many visitors!

HellOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO everyone. Last week Danny and AnnMarie came. AND MORE PEOPLE ARE COMING! And Sydney's b-day is on the 23 AND HER GUESTS COME FROM BENIN AND FRANCE! That's not fair! hum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What do you want for Christmas? I want a violin, not a mp3. 'Cause I have one already, and a horse, but i want a horse in the USA, a pinto. C.U. ffffffffffffffiiiiiiiiiiiiiioooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa [fiona]

Christmas

We decorated our Christmas tree last week. Elena and Fiona and me all have our own trees, too. Mama says that she'll put photos of the trees when Papa gets home with the camera. (Sorry about the poor quality of the tree photo here, we'll get another later. ~mama).

When it's Christmas, it's gonna be my birthday. I'll be 6 (typed by Syd) years old. I can't wait.

I can read some books. I know my numbers.

We'll have a ton of guests on Christmas. Too bad we can't build a snowman. It's really hot here.

love,

~Sydney

Movies.

Some weeks ago I watched The Lord Of The Rings. It was great, but just a little disgusting. I had to read the books before watching the movies. And yesterday the whole family watched Miss Congeniality and the Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl. Its a wonder that the little once slept, well Sydney said that she prayed. So, I suppose she slept. I thought it was "No fair" that Sydney got to watch it at the age of 5 (I watched it before the rest of the sisters watched it),but I was 10 not 5. But Miss Congeniality was good, too. By the way, CU stands for See You.

C U,
Elena

happy b-day fifi

On Sunday I had a party ['cause it was my birthday and I turned 9!] and my friends were there. Yesterday a friend from England came and his daughter came as well. They gave us the movie Ice Age one and two. The man came to help papa. They are leaving on Friday. Today we are going to the beach.
~Fiona

I don't have any photos yet.

Papa is so not prepared.

Today we went to an Eye doctor, Mama said that she and Papa needed to have their eyes checked. So we all went. Papa, Mama, Elena, Fiona and Sydney. We finally got there, and Mama went first. While we (the rest of us) stayed in the waiting room. We must have waited about half an hour. Now, I didn't know what the problem was today but obviously our patients must have been very low. Anyway where was I? Oh yes, I remember. Okay, now Mama Just came back, the result, no problem at all! Papa you're next. So we're waiting and Papa comes out of the office with a worried look on his face. He tells us that the doctor said he needs to wear glasses PERMANENTLY. Well as you know you get to choose the type you want. So now we are all helping Papa choose a pear. Papa has found a pair that are very thin and small.
Mama tells him that in order to look good in any pear he needs to shave that beard of his. Well I'm going to skip all those little parts that would take forever to tell. We are moving on to the next part of this errrrr, well story. Papa gets a sheet of paper that tells him that the glasses are $400. That is not affordable he says. So we leave our story at an end, well almost an end.

New Story:
I Elena Stoll The Grand Chicken of all times.
The chickening out part is when it comes to pulling teeth. It used to take weeks until it finally came out. This is the second tooth in a row that came out. I told Mama that I didn't want to pull it out because the tooth Fairy just visited me! Oh well, I must be a lucky kid.

Poor Pip

This is E (-lena). I have a sad piece of news. Well, Pip our dog died this morning and we think that she had canine cancer. Papa and Sydney went and buried her. Actually, the vet had some guys dig a hole in somebody's garden. Papa said, it cost him 17.000 CFA (around $40) to have her buried.
I asked Mama & Papa if Pip went to heaven. So Mama said, well animals neither go to heaven nor to hell, they just become part of the ground. Papa looked on the internet. We found some pages. I understand that the Bible dosen't say whether they go to heaven, or not. So, since God doesn't say anything about this, we have to decide what to think. I hope that I might see her there.

My first trip alone

On Friday I went to Vogan, a small town north of Lome. My family stayed at home while I went with Mrs. Mariza (who is helping in a medical clinic). I visited Nancy, a girl I had gotten to know a few weeks ago. She speaks English and is 17 years old. But she doesn't look it. She has a sister, named is Joycelin. She's 10 years old.
On our way we saw a taxi, which had two live cows as passengers. At one point the cows went mad in the vehicle and the people tried to hold them down. Take a look at the taxi. Noticing anything unusual?

Nancy and her sister took me to the weekly market. We saw lots of gross stuff like dead snakes, chameleons, hyena and monkey heads, which people use for their religion. I learned that the voodoo religion started in Togo and Benin, before it traveled to America.

At the market I had to greet everybody, cause I stood out. I learned to say "yes" in Ewe, the local language. As I was greeting a woman with her little boy (no older than Sydney) everybody started to laugh. Then, I just had to ask "what was so funny?" Nancy told me, that I had just agreed to marry the little guy. Oh dear!

I forgot to take a picture of my friends (how awful is that)? But I did get one of two pigs on a bicycle.

While we were at the market the sun was really hot and I had forgotten to put on sunscreen. So, no sunscreen + African sun = sunburn!
I'm pretty miserable right now. I hope I can sleep tonight.
Elena

School starts

School has begun! This is an extra special school year. We have our new classroom in our new house. It has a new name: Kingfisher Elementary (in honor of the blue-breasted Kingfisher who lived in our garden for a while) AND... Sydney has started kindergarten!! She has been so excited about it and the first day was no exception. She got a Schultüte, something every child gets in Germany when they start school for the first time. We also documented it well, in photos. Enjoy!

