Von Rideout family singers

Every 5-6 weeks, Krista helps lead worship for the Sunday night Niamey English Worship Service (NEWS). Different missionaries and visitors take turns preaching and leading worship each week. A few weeks ago, the person preaching spoke on having faith like a child. Krista thought it was a good opportunity to involve our kids in helping lead the worship. The kids worked hard learning the songs and did a great job. Here's a picture of Krista, Joy (our adopted oldest daughter for the year) and the kids singing.

Softball

One of the fun activities that some of us do here is play softball. We usually play pick up games of softball on Saturday afternoons. Each year, there are also two softball tournaments: one in Niamey in October and one in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in February. The teams participating are different every time depending on who's around and available. Last month, we took a rather unique team to the tournament in Ouaga. Our team was made up of missionaries from 5 different missions, volunteers with the Japanese version of the Peace Corps, a US Marine, and someone from a humanitarian organization. We drove about 6 hours to Ouaga for the weekend tournament.

3 of us from our team went expecting to sleep on the floor of a guesthouse. When we arrived, we discovered that the hospitality committee found other housing for us. They arranged for us to stay at the US Ambassador's house. They haven't had an ambassador there for a while, so the house was empty. It was a fun treat to crash at the ambassador's house for the weekend. Somehow I ended up with the master bedroom.

The first day of the tournament was a pool system where we played each of the other three teams in the competitive division. We lost all three of our games. Since there were only 4 teams in the competitive division, all 4 teams played again the next day in the semi-finals. We won our game and made it to the finals. Then, we won the finals. We finished the tournament with a losing record (2-3), but we won the tournament. It was fun to see the team come together and play well when it counted.

The picture above is our team as well as the team we played in the finals (the Burkina Bats).



Here's our team: the Niamey Nomads.

Another birthday celebration!

Our sweet Brynnie turned six on Friday! She wanted a Fairy tale themed party, and several of her friends came dressed as knights and princesses.
Here she is with her princess and the pea cake.They had a "dragon egg" hunt in the yard, which was a big hit!
She got this dress-up dress for her birthday.
We're very proud of our sweet girl! She is a delight to be around, always does her best, and cares about others. We love you Brynn!

Growing pups!

We are having such a great time with these sweet little puppies! Each day they get more playful and cute. Above is Kolo, who will go to Sahel Academy to live with Amber and Betsy.
These pups will be among the most well socialized ones around! They are loved on and played with whenever the kids are allowed. We do give them plenty of time to eat and sleep, of course.

This is Buddy and Domino. They paused for a picture between wrestling and gnawing on each others ears.
Cookie is my little sweetheart. I can't get enough of playing with her.
The four kid to four puppy ratio continues to work well. All the puppies get attention, and all the kids have a puppy to play with.

We'll be sad to send them off to their new homes in four more weeks! But in the meantime we are taking full advantage of having them around.

Birthday Boy!

Yesterday Silas celebrated his third birthday! It's hard to believe he's already three. His favorite things to do lately are singing, playing with his trains, and in the last few weeks playing with our puppies. Here is Silas with Buddy.



He got some fun animal visors from Nana and Papa, and Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Amanda. He loved roaring like a tiger while wearing this!



For the last few months he has been begging for a sock monkey like his sisters have. Aunt Sarah made the girls all some beautiful ones, and he loves them! Well, my sewing skills aren't quite up to the level of Aunt Sarah (She's amazing! She's made so many great gifts for the kids!) I made an attempt. Silas is quite pleased, and that's all that counts.

Here's the big three year old enjoying a piece of his train cake.
He gave us quite a show blowing out the candles one at a time and with a great deal of effort.

Due to some unpreventable circumstances his planned party ended up being just family. But turning three was all about the cake and ice cream and the presents. He was pretty happy, guests or not!

New Puppies!

Monday we got to enjoy the arrival of four new "family members." Our dog, Oreo, gave birth to some pretty cute puppies! She had two girls and two boys, one of each color. Aren't they sweet?







This little black girl, named "Domino" by the kids looks just like Oreo. She's the family favorite, though they are all as precious as can be. There are plenty of people wanting them. It's not often puppies that are 3/4 lab are born out here! Most dogs out here are African dogs. Not the great pets that labs are! So we just get to enjoy them for 8 weeks and then share them with their new families.

Destination Vacation Anyone?

Believe it or not, there's actually a golf course here on the edge of the desert just outside of the city. We've driven by it plenty of times, but I've never stopped to try it out. A few weeks ago, one of our co-workers had a birthday and his wife asked some of us to take him golfing. He's been here a long time and had never tried the course either. This is our group at the "club house". Get ready for a unique adventure.

The course is actually very well laid out. Here's the tee box on the first hole. In the background you can see the pavilion for the driving range.


The course is on a plateau that is laterite rock, which is very hard. You definitely don't want to take a swing with the ball sitting directly on the ground or your clubs would be hurting. Instead, you have to tee the ball up for every shot. We played on a weekday morning, so the owner wasn't around to provide the special rubber tees. We had to make do with whatever we could find... a few plastic bottle caps, a piece of rubber rolled up, some cardboard rolled up... The fairways are marked on either side with large rocks that are painted green.

Most of the year, there are no water traps. We also don't have deep rough or woods in which to lose a ball. There are some unique obstacles, though. Here are the remaining stalks from crops (probably millet).


There's also the occasional herd of goats or sheep that cross the fairway. Donkeys, cows and camels also frequent the course.

The "greens" are nicely oiled sand and well groomed. You can see the caddy pulling the flag out of the hole. You have to take some caddies along with you. They were pretty helpful for finding our way around the course and carrying the clubs. Most of us fall into the "hacker" category for golfers, but we had a good time. We played the first nine holes before we ran out of time and it got too hot. So there you have it... you can now include the Niamey Golf Club at Rio Bravo as one more attraction to see during your next destination vacation. Oh yeah, there's also an airstrip next to the course.