Night time twitters

Jarrah was stirring last night.  In the middle of the night.  Ben went in to turn the fan off.  She said she wanted a song.  He said he didn't know any songs but he'd rub her.  He stuck his head in the net and said "Oh, you wet your nappy."  Jarrah replies, "You can leave now!."

Jarrah

I was away for two nights this week and Ben was the primary caregiver during this time.  Ben gives Jarrah her breakfast.  She is very picky in the morning and sometimes doesn't want her milk stirred .. sometimes does.  Shrieks if we do it the wrong way (for example this morning she didn't want me to cut up her peeled mango and let us know .. loudly).  Anyway, Ben put her granola in her bowl.  She complains, "That is too much for the little critter."
Funny little thing.

Camping Photos

My elephant, dalmation... lumpy...

Hmmm .. what should I pack ...

Cutting up Cassava to dry

Clearing our trail for the car

Phnom Tnout (Sugar Palm Mountain)

Tapping 

2012 Camping

Hmm.. It looks like all we do is going camping!  Well we haven't done too much since the last post.  Until mid January, I had been at home since November 27 or there abouts.  A very long time.  We had run out of milk powder and flour and even spaghetti.  So since our venture out of Rovieng in January for an ADRA meeting at Kompong Thom, we went to Phnom Penh at the beginning of February for a whole week!  Our SMILE project, on January 10 finally went live. And so life for me is suddenly busy.  We're going to try to keep things posted over here at Project SMILE to see what our SMILE project is doing - the blog is a test monitoring / reporting tool so we'll see how that goes.

Well last weekend we went camping again.  Ben found a new forest to explore.  He went there about a month ago and got a local guide to take him to an Angkor Wat era temple lost in the forest.  Naturally that time he forgot to take his camera.  So this time, loaded with the kids and a camera we set out to find it.  Well what do ya know, it is still lost - hidden apparently.  Jarrah told Ben while he was carrying her through the jungle vines, "maybe the tiger knows where the hidden temple is."  Probably.  We did have a fine time.  There is a spring coming from where the temple is located.  A lovely mountaintop where the kids and I hung a hammock and rested while Ben went off searching.  We think we know where we went wrong after talking to the villagers on our return. 

The day we left home, we almost forgot our tent.  We picked Amelie up from school (her one hour of computer class finishes at 8am).  She asked, "where's the tent."  So off we go back home to pick up the tent and some other things we forgot.  We unfortunately didn't pick up the mattresses.  Why I don't know.  We camped right where our car was parked.  So none of us got a good night sleep - well maybe the kids did.  It also rained - just a light steady sprinkle - enough to make us get up and drape the fly over the tent.  But you know what happens when flies touch the tent - the water seeps through.  So in the somewhere in the middle of the night, there was a lovely puddle in one of the ditches that the tent was set over.  Not on my side at least.  By dawn, I realised I should have been sleeping in the car on the reclining front seat.  Why I didn't think of that earlier I am not sure.  It was a tough night.  

Here are some pictures at least - but alas, none of the temple still.  Maybe next time!!

Camping

We went camping last Sunday and Monday for a night.  We were supposed to go for two nights but our car got halfway there and the water pump stopped working and everything got very hot.  So, we stopped where we were.  There was a big patch of rosella flowers (to make rosella jam) so we picked those for a while.  Then we locked up the car and went hiking up the nearby mountain.  The grass was very tall.  Jarrah spent most of the hike on Daddy's shoulders.  Amelie was a trooper and tromped through the grass.  

We got to the top of a little mountain which had quite a view over the surrounding mountains.    

We found leftovers from a cut down tree and Jarrah found a rock that she wanted to bring home. 

 The girls had to climb up every incline tree they came across and pretend to be riding a horse.  

We got back to the car finally after trudging through neck high grass for what seemed like forever.  We set up camp in a rice field and had a campfire (burning up the rice straw).  The owner of the field came by to see what we were up to and to make sure we didn't end up burning his roofing that was drying nearby.  Had a comfortable nights sleep on our mattresses in our tent!  Pretty fancy camping.  Amelie was the chief fire attendant.  Had a great view of the millions of stars in the sky through the skylight in our tent.

And that was day one of our campout.
I shall write more later.  I need to go and cook something sweet with passionfruit again!

Jarrah's little words

We went camping on the weekend.  Jarrah was on Ben's shoulders most of the time.  She told him she was her "cuddle pack" because she likes to have cuddles all the time.  Either that, or she said she had a "cuddle attack" a term we use regularly as she so often comes up to us and says "I need a cuddle."  Cuddly little thing.  I like the cuddle pack.

On the toilet just tonight, Ben was going to finish her up (i.e. wipe).  She said, "I need Mummy to wipe me because she's my owner."

Then earlier today, she had gone to the village for an outing with her best friend, Bong Na to her house - she wanted to go, and she hadn't been for so long (I got the afternoon - or a few hours at least - to myself).  Ben brought her home at about 4.30 pm.  She says to me, "I ate the things inside."  "Inside what?" I ask.  "I ate the things in the shells."  Ahhhh, she ate these little shell snacky things they like to eat here.  She doesn't realise we don't eat that stuff.  She liked them.  They know we don't eat pork... but I didn't think of the shells!  I shall have to leave instructions.

Happy Sabbath, Merry Christmas!

I was trying to put up some photos but the connection is too slow - i had even straightened them !  will try again later.

Passionfruit

We have lots of passionfruit.  It is growing up high in a tall tree.  We can't pick it.  The squirrels can.  And when the ripe ones drop to the ground the deer get them.  We have Ung (our helper) climb up the tree and make them fall and gather them off the ground.  Well, we have about 50 of them right now sitting on my counter.  I went through them and sorted the ones which had split on impact and removed the pulp last night.  This afternoon, I made three things with them - Passionfruit Butter (or curd), Passionfruit and Banana Jam (I also have a cage full of banana's which are getting overripe!) and straight Passionfruit Jam.  The problem is my jams never congeal.  We'll see how this one goes.  I didn't have the patience to do the plate in the fridge test.  So... I wish you all could have some and I wish some professional jam makers could coach me better!

We are gearing up for Christmas.  I made some Christmas bunting and we have 25 flags with numbers on them - each with a little activity to do for each day.  We decorated our Christmas "bush" yesterday.  I still need to reorganise our wiring so that we can plug in the lights.  We made a wreath and have that hanging in our window.  It has some crane feathers, made of vines and bamboo.  Ben won't let me harvest any peacock feathers even though they would be very very beautiful.  The male peacock is almost in full feather and is strutting around. He is quite beautiful.  I shall post some pictures when I get around to it.

It is getting cold now, 18 degrees last night.  Need to go and get a shower before we freeze... I shall have to boil water.

Love Sharyn