Taylor's Spelling List

Taylor is so funny at times---well, most of the time. He is working on his spelling list of "ing" words this week. His favorite word....singing....because it is spelled
S----ING----ING. He thinks it is so funny that it is ing, ing. Ok, you probably have to hear HIM to think it is funny, but since you can't, I guess you'll just have to believe me that it IS funny!

Tortilla Making Day

Today, instead of the regular ladies Bible study, we got together to make tortillas. I wanted to learn to make them by hand, and most of the ladies had never done it either. No need to when you can buy a kilo for about 75 cents, hot and fresh every day at the tortilla shop. We also made salsa in a molcajeta--a stone for grinding up the ingredients. Another thing that most of the ladies had never done. We had fun, and at the end made picadas for dinner.

Knees and Boys

I bought a package of iron on patches YEARS ago to patch the boys pants. Never needed them---until now. Below are some examples of the knees of Taylor's pants. I was taking them off of the line today, and realized that on EVERY one of his pants the right knee is out, and the left on a number of them. Most of these pants are only 3 or 4 months old--we bought them when we were in the states in November. I might need to buy stock in Levi's....








Come to think of it, maybe the two older boys never needed knee patches because for the first years of their lives they never wore long pants. We lived in Bolivia, Colombia and Panama, where a cold day was 75 degrees, and one NEVER needed long pants!

Dentist Visits

We make trips about every 2 weeks over to Tequisquiapan (45 minutes) to visit our dentist. Janelle has had braces for a year now, and should be pretty much done by June. The dentist was showing me the before and after pictures last week....she is pretty pleased with the changes so far.

Taylor was supposed to have a retainer from about last September, but the first couple would last a couple of weeks and then break. Well, they didn't just break, but he seems to have chewed on them during the night and would break off the wires that held them in. Since we were gone in November and December, we didn't get a new one. Last week the dentist put in a retainer, but not one that is removable. We are hoping that there won't be any problems with this one, and it will do the job it is designed for...stretching out Taylor's mouth so that he can have surgery later this year or sometime next year. He still needs a bone graft to attach his front teeth to the rest of his teeth.

Happy Valentines Day, Presidents Day...what else?

I'm always amazed at people who change their blog for every holiday, and write something everyday. I'm not sure how they do it. Valentine's Day has come and gone--its not something we celebrate much. Once you leave the US, many of the holidays that are celebrated there are not known or celebrated elsewhere. Have to admit, though, that the commercialism has been creeping in here too, and there are lots of candies, teddy bears and the like that are sold--more and more each year. I didn't even think about it until the last minute, when the kids realized that there were heart crafts in their school craft books that we hadn't done.

We did have a dinner for adults at church on Saturday night. We had it downtown at Juan and Cesy's restaurant. There were 16 adults there, and we had a great dinner and a nice time of visiting.

Clowning Around

LiAnne got face paint for her birthday back in September. She loves to have someone paint their face--either her or someone else. Here she is with a nice, big smile with dad.

Kansas Work Team

This past week we kept busy with a work team from Kansas. We worked everyday in Tequisquiapan, on the church and pastors house there. The Nixa work team that came down last October began the work by putting up the outside wall. This group worked a lot on foundations and the first walls of the church/house. They were able to get a lot of work done. Richard kept busy at the job site.

I did the cooking for the group--feeding about 25 people lunch and dinner everyday. Nancy did the breakfasts. The group stayed with families in Tequis, but we drove over everyday (about 35 minutes), so I didn't want to have to get three kids up and try to get there in time to make breakfast.

I had the kids do their school work every morning, then they went down to the job site. Janelle helped here and there with the work, while Taylor and LiAnne had a fun time playing in the sand pile.

It was a good week, but we were tired by the end and glad to get back to normal here at home.

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Here are the weekly pages I have done of a picture a day in our lives. More coming.....If you double click on the picture it will open up full screen to be able to see it better.

Chinese New Year