Brrrrrrr!

Is it cold inside or are we shivering?!
We've had our first taste of winter here. This is the temperature
INSIDE of our flat! We wear scarves, gloves, jackets, whatever
we can around the house and to sleep at night. When waking up
this morning and even still now at 10:45 a.m., we can see our breath in here.
Hey, at least it's warmed up to 52 degrees!

This is the view from our window. If you can, look to see
a set of mountains that are dark in the front, then behind it is another
bigger set covered with snow! We see these mountains on clear days,
but not with snow until now.

The reason it is so cold inside is because there is no central A/C
or heating. Tim just bought this space heater. It can produce heat from gas
or electric - it's our make believe fireplace.

Well, now Kadence is sick. Kya at least understood when we
could only give her a spoonful of water at a time (because she
would throw it right up), but she would ask for it constantly.
Kadence constantly is fussing now for more water all of the time,
but she also throws it up a lot. Poor baby can't understand.

Yesterday our windows were all fogging up.
They did because it was still kinda warm inside. They don't anymore!

Tim's parents sent us a goody package. Woohoo!!! Like Christmas
before Christmas. A couple things we got were some
graham crackers and marshmallows (we don't have them here in
Albania) to make s'mores. We just melt the marshmallows
over our gas stove. Mmmmm.

Faithful blog checkers, sorry it has been a while since our last update.
We've had a really slow connection when we've had internet
and then Kya's been very sick. This is her getting checked
by a doctor on our team at our house. She has been
throwing up everything - even a spoonful of water
- for the past almost 48 hours. : (

To make it up to you, we've put a few videos on.
This is before she got sick. She likes to jump around the house
counting in Albanian "Nje, dy, tre, kater, pese, gjashte, shtate,
tete, nente, dhjete". Kadence is starting to try to count now,
but it actually sounds more like Albanian!
We think it's because Kya is always doing this.

Here's a team picnic. So so nice to get out of the city
and sit in grass under trees. This is maybe a 5 minute
drive from our place.

Some livestock came to join us. Too bad you can't hear
the donkey hee-hawing across the lake.

The sun is rising over the mountain just east of our flat.

This is a verb chart. This is how many ways we have to learn one single
verb! And guess what... we just found out today that we have to add
another column we haven't learned yet. Please, pray for us!
Sometimes it is difficult and tiring trying to study and fit so much
in our heads when our study times are very limited with the girls.

I miss green grass and playgrounds.

We thought this was interesting. It's a real, dead wolf hanging on a
building! We asked someone why it was there and they said probably
to show off that they killed a wolf. Hmmm....

We had a birthday party for our Australian missionary friend, Jess.
There obviously isn't a Party City here, so we had to get creative
with the decorations.

Uhoh. We ran out of water during the party. We found out
all of Lushnje ran out and didn't receive water that morning.
It sure was fun washing all those dishes without running water. : )
We didn't have water the next night either, then we went a couple
days without water. Man, are we grateful for running water!!
I would definitely say the worst effect from this is
the inability to flush the toilet.

Skype time with Micah and the Tumas fam. It's unbelievable -
this technology these days. We still feel far away
from our family and friends in the States, but it so
amazing to see their faces once in a while.