Don't Leave the Door Open!

"Were you raised in a barn?" I can remember Mom asking that whenever I would leave the door open. Ironically we did have a barn, and I spent a great deal of time out in the barn. I probably could have answered rather honestly "Yes" but it wasn't really worth pissing off my mom just for the pleasure of being a smart aleck.

Mom was worried about the flies coming inside. It took my cow wandering into the living room and leaving a cow patty on the rug before I learned to make sure the the door was securely closed. It isn't easy to get cow flop out of the rug. In fact we got rid of the carpet very soon after the cow incident, the smell lingered inspire of my best efforts to clean the mess.

When I fuss at my kids to close the door I'm not worried about flies or even passing livestock. I am more worried about malaria carrying mosquitos, deadly snakes (think mambas and cobras) , and horrifyingly large spiders. Yet in sprite of those very real threats the door is left propped wide open, more often than not, so that any passing critter can just come right in and make itself at home.

Today the dreaded home invasion finally occurred. The boys were off to school, Dave was off to work, and I thought I was alone in the house. As I walked down the hall past the bedrooms I was startled by a sudden noise and a flash of movement. After the intial moment of panic I realized that what I was seeing couldn't possibly be a mamba. I decided to investigate instead of running screaming out the door. What I found was a bird caught inside of Grayson's bedroom. The poor thing was frantically beating at the glass trying to find a way out into the garden.

At first I had no idea what was in Grayson's room.

When it stopped throwing it's self against the window I was able to tell a Heuglin's Robin had made it's way into the house and couldn't figure out how to get back out.

I was able to catch it without hurting it, although I could feel it's heart beating very very fast. The poor thing was terrified.

Once I had it out in the garden it stared at me intently as if to say, "Turn me loose already!"

When I opened my hand it flew away with even looking back. Hopefully it has learned that human houses are no place for birds.

Labor Day

We in the Cyberbones clan celebrated Labor Day by reinstating evening chores for all three cyberkids. Chores = Labor and it is Labor Day after all. I think it was a perfectly appropriate way to celebrate. The kids are less than pleased with this arrangement. Chores had slowly slipped by the wayside when we had a maid, but now that Mom is the primary maid and housekeeper again the kids are back on KP duty in the kitchen every night. They say I am mean and cruel. I think they will survive and hopefully learn a little something from it.

Oh Happy Day!

Yesterday was a great day. No, I didn't win the lottery or find a diamond in the backyard. Our second consumables shipment arrived. YAY! Pace picante, mac and cheese, shampoo, toilet paper, canned tunafish, corn chips. All the things that make life good, OK so not ALL the things, but a lot of them for sure. This is what our kitchen looked like at 2 o'clock.


A smallish mountain if boxes. I convinced Dave to take the boys and go to softball without me. By the time they retuned the boxes were gone and our formerly almost empty pantry was restocked and ready to go for the next year. It looks good.


We ordered our consumables from ELSO rather than spend our limited time in the states this summer shopping and dealing with shipping. For the most part it worked great. We didn't order many things that outdate or go stale easily, like chips or cereal. We had heard from others that they often arrived near to expiration date. I am happy to say that nothing was anywhere near to expiration date.

The only problem we had was a few things that were out of stock and so were CANCELLED from our order. Things like hairspray and children's tear free no tangle shampoo. Things that are hard/impossible to find here and if you do you will pay 10+ dollars for a itty bitty bottle. Sigh! Things that can't be shipped from Amazon because we are a pouch post and they are liquid or in the case of hairspray, flammable. HUGE SIGH! Dave is going back though his in-box to see if he missed an message asking if we wanted to make a substitution, because the first thing we heard of it was when we got an e-mail that said "Your order has been shipped here is a copy of your invoice." For the next year I will have to deal with messy hair and children crying because of "burning-eye" shampoo and tangled hair. Just dandy! At least I can drown my sorrows in bottle of picante sauce.

Tied in Knots

Who says whoooooo?

A few minutes ago the doorbell rang. It was Lyson one of our gardeners. He had this to give to the boys.


In case you can't tell that is a very pissed off baby owl. If you get too close he hisses, growls, and clacks his beak. He hasn't said whooo even once.

I quizzed Lyson to make sure he hadn't raided a nest. He hadn't, Mr. Crow had though. We have a mated pair of pied crows living in a tall tree in our yard. I rather like them, they are great fun to watch and handsome birds to boot. I never realized until we moved here that crows were hunters. I just thought they raided farmers crops. The roof of our house is littered with small bones from their prey. Every once in awhile they will drop something before they get a chance to eat. That's what happened to this little owlet. Somehow the crow ended up dropping him instead of eating him. Closer although very cautious inspection reveals that he probably has a broken leg and who knows what other injuries. We will take him to the wildlife center when David gets home and turn him over to the experts give him a chance of survival.

