La Familia Rahm: Happy Birthday, Joseph!

( Written Yesterday, May 25th)

Today is Joseph’s 27th birthday!

He woke up at his usual 5am and went outside to get some reading and preparing done for his class. I was lying in bed, just about ready to get up, when I heard a lot of chickens making some noise earlier than usual. I got up and peared out of our window and sure enough, I saw Joseph chasing the 2 hens and their baby chicks into their pen. Aparently they had gotten out of their box that they spend the nights in ☺ Right now some men are building a new chicken pen for mothers and their babies that will keep them safe from predators at night, but for now we have to put them in a box at night. Anyways, I quickly put on my slippers and ran out to help him. I laughed to myself thinking, of course something unexpected had to happen the morning of Joseph’s birthday! Haha.
I went back inside to get ready and while Joseph enjoyed his cup of coffee. Micah woke up shortly and we all had breakfast together. Here is a picture of Micah and Joseph:

Joseph taught his morning class while I watched Micah and washed some clothes.
Micah went down for an early nap because he didn’t sleep that well last night…we heard him roll around and make noises frequently throughout the night. After Joseph’s class I sowed seeds for a row of cabbage and two rows of onions in my garden. ( I planted three rows of carrots yesterday!) Joseph was able to skype with his parents and two Sisters for about an hour which was a great birthday present.

A few weeks ago I e-mailed Glen, the president of Art For Humanity, and asked him for a favor. I asked if he would bring a box of brownie mix for Joseph’s birthday. When he arrived a few days ago and gave me the brownies I was so excited! Joseph and I have been talking about how much we miss brownies and ice cream, so I thought this would be a nice surprise for him! How I needed to figure out if I could bake them ☺

I learned that the site manager, who lives just down the road from us, had an oven that we could use! This is going to be great. Long story short, Joseph found out I was going to make brownies because I let the cat out of the bag by asking him about an oven yesterday…yes, I am terrible at making surprises! I think I have surprised Joseph just once before we were married and I had to flat out lie to him. AND he lived in another city, so he couldn’t see the accidental smirks on my face ☺

Anyways, oh well, so he found out. But I knew he would like brownies just the same! Oh, so I had to cut a wheelbarrow of firewood yesterday and wheel it to Rosie’s house, she is the wife of the site manager.Today I made the brownie mix and let the cook, Candida, lick the bowl ☺ She was in heaven…she had never had a brownie before! Then I had to walk the brownie pan back to Rosie’s house, it is about ½ mile down the road. I got to her house and her oven was not the oven I was picturing. Haha. Look at the picture below with my brownies inside:

Well, here goes nothing. Aparently, she had started a big fire earlier and just pushed the logs aside, slid the brownie pan in with the end of a rake and covered the holes with pieces of a tin roof. I told her maybe it would take 30mintues and she said “No! cince minutos!” (15 mintues) She knows her oven better than I do, so I let her be in charge of the time. We walked back to her house and talked about our sons and motherhood and then after just 10 minutes she told me the brownies should be ready.
We walked through the cow field back towards the oven and she pulled them out and said “Nosotros una problema! (We have a problem!) haha. As you can see in the picture below, the brownies got BAKED to a black crisp on top, but then the middle was still gooey!

So then I realized that her oven was WAY too hot and it just wasn’t going to work for brownies unless next time…assuming Joseph will get me brownies ☺…we make a way smaller fire and put the brownies in earlier before it gets too hot.

Rosie and I laughed and I attempted to tell her in Spanish about the phrase we say in the states “It is the thought that counts!” She got the idea and we laughed again and she apologized. I told her that is was no problem and that I was thankful for her help.

I returned to the campus and all the girls ran up to me hoping to see a delicious chocolate cake. I showed them what happened and they smiled and said they didn’t mind, they would eat it anyways! Haha.

Shortly after I returned, it started to rain and we had to do our typical routine when it rains: run over to our clothesline and bring in all the laundry! Joseph started to work on cutting chicken wire to fence my garden off from the dogs and chickens, who like to dig. And I tried to entertain Micah and write this post ☺

I just put Micah down for a second nap that was much needed ☺ and I am sitting outside writing. The rain stopped and Rosie just walked up for a big bag full of delicious bread she just made in her oven. HAHA. It practically tastes like cake… ah geee…I guess for the next birthday we can just ask Rosie to make her bread! Haha.

Since the rain has stopped and Micah is sleeping I better go take a shower. The girls have one more hour of class and then dinner is at 5:30pm. Four of the students went into town today with Glen to get some dental work done and I gave them some money to buy a piñata for Joseph. Hopefully that comes as a surprise! I will write more about that and hopefully post a picture of two….

Ok, so the evening has ended and it sure ended with a bang. The pictures really say it all so I can keep this short :) I helped the girls make Joseph's favorite meal here, Baleadas - which are flour tortillas with bean and cheese. It was really fun and I am getting pretty good at it!

The girls decorated the classroom and surprised Joseph with a "Clifford - The Big Red Dog" pinata and some of the girls said a few words of gratitude and then did a skit that was hilarious....so I heard :) I had to go give Micah a bath and put him to bed so I missed it, but apparently 3 of the girls did a skit acting out Joseph, and 3 of the volunteers. Then we presented the pinata and that was pretty funny watching Joseph hit the dickens out of that thing.