Baby it's cold outside!!

Part of the reason that I moved to the Caribbean (besides for my desire to serve people here) was because it's the Caribbean, meaning, it's summer all year long!  Coming from Washington, I try to soak up every ounce of sun during our 3 nice months, cause I know that the other 9 months of the year will be all rain and cold.

I couldn't wait to live in Haiti and post facebook statuses or email my family rubbing it in their face that while they were wearing winter jackets and running from their car to the store to avoid getting drenched, I was wearing shorts and flip flops.  I was sweating and enjoying the sun.

Turns out that Haiti doesn't have summer all year long, and it's gets cold here and rains as well.  A few days ago I wore pants and a sweat shirt all day and was still cold.  All I could think about was taking a nice hot bath or wrapping up in a blanket.  Oh how I wish I had a blanket on some days.  I have a feeling (actually I know since I got it in the mail and wrapped it my self, sorry Karen) that I am getting a blanket for Christmas.  I've been tempted on several occasions to take it from under the tree and use it, but I'm doing my best to wait until Christmas comes!

As we were crawling into bed the other night, Nick said "I wish we had our electric blanket here."  This is a thought that I have had many times over the past week or two.  If it didn't use so much electricity, I'm sure we would have emailed our parents and had them send it down already!

When we first moved down here, my Grandma sent me a box of snacks, and in it was 4 boxes of hot chocolate mixes.  I hate to break it to you Grandma, but I thought you were a little crazy and wondered if you knew I had moved to the Caribbean.  However, Grandmas know best cause Nick and I have been drinking it lately.

Now having said all of this, I have to admit that it hasn't gotten below 75 degrees since we have been here.  But it really is cold, I'm not exaggerating this or being a baby!  When we are used to 90 degree weather all the time, 75 is freezing!  All of our kids wear sweat pants all day, and our nannies come in winter jackets.

It's raining today which is a good thing and a bad thing.  It means that all of our laundry, which we have a ton of with 43 babies and all of our staff, won't get dry today.  During the summer most of our clothes go on the line, or are sprawled out on the grass to dry.  During the rainy months, it's supposed to go in the dryer, but our dryers are currently broke and you can't buy one in Northern Haiti.  We are hoping to take a trip to the DR here soon to purchase one, but thats always a trip.

It's also bad because it means that many Haitians, including the home we visited the other day, will have rain inside their homes and children will sleep on muddy floors.  It means that our roads will get in worse condition and become muddy messes.

Rain is good however because it means that the rioting here will stop.  The only thing that Haitians hate more than being cheated out of an election is rain.  It shuts things down here.  (FYI: the rioting has stopped in CAP, but has still been going on in Port and other surrounding areas.  They are going to announce today wether or not the 3rd place person will be allowed to move on to the second round of elections.  This means that there likely could be more rioting once this announcement is made.  Nick is stocking up on all of our supplies today so that if anything happens we will be good for two months.)

Ok, off to make breakfast for the kiddos!!  I'll post more on the elections/riots as I learn more! I think I'll have some hot cocoa with breakfast, thanks Grandma!!