From Fiona

Guess what? I can play the guitar and I know just three songs but they are easy. We finally got our wardrobes, but they smell BAD! So M&P [mama and papa] slept in our room because their room smells bad. We will start school on Tuesday. We found a tick today. That's all from Fiona

That was a GOOD movie ! (by Elena)

The movie I'm talking about is The Lord Of The Rings. I had a deal to read the book and then watch the movie. It was good, but gross. I watched the extended version of the Fellowship Of The Ring , cause I did so good on the test I took. It is a special test that we take to see if we really understand the book. And I got 19 out of 20, they where hard questions. That was on Sunday. Yesterday Sydney insisted on making a band so we called it Ms.Dynamite. Cause we are all girls, well that is if you are not counting the backstage dancers , Mama & Papa. Well I need to go eat lunch, bye

Sydney decided to write something

Hello,

I am Sydney and we were having some fun. Did you have any fun today? I'm glad that my Papa doesn't have to go to work today. We went and played games with Papa's students. Me and Papa went to the classroom and cleaned and I showed him pictures that I drew. My Papa and my two sisters are making dinner. We will eat baked beans and bacon omelets. My Mama finished my bag. This morning Papa cleaned the filters on the a/c's. Well, that's it for right now from Sydney.

What Sydney thinks about our holiday

In Benin I learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. The oldest daughter, Noemi, taught me. I learned in 2 days. She gave me a medal because I did such a good job. And I got to keep the bike!

We had a chameleon that we found on the side of the road. Then we went to these people's house. They already had 2 chameleons. We put ours in their cage. One night, it got out. Now we don't have it.

We got satellite for 3 months. Now we get to watch all sorts of stuff on TV. (Now there's a big discussion each time it's turned on as to what we will watch. They all have to "get their fix" of TV for the year!)

Benin according to Fiona

As you know we went to Parakou, Benin. The oldest girl in the family we visited has a duck who had baby duckings. But the mama duck did not let us touch them. It was sooooooooooooooooooooooooo fun to see the baby ducks swim in the water. Now we are home and guess we got? Two BIRDS and they are dark blue Canaries. Their names are Ping and Pong because they fly all over the cage like ping pong balls. (Mama says we'll have to put a picture of Ping and Pong on here later because we haven't taken one of them yet.)

~Fiona

We had a great time !!!

We really did have a great time in Benin. That is where we went on our vacation. The family we visited got some packages, BIG packages or rather boxes, full of Christmas stuff. Well, they offered us some and we could choose what we wanted. It was AWESOME !! I did not know where to start, there where so many ornaments. So now we have loads of Christmas stuff. I hope the ornaments survived the long and bumpy trip. _ Elena

PS We just got back from a 10 day vacation in the north of Togo and Benin, visiting friends. We all had a great time and have many memories. More to come from the other girls later. ~the Editor

A Prayer Request

Hello.

This is a Stoll Girl, but not one of the 3 who normally write here.

I wanted to ask all of you to pray for Elena. She's had headaches and fever off and on for about a week now. She took malaria medicine and was better for a few days, but has started again. We took her to the Dr. today and he found a throat infection and prescribed an antibiotic. He also did a blood test and found that she still has malaria. Please pray that these meds will heal her and she'll soon be back to normal. We're going to visit friends in Benin (with a stop at other friends on the way) and she's afraid of feeling bad on our vacation.

Thanks,
The 4th Stoll Girl

That was awsome.

I, well we (the family) went to watch a movie at the Marines house last night. The Marines live at the American Embassy. The movie we watched is called Monsters vs Aliens. I liked it a lot. We got to drink Root Beer and Mt. Dew, which we don't usually get here in Togo and they gave us free popcorn. Bye, Elena !

Yeah, Its my turn. Finally !

Hey everyone ,
Finally its my turn. Well, Mama said that only one, (only 1!) girl should write on the blog each day. Well now I go. Yesterday we had to clean up our play room. We hate doing that (!) and it took, well I don't know how long. But it took too long, I can assure you. We actually did get it clean, and by the time we finished we all had a bad temper. I wasn't suprised. I'd best go and help with supper, um... mama what are we going to eat ? Oh well, I hope its something good. Bye for now !

It's Sydney's turn!

Hi, it’s Sydney here.

I like my life. How do you like your life? Is it fun? Mine’s sort of fun. ‘Cause it gets irritating from my sisters [they bother her], but I even like my sisters (Elena and Fiona) and I like my Mama and Papa (Kathy and Roger) [names typed by Sydney herself]. Do you like your family? My Papa goes to work and me and my mama and Elena and Fiona do school and stay home. I just play around. I’m learning my letters, but not always [because she doesn’t like to write them]. I played with my sisters today. That’s all.

Note: Brackets are inserted by the editor!

Fiona's thoughts for today

Quite a few weeks ago we got a video player. Only that it did not work at first, but praise the Lord it works now. Our dog Pip has problems with her feet and eyes. To me the new house is great. I love it. I am good at the recorder and I know some songs on it, but I don’t know the notes very well. I even make up my own songs. We’re gonna plant some seeds. I have something to tell you: I still wish I had glasses and I could fly.

Hello World

Hello world from the Stoll girls who have just started a blog. On here, we'll tell you all our thoughts and interesting stuff!

Elena, Fiona and Sydney