himself. The bigger ones Reed went down with him.



Asher loved it, even though we went on a very cold day!



A family photo with a random stranger who wanted to hold our children and be in the picture (slightly strange, yet common here!).


We are excited to go back on a warmer day to this park and try out some more slides. More pictures to come of our time with my parents.