Good Friends and Good News

(this first part was written a long time ago. I have just been too busy (or lazy) to post in a long time.)
Well, today we got a care package. We have actually gotten a couple of them. The first few were from my mom. Then, Susan, from CBC, sent us this amazing package with clothes, playthings, first-aid stuff, I mean a ton of stuff. It was like Christmas opening it up.

Well, today we got a little box with 4 little Easter toys for the kids. Oh, my gosh, they are so cute! (I can't find what I did with the photos, so I will post them another day)

There are 2 chickens and two eggs, one of each for each of my beautiful kids. They love them. BoyD is taking a nap and wanted to sleep with his chicken. He has decided that one of them is a rooster (although it still has his egg) and the other is the hen. It's nice to have friends, isn't it?

We have had a few problems with the house. The paint is chipping all along bottom of most of the walls. BabyM's room has large chunks of the paint missing, and we have mold/mildew problems all in our kitchen cabinets. The owners came by today and checked it all out, and this Thursday, they will be starting the repairs. YEAH! Oh, and our pila leaks, but they are going to fix that, too. I'm so relieved.

Well...we're going to try this again. I'm pregnant! I am 7 weeks and feeling a little crappy. I mean, this is my third kid, so preggo sick is nothing new. I am actually so incredibly thankful that I don't feel as bad as I did with BabyM. I mean, I didn't get off the couch and I didn't get my face out of the bowl for over 3 weeks. I finally had to take a pill ($25 each) made for cancer patients so that I could eat a little protein. I lost 13 pounds in 2 weeks! Now, I am just generally nauseated all the time, and very tired. I get really winded easily, and I can't stand up very fast w/o feeling like I'm gonna pass out. I am eating like every 1-2 hours so that I don't get really nauseated, and overall, it is working. I can function for the most part. I am having a hard time dealing with left-overs. The kitchen is shaky ground for me. I have an incredible husband that cooks and takes care of me.

They have these new memory cards (or maybe it's the cameras) that can wirelesly download photos from your camera to whatever folder you want on your computer! You just have to have that blue tooth technology! If I ever do a techno upgrade, I want that. I mean, that is so cool. Just to let you in on how behind I am, my cell phone takes no photos nor does it have a color display. And it's not because the technology isn't available here. I am just turning into an old person.

Our neighbors lent us season one of Little House on the Prairie. Oh my gosh! Why can't we get back to that. I don't mean living like that, their lives were incredibly difficult. I mean, having that kind of thing on TV. There is NOTHING that wholesome on TV any more. You have to watch PBS Kids before 9am to see something that is not on some level offensive. Oh, I do long for those days. When Andy Griffith, Little House on the Prairie, and old school Star Trek were the prime time entertainments. I am grieving that a little. Even if there is a show that is OK to have on while my kids are in the room, the commercials are so horrible, they should be rated pg-13 at best.

We (Kelley, the kids, Brandon, and I) went to visit Jacaltenango. It is a little town about 5 hours from here, up towards the Mexican border. Kelley taught a little art workshop. The 25 people from the church who attended loved it and did great work.

This is the kids working on their project and us explaining some stuff. The next photo is Kelley, Brandon, and Pablo (one of the Lopez family kiddos). The view behind them is Mexico.


This is the Lopez family. They are from the Xela area, and moved out there to be missionaries to the community. BabyM made a friend with the cat, and BoyD was obsessed with the rooster. The very loud rooster that we heard all night long. It was funny, BoyD will pick up all manner of insects, but was afraid to pick up the kitten.


The first picture was where BoyD slept. Or napped on and off all night. The next picture is their kitchen. It is basically outside.

We went to see the Mayan ruins near Huehuetenango. they are super cool and considered small. The little people on the top of the one on the left are my family. That gives you an idea of the size.


Precious BabyM is now a climber.


Kelley is an artist and painted this super cool palm tree mural in BoyD's room. It looks so fantastic.

That's enough for today. I don't get much time to blog, so I have to vomit all the info at once!

So Much to Say

So much to say, so little time.

