All photos and text are property of Dave Forney and may not be used without express permission.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Happy Birthday Hannah!

Happy birthday Hannah!


On June 21st Hannah turned eight!  As is our family tradition, the birthday person gets to pick each meal for the whole day.  Hannah chose to have sticky buns for breakfast, egg and cheese sandwiches for lunch, and pizza for dinner.  Yumm!  We had a little family birthday party for her that evening and she got to open presents from her grandparents in the U.S.  


The next day Joy had a very fancy tea party for all of the MAF girls here, in honor of Hannah's birthday.  They had a lot of fun!



Britton and his friend Carter have been trying to catch a certain Bronzeback snake for quite a while.  It lives around our back yards.   These snakes are super fast and can climb straight up walls and virtually "fly" through the bushes.  But they're not poisonous.  This week Carter finally caught the one they were after.  Since he already has a bunch of animals and no room for it, he gave it to Britton.   They both go berserk about animals, so as long as one of them can "house" the newest critter, they're happy.   Britton kept it for a few days before they caught another, smaller Bronzeback.  He then released the big one, and is keeping the smaller one in the same large cage that houses his Reticulated Python.  The small one is much more ill-tempered.  It bit and then chewed his hand in the fleshy area by his thumb.  It was pretty nasty looking, but of course, Britton takes all the blame for it, saying that he must have made the snake feel "uncomfortable."  And speaking of uncomfortable, I think it's Joy who feels the most discomfort and  deserves a hero's medal.  She despises snakes, but lets her boys be boys, which says a lot!  Incidentally, we also have three turtles that eat live fish and various fruit and vegetables and two rabbits.  We're getting quite a zoo here!


For the past month or so I've been spending much of my flight time working with our newest MAF pilot here in Tarakan, to get him ready to fly solo in this area.  It's been a lot of fun!  On Friday he got his Indonesian pilot's license and was able to make his first solo flights into the remote areas of Northeast Kalimantan.  Way to go Tripp!



Here's a few shots of the kids from PaUpan and Binuang.









And a few shots from "my office window"...



Well, I have to go get some sleep.  Gotta watch some World Cup games tonight.  Overall, I have just two words: VIVA BRASIL !!!

5 comments:

Jenny Quld said...

Happy Birthday Hannah!

I love reading your posts on Indonesia, I so admire the work you, Joy and your family do for Indonesia and the people our world.

John said...

Dave,
My name is John. I am a missionary in Ghana, West Africa. Been reading your blog for a while. Just got a question for you. How did you get your pictures so big. I see you just changed them.

C.G. Koens said...

You would be pulling for Brasil! We're cheering on Holland for the moment since the USA is knocked out and we feel that it's only fair that we cheer for Peter's homeland. If they're out...the VIVA BRASIL as well! ;-) Peter thinks it will come down to Brazil vs. Germany. But enough of that...seriously dude - warn people when there is a snake picture. I'm just sayin'... :-P And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Hannah!! Can't believe it's been 8 years already!

Dave said...

Thanks for the encouraging comment, Jen Jen.

Carrie, unfortunately your Holland dreams will end Friday when they play Brasil. I'm thinking it's going to come down to Brasil and Argentina, or Brasil and Spain. And I actually thought about you and Joy when I posted the snake picture. My advice: always expect a snake picture on my blog, and be pleasantly surprised if there's not one.

John, I've been looking for a way to post bigger pictures for some time now, and have a wider blog format. There are some complex ways to do it, but alas, last week I noticed new templates with a lot of formatting options. I started with that. The next time I posted (which was this post), when I uploaded pictures, they automatically gave me the option of "extra large" in addition to the normal three size options. It was that easy.

Sheri said...

Happy Birthday to you Hannah! Love, Savannah