Exciting Times!

It is getting near to Christmas- so on Saturday, we decided that it was time to get the Parker Family Christmas tree out, dust it down and get it ready for decorating!

The Christmas tree is not the only exciting object to make its appearance in our Dodoma home last week. The ladies at the MAF Compound in Dodoma also got very excited last Thursday when a vegetable seller turned up at our gates with some rare-to-Dodoma broccoli! This may not seem very exciting if you don't live in Dodoma, but to us, it is a scarce treat, as the dry climate of Dodoma is not conducive to growing broccoli. As I have mentioned before, it is the small things which become unexpectedly exciting when you find yourself far from the ususal home comforts! Ben got caught up in the jolly mood among the Housewives of MAF and posed with the much-valued vegetable!

 But the happy mood did not stop there- on Friday, our regular fruit and veg seller, Mama Kevin, appeared with bunches of rhubarb nestled amongst the more regular goodies of mangoes and pineapples:

Rhubarb is also a rare delicacy in Dodoma and provides a new variety to the food we generally have available to us here. Since variety is the spice of life, I just had to splash out and buy some! We will have 3 MAF guests coming for dinner on Thursday evening this week and I can already picture the rhubarb crumble I will make... a taste of my English childhood in far-off Africa!

Meanwhile, Ben surprised us with bringing a very exciting new pet to live with us, freshly made at Nursery School and now resident in the Parker home... Triceratops The Dinosaur made his appearance on Friday lunch time, as Ben dragged him through our gate and proudly presented him to his rather taken-aback Mum! Although I had seen this amazing work-in-progress at Nursery last week, I thought Ben's teacher was joking when she said he would be coming home with Ben ( Ben had been one of the main artisans of this fabulous creation). However, it seems Miss Marion was not joking, so here is our newest addition:

 Ben informs me that the dinosaur will eat me if I don't treat him nicely, but apparently he has taken a liking to Joel, so it was safe for the boys to sit outside with him for a photo shoot:

 Now he is living in Ben's bedroom, so we just exercise a bit of caution when we go in there- I wouldn't want to upset such a fierce-looking creature! Evidently, loud noises do not disturb him too much, as we didn't hear so much as a growl when the volume in our home climbed excessively last Friday evening, when more excitement arrived in the shape of parcels from England!