Spoke at that women's meeting. It was so fun and I loved it. I would love to do that more often.

I cooked for the pastor's prayer meeting at our house. That was fun, but I hate spending that time in the kitchen when my kids want to play. Especially when we all had to be in the kitchen and be quiet while the pastors prayed. Next time I will make a casserole or something the night before.

After reading "Snuggle Puppy" by Sandra Boynton several times to my kids, I made chocolate chip cookies this afternoon for them. So fun to bless them like that.

It is so great to be out of school for the semester. I have nap times and night times and early mornings to do things that I want/need to do. Laundry, workout, pray, nap, pay bills, bake cookies...

My ladies Bible Study is back on after a couple of weeks off. I say off, but really, the people that said that they were coming wouldn't show up. That's Guatemala. It's hard not to take it personally. I mean, maybe I should, but they showed up today! :)

We finally found sand for the BoyD's sandbox. It cost $40 to fill it. Yikes! At leaste we are getting to play outside.

Rainy season has started. It rains every day. Well, almost everyday. It hasn't rained so far today, but it will rain tomorrow. Usually it starts pretty soon after lunch.

We bought a new vacuum. That was a really hard decision, because we don't just have a ton of money laying around, yet our other vacuum had to pass over an area 2 or 3 times to pick up the obvious dirt. With a dog, a cat, and 2 little kiddos, I demand clean rugs!

We bought it, and after the rugs had been vacuumed with the old vac, I used the new one. The folllowing pictures are the results. I vacuumed two rugs that are this size:
These are two photos of the dirt that this vacuum picked up.

This is AFTER they had already been vacuumed! So, all that to say, I am ok with our purchase.

This last saturday morning, we took the kids to our little park in our condominium to play baseball. It was so fun and so cute.

Here are some pics. BoyD had a really hard time remember to run to all the bases and then run home. He just wanted to run. It was great. Too bad there is no little league here! We'll just have to have our own.


Ok - going to go eat a snack and go to bed. Hopefully I'll be back sooner rather than later. I actually have a ton that I want to write about.

Ok - I wanted to post some photos of BabyM's room. I realize that her name is on the wall, but it won't show up on any search engine or anything.

This first is a broad shot of the wall:On the left are two of BabyM's dresses from when she was really little. In the middle is her name spelled out in cloth letters hung on a length of twine with clothes pins. (I will be getting some smaller ones soon) Under that is a painting by my sister-in-law, Denise. She is an incredible artist. She also did the treasure map painting in BoyD's room. On the right is a picture of a paper doll set. Her crib bedding in doll dresses.

Another view of above:
This is a close up of Denise's painting:

Ok, below is a close up of the cloth letters. I bascially cut out letters that I printed from Word, glued them to a cereal box, cut those out, and hot glued the fabric to the cardboard. Then is a shot of the paper doll picture.

Both these dresses and the paper doll print above are hung on some wooden drawer pulls that I found in a hardware store and covered with fabric. The hangers are ugly pastic ones, so I covered them with ribbon until I could find some others. I actually found some metal ones today that Brandon is going to spraypaint either silver or white. I'll then tie a little bow around them.

The best part is that aside from the painting and the print (both were gifts), I spent like $6-$8 on the whole thing. When I get back from my trip, I will finish the other wall, and post some more pics.

Finally, here are my sweet babies! BabyM just woke up (look...she is looking fatter!) and sweet BoyD sleeping with Brandon's boyhood stuffed dog.

Well, I don't consider myself very good at decorating, but this was one of those rare occasions when it turns out even better than I had imagined it. Even BabyM likes to be in her room better now. Any ideas on what color we should paint that wall? I am thinking some shade of green. We'll see.

More later:

Just an update.

I am almost finished decorating BabyM's room. The walls were totally bare until today. We've been here a year, and she hasn't had one picture on her wall! Oh, well. I will post tomorrow the photos of her room. I am so excited. There is still more to do, but it will have to wait a week or so.

I leave to go spend some time with my mom this Sunday. Me and the kids. Without Brandon. That will be weird! I mean, he has been gone from the house for a day or two, but I've never traveled for 5 days without him.

