December 15, 2010

I will fill you in on what happened yesterday since we sent the e-mail early.  Today is our tenth wedding anniversary, and we celebrated yesterday.  We went to Abidjan in the afternoon.  We went to a nice Italian restaurant for lunch called La Trattoria de Montparnasse.  

After that, we dropped off some paperwork at the shipping company that is working on getting our pallets out of port.  Then, we went to Orca.  It is a big store that fills two stories of a building.  The third story has little shops, a big aquarium store, and little restaurants.  We got some things for the kids for Christmas.  There was a man dressed like Santa Claus inside Orca.  He had a microphone and was stopping different shoppers to have them sing a bit of a Christmas Carol.  Everywhere Joe went, Santa was sure to follow.  Joe spent his time avoiding Santa; he was not about to sing or say anything into that microphone.

We drove back to Bassam and went to a French restaurant/Hotel.  The restaurant is outside in front of a Frenchman's house; the hotel room is behind his house. We stayed in his hotel room.  It wasn't anything fancy, but it had air conditioning and hot water!  We had a French meal for supper.  It was very good.

We had a good breakfast there at the French restaurant this morning.  We had an omelet, two kinds of bread, an a tart.  The man told us that they were starting to set up the barrages in Bassam again.  So, we headed straight home.  

Jennifer helped the kids make anniversary cards for us.  They were so proud to present them to us.

Jennifer did a couple pages of school work with the boys.  I decided just to save the rest for tomorrow.

This morning, the big tree in the yard was being trimmed.  The well is under the tree and is covered by a cement box.  There was a big bucket with a turtle in it on top of the "cement thingy" as Bonnie calls it.  They moved the turtle to the other side of the yard.  Gilbert said to Joe, "Dad, I've been thinking about why they moved that turtle over there.  As I see these limbs falling, I figured that they moved it so that the turtle wouldn't get hit."  He tapped on his head saying, "I'm glad I've got a good thinker!"

This evening, Gilbert choked on his drink.  He said, "Mom, that went down the wrong throat."

Danny and I are both coming down with bronchitis.  We started an antibiotic today.  I think that is why Danny had a bit of a fever off and on.  I rested most of the afternoon and then got supper ready.

Bonnie came into the kitchen just as I was finishing getting supper ready.  I asked her if she could go tell the boys and Daddy that supper was ready.  At first, she said, "I don't want to do it."  Then, she said, "Oh, I'll go tell them."  I think her brothers are rubbing off on her.

We had church at home tonight.  It has been said that a lot of things are going to take place tomorrow in Abidjan.  So, all of the roadblocks are back in place here in Bassam.  

Ouattara has said that he is going to take over the TV and radio stations tomorrow as well as government offices on Friday.  Up to this point, he has been in a hotel.  Gbagbo has already taken measures to keep those things from happening.  He has the military set up in strategic places.  It could be that nothing will happen, or it could get bad.  Please continue to pray for this situation.

A demain,

Joe, Laura, Gilbert, Danny, and Bonnie