When it rains, it pours.

*We have had a good week, although it wasn't all as we had planned it to be. On Monday we went to Lac Mantasoa, to the retreat centre we've visited before. It was lovely to be there, although I almost worried that Robyn's baby would be jiggled excessively. The road is in a bad condition, but we made it. Tuesday morning we drove to Andasibe* (otherwise known as the rainforest) and although the drive was longer than we remembered, and one child unfortunately lost her breakfast because of the curvy roads, we got there in time to visit the lemurs before lunch. I love visiting the lemurs and letting them jump on me, but some of the smaller members of our expedition were less than thrilled about the whole event. This was followed by a wonderful lunch and the return trip to Mantasoa. Wednesday we drove back here. Thursday we went into town and went up to the top of one of the many hills around Tana for a look-see. It's quite a view from up there. We then followed that up with lunch at one of our favourite restaurants on the main street of downtown Tana. Unfortunately, Daryl's passport was stolen at some point and that put a damper on our day, to say the very least. Friday, M and Daryl spent most of the day getting the paperwork done to replace his passport. (Well, it actually doesn't replace his passport, but it will get him home and that's the important thing.) Praise the Lord, it wasn't nearly as complicated as we had originally thought.

*Moving on...

*C has a loose tooth for the first time and I believe that 90% of people in a 10 km radius have heard about it. She's a little excited. Just the other day she had been worrying that she wouldn't ever get a loose tooth. She confided, "It's sort of hard not to be jealous when it happens to other people!"

*We have wireless, high-ish speed internet! Amazing. Well, when it works, at least. The reliability factor is less than impressive so far, but I'll try to be patient and give them time to work out the kinks.

*Some of our best friends here are moving back to Canada in 9 days and today was their moving sale. I brought home tons of stuff, but my two best finds were a VHS copy of Chariots of Fire and a pizza pan. We tried out the pizza pan tonight and it performed beautifully.**

*Beginning at about 8 last night, we were without power for about 15 hours. It got a little old, I can tell you that.

*I have a really great neighbour named Jocelyn. We love having MAF neighbours that are easy to be neighbours with. Anywhoo, all of that to say that she blogs, and recently she wrote this. I couldn't have said it better myself.

*Last night we barbequed steaks (that were tremendously delicious) and ate them with baked potatoes and cauliflower with cheese sauce. For dessert we had wacky cake with strawberries and whipped cream. It was fantastic. My husband is very good at bbqing steaks. (This is a free report for the Nislys out there.)

*The kids are totally obsessed with Sound of Music. There is at least one squabble a day over who gets to be Liesl, and Rolf is talked about as though he is a close friend. A informed me that she likes to say the name "Freidrich" because it can be said very quickly. The songs are sung with varying degrees of accuracy, but all with enthusiasm.

*Do you ever wonder how these names are pronounced? This particular one is pronounced "ann-dah-see-bay".
**Tonight we ate 3.5 pizzas. This crew can put away the food.