I'm Back!

We are back in Malawi, the kids are back in school and I am back blogging. The protests I mentioned in my last post lasted two days and resulted in 18 deaths. Everything has been calm since we have been back and I hope it remains that way. There were scheduled demonstrations last week, the kids school was canceled for two days and many businesses around town shut down. After all of that the demonstrations didn't happen.

It has been a rough transition back to post. We arrived to find that an entire swarm of honey bees had set up house keeping in our bedroom. Thank goodness the gardener noticed the bees coming and going from a vent in our bedroom wall. He managed to get word to the embassy and they sent someone out to spray the morning we arrived back. When we walked in to the master bedroom we found thousands of dead and dying bees and a chunk of honeycomb the size of my hand, just wax, no honey. I was so jet lagged and astounded that it didn't even occur to me to take a picture. To give you an idea of the sheer number of bees it took 3 very full dust pans to remove the bulk of the dead bees and I'm still finding dead bees in strange places. Interestingly the day we arrived at our house for the very first time there was a giant swarm of bees hanging in a tree by the driveway. You know I think Africa is trying to kill me, and and bees are it's weapon of choice.

Heavy Heart

I picked up the computer this morning to do a quick check in before heading out to the river with some friends. I simply intended to hit facebook, glance at my regular blog reads, and try to get a Wordless Wednesday posted. Instead I find this
http://intomalawi.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/july-20th/
and this
http://gwynethsadventures.blogspot.com/2011/07/day-of-protest.html
and this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14217148


News of riots in Lilongwe is unsettling to say the least. I feel like I should say something profound but really I simply hope all our friends back in Lilongwe are safe.

Wordless Wednesday - Didn't Happen

Sorry there was no Wordless Wednesday this week. David bought a brand new super fancy camera. In fact it is so fancy that it is a snob and refuses to talk to my beat up ancient MacBook. Hopefully at some point Apple technology will work with new Nikon technology and I will have lots and lots of pictures to post. David says he is sure he can find a work around for the problem, then he will have to teach me how to do it. In the mean time we are super busy enjoying our time at home with family and friends.

Quick Update

I will get back in the swing of blogging soon. Right now we are on vacation, very busy and enjoying every minute of it. In the mean time at least Wordless Wednesday will make it up each week.

The Cyberbones clan finally all made it to the states for R&R. So far the boys and I vacationed at Aunt Teri's house in Kentucky for two lovely weeks, while Dave remained behind in Malawi hard at work. The kids had lots of cousins to play with and fun was had by all.

Last weekend we all arrived in Texas with me driving in from Kentucky to Texas, special thanks to my nephew who reminded me which side of the road to drive on, and ran interference when the kids stared fighting. Alonzo drove in a day later with his cousin Jennifer and her son. Meanwhile David flew in from Malawi, and Dakota flew in from South Carolina. It was wonderful to have all my babies together again, even if my oldest baby is taller than me these days. This week has been crazy busy reuniting with friends and catching up with family.

Today Dakota had to return to South Carolina, apparently the Navy wants him back, go figure. Tomorrow the 3 younger boys will start zoo camp. They are really excited. I'm excited too, shopping without kids! Yay! Lunch at a restaurant, without kids. Heaven!

I sort of feel sorry for the camp counselors. Picture this:

"Kids this is a kudu"

"We saw those in Zambia and ate kudu steaks in Botswana. Mmmmm.....Kudu...yummy!"

"Ummmmm.....Yeah.....Moving on. This is a baboon spider from Africa"

"My mom hates those, she screams when I let them loose in the kitchen."

"Okaaaaay. Let's move on to Southeast Asia. This is a gibbon."

"My brother saw those when he went white water rafting in Sumatra."

So how long before I get a call about my kids making up stories? I'm betting sometime in the first day. And Lord help the counselor that tries to talk birds with Colin. I quit trying to look birds up in the book several months back. I just ask Colin, it's a lot quicker, he has them all memorized.

Well I gotta go do some laundry, this is the first time all week we made it home before dark, and if I don't get it done the kids may be going to camp naked.

Wordless Wednesday - Earring

Fabric Shopping - Area 2

Dave here - Today I went to “Area 2” to do some fabric shopping. I didn’t think to take my camera out while I was at the fabric store, but I did get some pictures around the area. After I got home, I took some pictures of the fabric I bought for Shannon. I think she will like what I got. I can’t wait to take Shannon there so she can see all the fabric herself.