When I get back, I will have a week to prepare for the women's meeting. I will be teaching. I have like 45 minutes or so to share. These are pastor's wives, and there were 100 or so invited. So we will have anywhere from 25 to 100+. I am told I am supposed to teach on how to be a pastor's wife. WHAT?? I mean, what do I know about that??? I am a little overwhelmed. I am not a pastor's wife. I am not guatemalan. I don't have any idea what these women deal with. I have the impression that the pastors want me to teach their wives this.

Anyway, more on that later. Moore photos of my kids as well. I think that those photos might be the reason that many of you read this blog! Well...that's why the grandparents read it.

I went to the orphanage today. That is going really well, except that they are totally disorganized. I was supposed to work with 11-13 year olds, but when I got there, they were not there. And the other groups were working on their homework. I will go back tomorrow. I wish I could spend more time with those kids.

Ok...going to bed.

Big drinks and guns.

Ok. It's time to post some pics. Really don't have any stories to tell today. Just that I finally finished a 17 page paper regarding the revelation of God in prophesy, dreams, and visions. Whew! So glad that is over. Now I can go back to being a house wife and get some stuff done. This is sweet BabyM (who is eating great, by the way!) drinking a monster tea from Burger King. I tried to give her a drink of carbonated orange drink, and she just makes this awful face. She loves iced tea, though.

Time to cut bangs. That cup is half her size!

The other day, the kids wanted to play in the rain, so we took off thier clothes, put on their rain coats, and let them play. It was a little too cold, so BabyM was suffering a little. She was torn, because when I was trying to bring her inside, she wanted to stay out, but she kept shivering and crying out. I finally did the parenting thing and brought the kids into a warm bath. BoyD was super disapointed. The cold didn't faze him and he wanted to keep playing.
This is babyM and Glady's grand-daughter hugging. Well, BabyM is trying to give her a kiss, but she wants none of it. That little girl is about a month older than BabyM and so much bigger.
BabyM got to eat...well...she got to disolve a guatemalan cookie which is basically hardened pink meringue thingy. What you can't see in the picture, is the little pink handprint on the couch beside me.

And this is my precious GQ son. I think he knows how handsome he is. This kid asks questions all the time. I mean, why is his favorite word. The cool thing is that he aks important questions. Like about God and faith and life and death.

I must tell one story. My son is a Scott boy. We were watcing the last part of Jurasic park 3 and there was one dinosaur attacking the group of people and BoyD asked "where is their gun?" I don't know if I am proud or a little sad that my son thought of guns when the dinosaurs attack.

Anyway, I will be travelling back to the states with the kids to spend some time with my mom on mother's day. After that, I will be speaking at a women's meeting of pastor's wives. I can't believe that I am going to be doing that. Please start praying for that now.

Sick of Diarrhea.

BabyM has it again. 3 days of diarrhea and not eating. Remember the story of her pooping in the tub? Actually, I don't remember if I blogged about that one. She pooped in the tub, and although I was in the bathroom with her, it took me about 5 seconds to notice and she might have put bathwater in her mouth. I mean, I didn't see her do it, but she puts a lot of things in her mouth, so I wasn't sure.

It appears that she did...or she put someone's poop in her mouth, because she has another infection. Thankfully there is a lab just down the street, and we didn't even have to make a dr. appointment. It is a little routine by now so I just called the doc and we picked up the lab order, delivered the poop and the results of the tests, and called him back to find out what she needed to take.

I am really tired of this battle. I don't know if we are going to be battling this as long as we have kids, as long as we live in a 3rd world country, or what. And I am also sick of hearing how some babies are just small, and don't worry so much, and she'll eat when she wants to, and "my baby was the same way." Unless you have lived in a 3rd world country where your baby has had chronic diarrhea and therfore anemia and being (according to the doctor) grossly underweight, you don't understand the stress when your baby won't eat for 3 days. Or when you don't have to change a diaper more than 2 times a day b/c she won't drink anything either.

