So the big news is that Annabel has got her birth certificate, yay! We went on Wednesday to pick it up, and also got her a temporary passport. So Tracy will be travelling to South Africa between 15 and 29 April, to spend time with her parents, family and friends in Cape Town. She is very excited and we booked her tickets in this last week. After the disappointment of not being able to go in January, this will be a real blessing. I decided not to go, in order to save a bit of money, and then we are planning to do a proper holiday in December, where we will also go to KZN to see our friends there. As it turned out though, Paul and Shannon, and Sue, and Carol will all be in Cape Town during that time. Anyone else wanting to join...?I will be attending a conference in Sweden at the same time, presenting my proposal at one of the sessions, and hopefully getting some good feedback. The town where I am going has a NewFrontiers church, so I'll try and hook up with those guys while I am there.
My supervisor from Oslo was here this last week, and he was very happy with the work I have been doing on my literature review, and was very encouraging. It was good to hear some positive feedback, and that I am still on the right track.
I ordered some books from the Rabbit Room (see link on the right) with money that Tracy's folks gave me for my birthday. So we have been furiously reading together, because they are really good. I can highly recommend 'The Fiddler's Gun' by A.S. Peterson and the Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson. The first is a historical novel set during the American Civil War, and deals with some big issues, most importantly - redemption. The second is a series of fantasy books, related to the Narnia series in intention, and is really fun. When we get into it, not much else gets done, and we spent this last weekend reading to each other almost non-stop. (If you are in Helsinki and looking for a good book, let us know.)
Annabel has been learning to sing. I found that she enjoys when I slide up from low to my falsetto voice, and then she started imitating me. So we have little vocal warm-up sessions that are really cute. She has given her first full-bellied laugh, and is experimenting with moving around by kicking her feet against anything that provides traction. It will be interesting once she figures out how to crawl, and I am thinking we should not encourage this development at all.
We have been baking a lot of bread using the Sullivan Street Bakery recipe and a terracotta flowerpot. Here is a photo of one of the beauties. It is really simple, and so delicious to have fresh bread, although you have to plan a little bit because it needs to rise for 12-14 hours. We are now trying to find a similar recipe that will work for whole wheat flour, and will report our results later.
