Sean, Kale, Alanna! It's Lizard Week at the White House!

Yesterday I went into the kitchen to start breakfast and found a little buddy in the sink. Not sure what to call him (Frank is a popular name for a neighbour), but I think he's a permanent resident in our kitchen. Just above our kitchen cupboards, where the average eye cannot see, is a huge hole in the cement. Obviously the cabinet installers didn't think that it was important to fill this hole and they just partially covered it with the cupboards instead. Daily we find cement dust and bits on our counter in the corner, and we've seen the odd cicak (chee-chaah or gecko-like lizard) run up in behind the side of the cupboard. This is probably one that we've seen around the house. If only I could capture him for a moment and ID him (what, with nailpolish??) so that we could keep tabs on him. Notice how he's kind of transparent...very weird to see up close. I stuck the fork next to him to show you the average size of a cicak around here. We watched one capture a huge flying ant last week, and so I really don't mind having them around. If I'm correct (and I'm not always in identifying noises...) I think that a cicak makes a sound like a squeeze toy. At night you can hear them wheezing away like a tiny dog's chewy toy that squeaks. They make me laugh.

Abby and I just arrived home from school. I went early and watched her and her grade 5 classmates play a variety of instruments. Because Abby registered late in the school year she had no choice but to play in the handbell ensemble, but she did great! It was really neat to see a bunch of 11 year olds playing violin, piano, brass instruments, bells, bass and wind instruments. Most kids her age don't start these until they're in grade 7, at least where we come from. We are still waiting for Matthew to come home...he's a little later than usual. Knowing him he's just catching up with his friends because of all of the school he missed last week.

I hope that Matthew gets here soon, because there's another buddy out in the backyard that showed up for a visit, and he may leave soon. Not sure what he is, and I hope that you can see him in this photo, because he's pretty camouflaged!

I've taken a photo of brave Abby in front of the lizard so that you get an idea of how big it is. I can't believe that Matthew is missing this!!!!

Other than the lizards in and around our home, we're doing pretty good. Nothing terribly exciting, except maybe that we were able to find garland and twisted it and some red ribbon up our bannister. Now it looks Christmassy (and feels like we live on the equator...). We've borrowed Comries' tree, which I'll put up a little later, and we've been playing Christmas music.

"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

Thanks for reading.