The party house

As you know, our home here is lacking in many of the conveniences that we have grown accustomed to. This has helped us to appreiciate our blessings, and has been a good learning tool for not complaining. As an example, here are some of the things that happen in our house on a DAILY basis.

First…termites. They leave these little crumb like things wherever there is wood! Our chair legs are always breaking underneath us, the boy’s 4 poster bed is now a 3 poster bed, our seesaw outside only has one seat, you get the picture. Each morning we wake up, and know that we have to go and clean up all the wooden crumbs from the termites. This is a wooden shelf at our house that we have to clean off each day.

Second, whenever we turn on our oven, this happens. Our poor modern oven wasn’t designed to be hooked up to a propane tank and spurts out soot all over the top of the oven, as well as over whatever I’m cooking. My kids have finally realized that I haven’t burned dinner, but that whatever I bake will come out of the oven black regardless.

Third, well, we’re not exactly sure. Each morning when we get up, we find this scene in the kitchen. Every day we clean it up, and every day it happens again. Those are not graham crackers, they are pieces of wood. We can’t figure out if it is mice, termites or what, but something is eating up our cabinets, and leaving little pieces of them in a pile on the floor each day. Very strange.

So, like I said, our house is awesome. No big deal, just things that we have to clean up every day. BUT….we still have one of the best houses on this island. There are a couple of fancy pants mansions up on the mountain, but for regular people, we have a castle. When people come to our house, they are amazed, and it really puts us in our place. Our home is so much bigger than most. It is so rare to find a four bedroom house. We have a huge malae (garden/field in front of the house), and plenty of space for entertaining, hence the title of this post…the party house!

The school wanted to have a Christmas party but didn’t have a location so my house was the perfect solution. With all of the teachers, administration, and cooks from the school, we would have 15 people. No problem! We had the party last night and it was tons of fun. We actually had a few extra with a spouse and a few kids, but we still had plenty of room. I put the kids to bed, and Michael hung out in the bedroom reading a book.

Here is the first thing that people see when they walk into my house…

… isn’t it beautiful? The owner’s of this house have a very unique decorating style, and although we removed most things when we got here, it was too hard to take down the tea cup chandelier. Makes an interesting conversation piece though!

At the party, we revealed our Secret Santa’s, ate great food, and played some hilarious “minute to win it” games. It was a great night. I work with some really great people. Here are some photos of the games we played. (And yes, one of our chairs did give way at the party underneath one of those large Samoans. Oops!)