Don't get me wrong. She really is fine. She has been eating fairly well since we got back from the states (in Feb), yet she just can't seem to get ahead on her weight. I don't even want to know what she weighs now. It will just depress me and there is nothing I can do about it. Every couple of weeks she has something new (a cold, a sore throat, we are travelling, diarrhea, teething) and doesn't eat much. We can't even get an accurate reading on her weight, b/c she loses every time one of these things happen.

But she's beautiful and fun and charming.

She is also super fussy, which makes sense since she can't be feeling all that well.
She rubs food in her hair when she's finished eating.
You can point to her and in a very serious voice demand "Be cute!" and she smiles and acts very demure and sweet.
When we sit down in her chair in her room before naps and night time, she points to her nightstand and says "boo k" while sighning book with her hands.
When I take her clothes off (for whatever reason) she says "I wan batch" which means that she wants a bath.
"unch" means she wants a drink, "bah" with her tongue sticking out at the end means "ball." She even says "I wan datch" or "I wan ditch" which is "I want that" and "this" respectively.
She sings the ABC's along with her leapfrog toy (all the letters are variations of eh, ah, ot, oot, it, aht).
She also dances by sticking out her rear end and sort of bouncing.
Anytime anyone claps, she claps, and she throws a monster fit if she doesn't get what she wants. If she is tired, she will lay down on the tile floor, and she startles big time if you "catch" her doing something she knows that she shouldn't.
She loves to "talk" on the phone and she loves to play with BoyD's dinosaurs and race cars.
She just copies him and plays with them like he does.
She also "steels" things from people and then tries to hide them under her arm when confronted.
She's a sneeky little booger that likes to get scared (like I hide around a corner and say "boo" when she comes into view.)

Anyway, keep praying for her.

Hey all! I just wanted to post a quick update on our weekend conference with CAM. First of all, it was so much cooler than I had anticipated. Not that I thought it would be bad, I just wasn't looking forward to traveling the 4.5 hours to and from the city, sleeping away from home, not getting to do my to-do list, and sleeping all of us in one room.

Here we all are in the courtyard. Except BabyM was not looking at the camera:


It was actually so much fun. We are on a team with 5 other couples. They are all so incredibly awesome! I mean, we have so much fun just being around all of them. There is one couple who have been on the field for over 50 years. One couple have been here for almost that long, and the husband's grandfather gave the gospel to the Mayan's in the area in which we live. Another couple got here around the time that we did and are retirees that run the CAM retreat center! Poor them! :) Another couple is living out in the boonies running a camp, and they have made some serious creature comfort sacrifices. Finally, there is a couple with 4 young kids that live in a village that has no grocery store! They shop completely at the market, and have to take a boat ride to get to a store. We are in the company of greatness! We laugh, play games, and just chit chat. It was so fun to get to spend time with all of them.

Aside from that wonderfulness, we had a few setbacks, as always happens on road trips with little ones. First of all, we left BoyD's tag (his blanket that he sleeps with and holds while he sucks his thumb) at home. BIG mistake. Friday night he didn't go to sleep until 11, and that was after waking BabyM up several times and Brandon pinning him down on the bed until he finally wore out.

Then, Saturday night, he went to bed fine, but started throwing up at 11:30 every half hour until 5:22 am. I mean, poor baby, he would just start throwing up while he was still asleep and I would have to pick him up and hold his little head over the bucket. He would say "no more! No more!" when he was only half way done and he would fall back asleep before his head even hit the pillow.

Sunday, he did great, didn't take much of a nap and didn't eat much, but was otherwise fine!

Then, Monday, on the drive back, BabyM got car sick and threw up all over herself and her seat. It ended up taking us about 6 hours to get home, including major traffic leaving Guatemala city.

We did get home and I drove for the first time in the city and on the way home from the city. Brandon was driving our "new" car and I followed in the minivan.

We now have a 4 wheel drive Honda Passport for Brandon to drive when he goes into the out into the boonies! We are totally pumped about it! Check out Brandon's blog to see more.


Ok...very soon I am going to post a challenge. Maybe in a couple of days, so check back.