Monday, July 27, 2009

Mexico!!!

On June 18th we left Eben and Kivi at Grandma and Grandpa's and flew down to Orange County, CA with Jasper and Opal - the two freebies. After a day at the Magic Castle (a super cool magician's mansion) we left the babies with Poppie and Nonnie and joined up with our church's Mexico mission team at the Long Beach airport.

After many failed attempts to cross the border into Mexico, we finally remembered to pray and God got us right in. Our Mexico experience was awesome! We stayed in a hotel in San Vicente, which we brought in our own military cots to sleep on - yes, in the hotel. There were roosters to wake us up every morning at 4 am. And it was so hot that we all made a special stop at a Home Depot before the border so everyone could buy fans - which basically just blew the hot air around the room. Oh well, it sounded like it was doing something.

Every day we would eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in this cutest hut:

And I fell in love with refried beans. We had them at every meal. I keep trying to make them and I'm failing miserably.

Our main goal while we were there was to build pig pens, a fenced garden, a chicken coop, plant an orchard, and erect a windmill to pump water to the afore mentioned things on a men's recovery ranch. I was on team garden, and Peter was the leader of the pig team.

Day one however, everyone ended up on Peter's pig team because he needed 50 some odd holes dug out of the clay/cement dirt for post holes and the rest of us had to wait for the back hoe to dig holes for our projects. After digging about 16 holes by hand at the end of day, no one thought we were going to finish our projects by the end of the week. But plans were changed (pounding rebar instead of digging post holes), the back hoe finished and God was good...and all of the projects were completed!!

We even did a little extra project, our Women Shed:

No boys were allowed in the building of the two Women Sheds and this whole thing was put together with one screwdriver! What? No one thought to bring more than one screwdriver? No. Oh yes, we had a drill, but it had no bits.

Here's Peter and his pig team in one of their three newly constructed hog shade things:

They also built a mommy/baby pig birthing suite and I helped run electrical wire around all the pens. Al Hall helped to test the shock factor of the electric fence.

And here's our whole team at the finished windmill:

We were able to meet some of the great people of San Vicente, go to church, play with the kids at the Casa (a home for women and their children) and at a migrant camp, and even spend an afternoon at a water park.
I know God is doing many great things in this part of Mexico and it was wonderful to be able to be a small part of it and share this experience with my amazing hubby. I loved seeing him play with the kids, work hard, be a great leader, and encourage others. He bought me a "going steady" friendship bracelet from a vendor outside our hotel the first day and he took me to ice cream every night. It's wonderful to serve God with such a great man.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Our June Garden

My garden goal for this summer is to find out what exactly I've planted and where. Because when winter comes and it's all gone I forget what's going to pop up and when. So I got my Gardening Journal, put on my long flowing dress, removed my shoes and sat on a blanket in the middle of my yard. In my head I was living in the 17th century, but I didn't have that beautiful of a dress on. And I mapped out our gardens or part of them. Each kid has their own garden, so far I've gotten done Eben's and Opal's. I also took pictures of what the plants look like so I can get excited in Fall of what's to come in Spring.
This is also the first year we've had a vegetable garden. It's the second year trying. Last year they all got eaten a day after I planted my precious seedlings outdoors. I don't know why, but I feel like if I don't do it from seeds, it's cheating. Which is weird, because I'm a self-proclaimed cheater. So far, we have had tons of lettuce, some beans, and it's looks like the broccoli, zucchini and eggplant will do well too. I think I got too late a start on the tomatoes. I should just cheat.
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Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Girl Party and Man Day!

Girl Party was June 5-6th and Man Day was all day June 13th and although we had awesome times...these were the only pictures that even proved we got together! How pathetic is that. And since I'm relying on this blog as my virtual "Notebook" of life, (Because I have the memory of a fly.) I probably won't even remember that these days existed. I'm a visual learner. Pictures. Not words.

So although it looks like all we did was play Guitar Hero and all the guys did was golf, that is not true. We had a great time, all us women, at our girly slumber party. We ate pizza. By the way, here's something I learned - 15 women do not eat 8 pizzas - they eat 2. We played games, made s'mores down at the fire, did pedicures, snacked, had Italian sodas, watched girly movies, and oh yes - talked, some of us until 4 in the am.

Here's my pic of Shannon belting out... a rock song (see I already don't remember) assisted by Christine on the guitar.

As for Man Day. I don't really know. I wasn't allowed to be there. I am not a man. But I know they had a kick in the pants. This is what I learned about Man Day:
-Denny's rocks for breakfast.
-Golf was great. Joe won the great golf hat contest.
-Everyone got "the slow cart" at the go cart races. Al and Chris schooled everyone. But technically, Rich won.
-Matthew fished all day in a cute boat.
-The jet ski sank. Al ran over Matthew's line.
-.08 is a crazy lot of alcohol to be the legal limit for driving home.
-Man Day turned into Boy Party sleep over.


Al and Jeremy - golf posers.

Thanks all you great Girls and Men for joining us. We had a blast!

Summertime!

A nice warm summer. A cool refreshing lake. And a Dada who's ready to jump in whenever you ask. How much more could a kid ask for?
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