Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Heard Around the House #6

Silas had a bruise under his left eye, so we asked him what happened.
Silas - "A bear get me... in a whale's belly."
Then I went to wipe the cinnamon bun glaze off his face.
Silas - "Mama, don't wipe my boo boo off!"
I think he was proud of it!

The boys were in their bunk bed in the potty bus shooting at "elephants and bears"outside the windows with their new guns. Silas decided to start shooting at us in the RV.
Kiki - "Don't shoot me, if I drink water I'll leak."
Silas - "Go drink water!"

Kiki had a towel wrapped around her wet hair one evening.
Jonah - "Kiki, me like your hat!"

We were putting on the boys' pjs on our way to our destination one night. 
Daddy - "We're going to see some deer tonight."
Kiki - "Hurry, get your pjs on so that you can look for deer."
Silas - in a worried voice "No deer see me naked!" 

Jonah was rubbing his ear at breakfast.
Mommy - "Jonah, does your ear hurt?"
Jonah - "No!"
Mommy - "Well what's the matter with your ear?"
Jonah - a little troubled "Me got boogers in my ears."
He was talking about earwax. 

The boys know their mommy eats late night snacks.
One night on the potty bus Silas got up to go potty and saw me sitting on the bed. He stands there looking at me with a very serious face. 
Silas - "Mama, don't eat my cinnamon bun... ok?!" and then goes back to bed.

I have been explaining to the boys lately that they are twins. I regularly ask them what a twin is, if they are one, and who their twin is.
Mommy - "Silas, are you a twin?"
Silas - "Yes!"
Mommy - "Am I a twin?"
Silas - "No, you're a girl!"

After watching an episode of the Bible miniseries,
Silas - "I have something to tell you."
Daddy - "What?!"
Silas - very seriously "Jesus was not a pirate."
We later figured out that he was confusing 'pirate' with 'prophet'.

My home church had a bouncy castle and a blow up slide memorial day weekend for the kids after church. The slide was a big shark. (The boys kept calling it "Jonah's Whale"). It was huge, like two stories high maybe. I would be scared to go down a slide that tall and steep. Jonah and Silas are brave about different things. Jonah is usually the brave one when it comes to slides. Sure enough he didn't hesitate and with big kids bouncing him all over the place trying to climb the ladder, he made it! Then he didn't even stand at the top to build up courage, he just went down. It was mostly a free fall. His face was one of terror, but then when he landed he excitedly said, "That was a fast one!"

There was no way Silas was getting on that slide... he wouldn't even get close, but then one of the workers told him, "You can go with your brother." Jonah put his hand on his brother's shoulder and sweetly said, "You can go with me, Mani!" And Silas and Jonah did it together... 3 times!
{You can see Jonah comforting Silas}
I was so proud of Jonah for comforting his brother. He didn't rub it in at all that he was brave and Silas was scared. Silas is kind of like the most thoughtful twin brother ever, so I was glad to see that reciprocated in Jonah. 

Friday, May 24, 2013

We're Done With Furlough!

