Cute and crazy crawford clan

Last week we headed up with our friends the Hiemstra's and the Harries to a little village in the mountains called Maubisse. On the way up there was a funeral procession that lasted for about a mile. It was interesting to watch.

It was a wonderful little getaway where we did absolutely nothing. Seriously, nothing. We let the kids go nuts and run around and play with each other and we sat around talking and enjoying being in the rain and COLD. Where we stayed was at this OLD OLD place called the Poussada. It was a huge gorgeous manner when the Portugeuse controlled Timor. We stayed in the servants quarters as opposed to the main house and the kids had such a blast!

I accidentally left my camera sitting on the couch so all of these were taken with our video camera in camera mode, they aren't all that bad.

Abby on the steps leading up to the main house

Liam and Roman making fishing poles out of sticks and tea bags (this is what happens when you purposely don't bring toys!)

Sam was hanging out with his best school buddy which always means Liam gets abandoned. It makes my heart hurt a little. So we spent lots of quality time together. We took a walk and found a monkey

And flowers that looked like horns,

then found out they were hallucinogenic if you touched them for too long, ooopps. We enjoyed wearing flannel and saying "I need some mittens it's so cold!"

Figured out what we would look like if we were at woodstock and big ole hippies

It was nice spending some quality time with just Lemers. He is such an easy going guy I think sometimes he is so content we don't worry enough about giving him his fair share of attention.

Enjoyed the lovely tandem swing...

"Um mom where are the seats?"

Admired the ingenuity and reuse of USAID products we have given the Timorese

Ate our weight in rocks.... well some of us did

ran around ALOT

Some of us were good and just looked at the turtles...

While others threw caution to the wind and threats of salmonial were ignored as was the rule that you don't throw turtles back and forth to each other

One candle was lit, but it took four children to blow it out

Some of the other guests had a huge fire going and a giant cooler (the biggest I have ever seen) chakabox full of sodas and snacks and kept bribing all the kids to take pictures of them by giving them sprite and treats until finally we had to put a stop to it.

Abby was mesmerized by the fire and kept trying to walk over to it.

(I know how to get rid of red eye but how do you get ride of crazy possessed silver eyes?)

On old drained pool became the coolest hid out ever,

but mostly we saw a lot of these:

and heard a lot of this "this is the BEST day ever mom!"! That night Sam and Chris slept in one room with Abby and Liam and I in the other. It was so nice to sleep without worry of mosquitos and being so incredibly hot you can't stand it (like in Autauro). We woke up in the morning and had a lovely breakfast of buns and jam and let the kids play for a bit in the rain. Liam and Roman enjoyed eating their cereal on our porch

While Sammy pouted because we had to leave and he wanted to stay with Noah

On the way back the weather looked like this:

So it is not to surprising that we got lost. Especially when you take into consideration that in Timor the "road less taken" is the one that is pristine and intact. While the one that leads to the capital city is terrible and completely chopped up. About an hour into the drive our engine started billowing smoke so we pulled over and Chris and I had an adventure with the radiator. It actually turned out that when we had turned the heater on the car freaked out because it had never had the heater turned on before ha! After about another hour the boys were begging for food so we pulled over and I hoped out to get fruit snacks out of the back. There were three local children hanging out on the side of the road and I thought they might like some so I gave them each a pack of fruit snacks. The littlest guy had me open his and the smile he gave me was priceless

The scenery was amazing

And we made it home safe and sound, it was such a great little break!