Enjoy the Pictures

Wordless Wednesday - Frat Brothers

Day trip to Kumbali

Dave here *- I decided to head out to Kumbali today and see what there was to see and drop off some seeds at the permaculture center. This post will have a lot of pictures on it because a picture is worth a thousand words. When I arrived at Kumbali, I noticed a lot of color in the trees. The last time I saw this much color was when they were having the quilt show a few months back. To my surprise one of the local shops was hanging their batiks to be sold. I am told that they do this every Sunday.




After looking to see where there was to see. I headed down the path for a walk. If Shannon is reading this she will know what path it is as we have been there together before. I was met with a surprise and horror.

The surprise was a colony of ants making their way from one side of the path to the other. It was a sight to see. If you look closely at the picture you will notice that the ants have made a tunnel in which to transport their eggs from one location to the other. It was really cool.




The horror was the sight of the fields all burnt. I was hoping to say for a few hours but the smell of the freshly burnt areas was killing me. I walk through the burnt area hoping to see some small homles critter but only came a cross a stump that was still smoldering. It was obvious that the fire had just finished.


I was all equipped to sit around and get some good bird pictures, but I was only able to get one. I thought it came out very well. I am posting the one of it flying for Colin. It was a lucky shot as most of my flying picture are.



My trip ended back at the batiks to pick up a little surprise for Shannon. I think she will really like what I got her.

*note - Shannon Requires me to tell everyone that it is me posting so people will not think that it is her.

Flight nightmares

By this time tomorrow I will be at the airport waiting to board the flight that will take me and the boys back to the states. OK, so we will be waiting board the flight to South Africa where we will switch planes to board the flight that will take us back to the states. I'm ridiculously nervous. It's my first time flying solo with the kids. Always before I've had Dave and Dakota or Teri and Dakota to help corral the three little one on international flights. This time it's just me. And the three boys. SIGH! Wish me luck, I'm gonna need it.

Just about the time I thought I was all organized and had everything under control David decided to caution me to make sure I got on the right flight, there are three leaving at about the same time. Apparently some guy a few weeks ago got on the wrong flight and ended up in Nairobi instead of Johannesburg. His luggage and connecting flight were all in Johannesburg, South Africa but this poor guy was stranded in Nairobi, Kenya. I have no idea how he got home. The buzzing in my ears as I had a total panic attack drowned out the sound of Dave's voice. I thought this was why your tickets are always checked right before you board, to make sure you don't end up on the wrong flight. Then again this IS Malawi.

I hardly slept at all last night worrying about ending up stuck in Nairobi instead of winging my way home to the states. Then I had a flash of brilliance, I actually sorta-kinda know people in Nairobi, in a bloggy sort of way. So you FS bloggers in Kenya if you get a totally hysterical e-mail from me sometime tomorrow afternoon could you pretty please come rescue me from the airport? Thank you! I knew I could count on you. Now does anyone know any bloggers in Addis Abada?

Lunar Eclipse 2011

Tonight just after I finally got all three kids in bed, I sank down onto the couch with my laptop to check my e-mail and read a few blogs. I noticed the Google Doodle for the day was of a full moon. I clicked on it to see what the deal was. I was thinking vampires or werewolves. Hmmm...maybe it's time to lay off the Laurel K. Hamilton books. No, never mind that's not going to happen.


Turns out it had nothing to do with the supernatural and everything to to do with the natural. Tonight was the longest and darkest lunar eclipse of the century and we were in the perfect place to view it. It would be only visible in it's entirety from Africa and Central Asia. Dave and I ran outside and found it was already underway. We got the two older boys out of bed and the four of us sat in the driveway watching the slow motion drama of an unfolding lunar eclipse. It was a first for Dave and the boys. I remember seeing one with mom years and years ago, I probably wasn't much older than Alonzo. It was really cool to experience it with my own kids. I hope someday they get to share the experience with their own kids.

David set up the tripod and camera to document the whole thing. I peeked at the pictures and it looks like he got some good shots but we won't really know until we load the pictures onto the computer to get a good look at them. That's not happening until tomorrow because it is 10 o'clock, he kids are back in bed, and I am enjoying a glass of wine.

There is still an eclipse going on out there, but having watched the moon slowly disappear I am not hanging around outside for another hour and half to watch it reappear. Honestly if tomorrow wasn't the last day of school I would have been happy to sit out there freezing my butt of as long as the boys wanted to, but there is school tomorrow so off to bed they had to go.