Have you got your Hootcase packed?

We were sitting out on the patio eating lunch today, and LiAnne tells us that Peter Pan lives up in the sky. That is where Neverland is. (Can you tell what movie they watched last night?) So, she begins to explain how you can fly, and how Michael and Peter live in the house, but fly to Neverland. And about having your Hootcase packed to go. LiAnne can't pronounce her "s's" very well unless she really stops and thinks about it, so suitcase comes out Hootcase. Ok, when LiAnne tells the story it is just waaayyy toooo fuuuuny.

When Lancy was here in December, she brought her Hootcases, and then had to repack the hootcases in order to leave again in January.

Actually, both Taylor and LiAnne call them hootcases, and Richard and I have had some pretty good laughs over it.

It makes for some pretty interesting conversations around here when you stop and consider the speech problems of the three kids. LiAnne's is just a little kid that hasn't learned to pronounce all of her letters very well yet. Taylor's is from his cleft, and will take some real work to get over, and Janelle's is because she is going from Chinese to English, and she will, unfortunately, probably have a pronounced accent with her English. But it can be pretty funny.

On another note, we heard back from the doctors at Shriners yesterday, and Taylor is supposed to get brackets on his teeth right away. They apparently want to begin to move his front teeth around before they are ready to do his next surgery. They want to see him within a year, so we will probably need to make a trip to Portland at this end of this year, beginning of the next for him to see the doctors there. Janelle just got her's on earlier this month, so now we will have two in brackets. At least we can combine trips to the dentist and do two at once, so it will save me some trips (it is 45 minutes away in Tequisquiapan.)

Easter service tomorrow. I am fixing breakfast for 30-40 people for church. It will be a busy morning.

Ok, still no pictures, but I'll try to get some taken tomorrow.

HE IS RISEN!

Missing, but still in Action

I know that it has been a loooooong time since my last post, but there are reasons. I have this nice, new laptop that I just got in early November. It had been giving me problems....blue screens of death my son calls them....and three weeks ago it just shut down, and wouldn't start up again. A quick call to Dell, and it was a confirmed hard drive death. That meant sending the hard drive to the states, and having a new one sent down. Caleb thought that he could recover my folders from theold one, and that sounded good to me. He had a really busy week, though, and couldn't get to it right away. It did arrive earlier this week, but when I put it in the computer and started it up, somehow I messed up (who me, the mom to the computer expert?) and I lost all of the folders he had recovered. So, I am starting over again, sad about losing so much. Pictures are all on CD's, but I had downloaded a lot of digital scrapbooking stuff, and that is all gone.

I did use the main computer some during these weeks, but Richard uses it for work, plus has been doing our taxes, so I didn't get on much. But I did get other things done.....curtains for the living room, a good part of Lancy's quilt quilted, and a couple of books read.

School is going ok. Taylor loves to sound out words from cereal boxes, back of books, anywhere he can these days. Janelle is almost done with the 4th grade math book. There are days when things go well, and days when they don't. It is hard to figure out how she can do one problem well, and the very next problem she has no idea what to do, even though it is the same type of problem. Is logic something you can learn???? Sure would be nice to think that her logic skills would improve. We started with the 1st grade Science and Health books a couple of weeks ago. She reads the pages outloud to me, and writes down new words to look up. She is able to understand quite a bit. I was hoping to jump her up to the 4th grade books when these are finished, but looking them over decided that we would just go on the 2nd. It is just too big of a jump. We have made it one day shy of three weeks without a crying breakdown, so she is doing well.

I have had problems with my left lower arm since we were in October....tendonitis the doctor said. It is finally feeling about 90% better, when the same problem started in my right arm. That is much worse, since I use it so much. I am going to physical therapy a couple of times a week here in Bernal, and do feel that it is helping. But, have you ever tried to keep a house clean with two sore arms? I have tile floors that need to be mopped every day. Very hard to wring the mop out with out using those arms.

Hmmmm....what else is new around here? Lancy is really enjoying Thailand, we have the walls of the Sunday School rooms about 1/2 up, this weekend starts the two week Easter vacation here in Mexico, next Friday is the first day of Spring, so we can expect a few thousand visitors here in Bernal to "get their energy from the Pena". (We stay home that day.) Oh, and Amanda was accepted to go to Thailand with a Baptist group this summer for a few weeks, so she'll get to visit Lancy while there.

This is long enough for now, so I'll quit and promise some pictures for next time. Still don't have any pictures on my computer. It takes a lot of work to get a computer back in service after losing everything!

Another Quilt

Finished another baby quilt.....this time for our co-workers little boy....Zuriel. I loved the bright colors!

