petit compaore

 The singing was so beautiful. For some reason I had the thought, "I wonder if those people who wrote those more 'folksy' songs actually thought the songs would be sung be people with voices like this." The singers could have made almost any song sound beautiful and uplifting and reverent. Again, it was all very beautiful. The sermon didn't make much sense to me though, but maybe I was distracted by the beauty of the church...

A little family photo on the front steps. Apparently I need to clean my camera lens!

 Isaac with his dolly, who is now known as "Corinne". Sometimes "Lulu", sometimes "Coco". 

 Papa with his baby girl

 My handsome Isaac

 Now the next picture might just make your heart melt. It's okay if it inspires a little extra Papa love. I made it extra big so you can get a good look at that face I love. Well, two faces I love.

 A little forced animal petting never hurt anyone, right? Pet the horsie, Sonia.

 Isaac with another palm tree. Man, this is going to be a tough decision as to which type of palm tree to put around that house in Burkina. 

 Alright, little hammy ham.

 Some more pictures from our walk around the Capitol building.

 Then we went to IKEA. We ate the food, we bought a salad spinner. We had the IKEA experience. Now I will probably have to go to the one in Portland sometime.

 Finally we came back to Uncle Chris's place for a little cooling off. Uncle Chris was going to turn on the sprinklers so Isaac could run in them, but then Isaac fell asleep. I think he caught the tail end of the sprinkler time, but by then the nice evening breeze had cooled things off a little too much for Isaac.

 Mmm, champagne! Err, sparkling cider.

 Fish, fish, fish, fish! (accompanied by happy panting and bouncing). 

Evening came, and morning followed...

 What kind of plants are these? 

 Well, there was a variety, but the one to pay the most attention to was the alfalfa. These are some experimental ones, I think. Uncle Chris is doing lots of alfalfa research. I would attempt to elaborate, but I would probably get it wrong. Ah, heck, I'll try to elaborate anyway. If I get it wrong, Uncle Chris can send me an email. Why is alfalfa a big deal? 

 Well, apparently the cows eat it (and did you know that California produces 21.3% of the nation's milk?) so they are looking at ways to produce more alfalfa to meet the need to feed all those dairy cows.

 Another bonus is that Uncle Chris has all the ag hookups so gets lots of free fruit and veggies. In fact, I believe it is quite rare that he actually has to buy fruit or veggies between his garden and his work connections. :) We enjoyed some delicious cherries courtesy of said work connections.

And now for something completely different. 

 We went to the Jelly Belly factory, which was somewhere down there (how bad it is it that I can't remember the name of the city) close by. Uncle Chris had never been and neither had we, so we figured it would be fun and potentially interesting for Isaac. I also had absolutely no idea how they made jelly beans so it was educational for me too. 

We had to wear paper hats on the tour, even if we had no hair.

 We learned that Ronald Reagan liked Jelly Belly jellybeans and probably helped make them famous. As a result, there are multiple jellybean mosaics of President Reagan around the factory.

 Here we are, ready to go on the tour!

 Oh no, a line. We have to wait in it. What shall I ever do? says Sonia. I shall just have to resort to eating my hand.

 We couldn't take any pictures on the tour but it was informative, plus they gave us each a pack of jellybeans on the way out. We also bought some fudge. Yum, yum! I need to learn how to make fudge. 

Afterwards we were pretty hungry, so we went to this favorite Chinese restaurant of Uncle Chris's: Golden Dragon. Much unlike the "Hungry Tiger" of Portland infamy (which does not exist anymore), the Golden Dragon had some good food. I ordered something with a really yummy black bean sauce.

The waitress there is very unique - she has an amazing memory and remembers facts about every person who comes in. By the end of the meal she had figured out who my mom was (from when my mom and dad came down before) even though Uncle Chris only said that I was his niece. I wish I had a memory half that good! 

It was so sunny. We like sunny. We like it a lot.

 You can't really get a sense from these pictures of just how amazing Uncle Chris's house is. It is a really nice setup inside for guests - it essentially separates into two houses, but there is shared space, obviously. I really liked the decor too. The yards/gardens, both front and back, look like something that should be featured in the next issue of Sunset. Someday I would like a lemon tree in my front lawn and an orange tree in the back. With some experimental papayas thrown in for good measure. 

 Cute and cozy, but not too small.

Uncle Chris was a great host! He had a delicious shrimp taco creation for us upon our arrival. I am 97% sure I wrote the recipe down somewhere and I hope I can find it because I am getting hungry again just thinking about it. He also tolerated Sonia pooping on the floor the next morning. I swear these things never happen at home - only in the weirdest possible locations. I think Grandma and Grandpa brought the carpet shampooer down there so hopefully that spot really truly went away. Sorry Uncle Chris. Sonia has not worn tights since then.

I want to write about the next three days but I am getting kind of tired... so hopefully I can write more tomorrow. I am almost a month behind on getting these pictures up, so I really need to get caught up. That and my SD card is full, but I know that if I put the pictures on the external hard drive, I will never post the pictures of California, and it was one of those trips that was so good that I need to document it. To me felt like an out of country trip, which is a good thing for two people who like to travel, except it took much less time to get there. Afterwards you feel really relaxed and you don't really want to go back home. So, a' demain.