Mommy

Wow, can you believe my blogging awesome husband!!!!
I thought I better get some of my thoughts OUT before to many days go by and I lose the thoughts I have!
I will break it up in a few posts, I think! (I went down stairs this a.m. to start our wash, went over to talk to Jim and Laurel for a few mins....the girls..Victoria, Rachel and Sarah were washing the clothes....OKAY so now I have a few mins to blog before we all head off to the craft market!)
NORTH!
How do you gear up for a 15 hour bus ride with two kids?
OUR KIDS DID AMAZING! Dave did a great blog about this, but I thought I would add a few "Carrie-ism's" for all my friends and family at home to let you all LAUGH at the sheer AMOUNT of STRETCHING I did.

4 back packs, stuffed with gifts, food and TOILET paper, two kids all in "air plane" type seats...no leg room etc. Every time we needed something out of the bag it was a shuffle of GREAT measure. You all know how I am an organizer....after a few hours, I started to go into "whatever mode." It did not matter that thinigs were ALL undone, just happy if we could shove things into the bags.. The kids never complained. The most asked question was, "Water, mum, water"
How do you keep giving kids water (which they needed ) when you do not know when or if the driver is going to stop....hummm!

BUS
We asked ALOT of questions as to how to travel to Bolga...Air conditioned bus, or Non-AC, a bus that has random stops or scheduled stops, a newer bus or an older one.
(we had 3 choices of company's, one being government)
On the way up...AC bus at Night with hopes the kids would SLEEP!
Sleep....well, the AC was soooooo loud and freezing it was hard to rest.
Rest was not an option mostly because the bus had a small TV in the front (close to where our seats were) and all along the bus ceiling were speakers.
The conductor put in "VHS" tapes ALL night, with the sound BLARRING...bad sound, static etc.
I maybe could of taken the sound, but the CONTENT was HORRID!
The first few were soap opera type...with affairs, prostitution...YEAH, not even kidding. This was bad, but it got worse. The next few were all about a village and the people in the village..relationships and daily life. It started out with a 10 min witchcraft ritual of cursing certain people in the village....complete with chanting and sacrifices and wailing...HORRID! Then it finished with the scenes of the people they just cursed walking down the road and being attacked by the curse....BLOOD spurting out of their mouths, stomaches coming out ...can not even tell you!
We turned on the DVD player Phil and Amanda let us borrow and shoved the kids cose to the window so they could not see. (Phil and Amanda...I bet you did not know that your DVD player was going to protect our kids spiritual hearts huh! How do we thank you?)

Our Escort Bernard (amazing Christian man) and Dave and i closed our eyes and sang worship songs OUT LOUD and got MAD at the Enemy!!!
So the bus on the wy home...you got it...Non-Ac government bus! yeah, windows DOWN, NO videos and a much better trip!

RESTROOM
I know some of you are wondering how this all works here...there is to much to say, and alot you do not want to read about...but for the sake of getting to LAUGH at me..I will add a few things.
On our trip back...we stopped late at night in a town to go to the bathroom. It had been about 6 hours and we had NOT stopped! OKAY time to go!
I was told to wear a skirt because you never know when you are going to get a chance to go, and when you get the chance...squat and take it!
Everyone got up on the bus to depart, it was a bit CRAZY and noisy. I said to Bernard "Please, Victoria has to use the restroom and me too"
We weaved through vendor after vendor shouting "bread...Eggs, plantians" Bernard walked us through an alley packed with people, into a building...and pulled out chairs for us to sit down.
I looked around, confused and said "do we need to buy something to use the restroom"
Bernard looked blankly at me....I realized he had taked us to a "resteraunt"...Oh my good gravy...I looked at him and said "SORRY...Toilet!" Victoria at this time is DANCING and starting to cry.."it is coming, it is coming!"
We walked around again in the dirt and vendors and came to a cement building with no roof. (the walls were about 6 feet high, with a womens side and mans side. There was a table outside with a man collecting money...you pay to go.
I braced my self, took Victoria in and held my breath...(gagging) telling myself "You are FINIE..go and get out!'
The floor was cement, about 6 feet by 6 feet with a small ditch along the back wall.
Victoria walked right in, squatted and did her thing.
I had my shoulder bag around my neck, tiolet paper in my hand, had to balance with out falling over all while holding EVERYTHING. I had visions ov plopping over backwards onto the ground. Ohhhhh, what I failed to mention...the floor was 1/4 inch of wet liquid.....you know what I mean.
Just when I thought I was going to make it with out losing my sanity...a lady came in and squatted...PROBLEM...she was on the floor about 2 feet above me...so as she did her thing...it all ran towards the drain past my sandals! (anyone laughing yet?)
I went out side to the table and saw that they had small buckets of water (which were to used for other things) and I did not even ask...I just filled one and went back to the entrance and DUMPED it over my feet!
OKAY-YA!
We walked back to the bus in the dirt (wet feet) bought GREAT bananas, settled in and drove off!
I almost used a whole BOTTLE of our hand sanitizer on all of us!
Can any one say stretch?
So....this post is to long. So I will try another one later. I will let you all go now and ponder the gross story I just put out there for you!
*no spell check...and no time to proof read...so just laugh at this "homeschool mom" and enjoy!