Safe Arrival

Just talked to Lancy, and she made it safe and sound....with luggage....to Bangkok.

A Slight Change in Plans

Lancy is on her way.....but two days late and going around the world the other way. When she got to the airport on Tuesday, United wouldn't let her on her flight because she just had a one way ticket. According to the Thai consulate, that was all that she needed because she had a 1 year visa, not the typical tourist visa. But...the Thai consulate would not contact United, and United would not contact the Thai consulate....so she was stuck.

Fast forward to today. Yesterday she bought a ticket to Cambodia so that she would have a ticket leaving Thailand. Today that was acceptable by United so she was able to get on the flight. Next problem---the flight from San Francisco to Bangkok was cancelled today.....so they re-routed her through Frankfurt.....Germany.....the other way around the world!

So, she is ON the plane now, heading first to Denver, then to Frankfort, then to Bangkok, arriving on Saturday, the 23rd at 6:30am.....9 hours later than she would have arrived on the original flight. That will be about 38 hours of traveling.....good thing she is young. She will be wiped out when she gets there, but will at least be able to say that she has been to Europe, eh???

Keep praying for her travel and her first days getting settled in Thailand.

Lancy off to Thailand

Our daughter, Lancy, is off to Thailand tomorrow! We are so excited for her! She graduated almost 2 years ago from the Word of Life Bible Institute in Argentina, worked there for a year, and is now off to Bangkok where she will be working with youth there. Please pray for her as she travels and gets settled in with her co-workers, who arrived last week. She has lots of new experiences ahead of her!

Happy New Year!

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year. Since the Chinese in our home outnumber the non-Chinese, we decided we would celebrate this year. OK, maybe not quite like in China, but with red lanterns, Chinese food and red envelopes of money for the kids. When MinMin saw the envelopes she said to the other kids, "Money". She knew exactly what was supposed to be in them. Of course, they may have been the only Chinese kids to receive red envelopes with Mexican pesos in them. We also put on some Chinese music during dinner, and MinMin sang along with many of them. Even Taylor got excited about the music. He sang along with a couple, like he remembered the music/songs from over 1 1/2 years ago when he lived in China.

Over all, the kids enjoyed themselves---that was the important thing!

Quilts

In my spare time, I work on quilts. Spare time---that is why these have taken me so long to do. MinMin has an orange bedspread, and LiAnne, pink. Their curtains are made of the same fabric as the quilts. MinMin must have asked me 20 times if I was making it for Lancy, and I told her the same number of times it was for her. I don't think she believed me until we put it on the end of her bed.

So Little Time Left.....

to help Love Without Boundaries win the $50,000 Facebook Challenge. Have you joined and given? http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/51591 It's easy! But hurry, only a couple of hours left.

January 31st

The month of January has just flown by. Here we are, just about an hour until February starts. Where does the time go???

I think that we are making great strides these days with MinMin. About a week ago, as she was leaving to go shopping with Richard, she came over to tell me good-by, and gave me a hug. That was a first. She has always been willing to give hugs to Richard, and also to Lancy and Amanda, but not me. Today she got frustrated with her math, and went to her room crying. I left her for a few minutes, then went in to tell her it was time to get back to work. I took her hand and pulled her up, and gave her a hug. She gave me a hug back, and off she went to work again. I can really see a great change in her in being part of the family, playing with Taylor and LiAnne, wanting to help, to be involved. It is so great to see a child who went over 12 years without a family, learning to be part of a family. Makes all of the work, patience, annoying habits and the like well worth the effort.

School Days

This year is my 18th year of home schooling! Wow, that is pretty amazing. It is sure worth the effort when you sit down with a little boy learning to read, and he quickly reads through the blends and three letter words. Taylor was so proud of himself this morning that he read through the list with no help! Last year he attended the local Christian pre-school to help him learn Spanish. The teacher tried to get him to write letters, but he had great difficulty trying to draw circles. His coloring was pretty much just scribbles on the page----inside what lines? I think that he just hadn't had any practice in holding a pencil or using crayons before he came home. Now, a year later, he is learning to write, and this boy has the neatest writing! He can write most letters very nicely--even the first day that he learns them.

MinMin is making great strides in math and English. We have been working on a lot of the math basics--making sure that she really knows them before moving on to new things. She works very hard most days.....Her English is coming along nicely, as well. She is talking more and more and getting her point across. There are still times that she doesn't understand something we tell her, but for the most part she is understanding.

LiAnne likes to do school for about 10 mintues in the morning....then she asks if she can have a break yet. That is fine with me....I know that she is picking up quite a few things just hearing what the other kids are learning.