Woot woot! We visited our last church this past Sunday morning. That's 19 churches in 2 months. We are so thankful for everyone's kindness to us while we were on the road. 
{Conestee, SC}
It was great to see many familiar faces that have been so faithful to support us over the past 7 years. We are very thankful for both of our families for taking such good care of us and feeding all of us. Everyone turned their schedules upside down to spend as much time with the grandkids as possible, and we appreciated it!
We are so blessed and I don't want to miss that or any of us miss that in the business of our lives. As a family we are trying to make gratefulness a theme, to consciously make it a point to talk about all that God does in our lives and ministry and praise Him for it. To have the conversations with our kids now that they are old enough to understand so that they will recognize God at work in their lives and give him the glory for it. 
{St.Augustine, FL}
We ran into a couple missionaries that were on deputation. They have been going at it hard for months and months and I know want to make it to their fields soon. It made me go back and remember and be so grateful for God bringing in our support when we were on deputation. I'm thankful that those churches and individuals were so faithful to support us over the years. Anytime we lost some support for whatever reason God would immediately bring someone else or another church along that would take us on and more than make up for the lost. It all is really a beautiful testimony of how God just flat out takes care of His work. 
{The Petzels, who will be coming down in Oct!}
I was taking photos of all of our meetings and then about the time we started getting homesick I stopped, haha! Several weeks ago even Silas started telling us that he wanted to go back to his "new house". He said, "I'm going to go to my new house and play outside with my gun (they shoot bears from the top of their swing set) and you make me breakfast and then you call me (when it's ready), ok?!!!" I'm glad he misses being us. 
{Chestertown, MD}
The goal of this furlough was to present the pastors institute to all of our supporting churches... or at least many of them. We are in need of some startup funds to finishes the rest of the projects before the semester starts and also we were planning on scheduling some mission teams to come down. We did schedule several teams and received a couple other blessings which will be very helpful to our work. I will share those in future posts. 
Thank you to everyone who fed us, put us up in their home or in a hotel, and encouraged us along the way. Thank you for sharing our burden and passion for what God is doing in Petén. And more than anything else, thank you for your kindness to our children! 
Here are a couple more photos from the road. Seriously some of the nicest people you could ever meet are in these pics.
This couple has kids and grandkids on the mission field and they loved on us like we were their own!

Jimmy worked it out to where we got to stop and visit with my beautiful friends Becky and Cate in WV. 
Then in Ohio we got to spend a couple days with my friend Jeannie and meet her newest son Peyton!
{Thrifting!}
{After the creation museum!}
 We also got to see family I hadn't seen in years!
{My Great Aunt Maxine}
{My Uncle John}
Here we went fishing with Bob and Barb Walker, two great soul winners! I always feel honored to be in their presence.

We got to spend several days with Pastor Andy and his family! We are so thankful for them and their constant encouragement.
Thank you to everyone who invited us to their church and listened to what was on our hearts! May God bless you all!

So we are kissing all the hotels, suitcases, and Crackerbarrels goodbye and looking forward to home!


Just a couple more days at Kiki and Papa's house to soak up as much family time as possible, then we're off to Guatemala on Wednesday!

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Our Little Girl Turned One!

Eden's birthday was the day we left for Guatemala City (March 13th). This was Eden the morning of her birthday:
It was a long day on the road. Once we made it to the capital we stopped at a mall with a large play space and a Dunkin' Donuts. At least she got a sprinkle donut on her day! 
I can't believe that we have already enjoyed this little girl for an entire year! Her big personality is coming out now that she's a whole year old! 

She recently learned how to use her index finger to point at exactly what she wants, and she is very opinionated, I love it! She mainly points at food and is very vocal about how much she wants it.
The girl begs like a Beagle! She saw an orange (her favorite food) the other day and let out a yelp so loud it set off my parents' house alarm.
Here, she caught Daddy eating strawberries without her while he was driving the potty bus, and you know she got some! I can't think of anything that she has eaten that she hasn't liked and she has tried everything we have eaten lately. She is a really big meat eater, she eats more meat than our boys. 
She adores Jonah and Silas and wants to try and do anything they are doing of course! 
She doesn't cry about how rough they are either. 
{Oops!}
They love her just as much as she loves them! I think she is a prefect blend of them both. She's kind of particular like Jonah, but has Silas' sense of humor for sure!
She is also pretty fearless. I guess she has to be tumbling around with her brothers. 
The other night after arriving at our hotel, she fell asleep right in the middle of them wrestling. 
She so crazy, she likes to hand us Jonah's Hulk mask so we'll scare her with it. She'll jump back and then laugh and get us to do it again. Then she'll put it in front of her face and growl to scare us. She has an adventurous spirit. Here, she had gotten stuck in the cab of the potty bus after exploring.
The one thing she is completely terrified of is the Chic-fil-a cows! She hates those things. The cow we saw was a girl cow too, with a big bow on her head. Eden yelled at me to get her away from that thing and was trembling. So Hulk masks are cool, but giant cows are out!

I wasn't sure what our little girl would be like, but even amongst all of her brothers' trucks, guns, and swords she is turning out to be kind of a girly girl!
When she was helping me pack for the States, all my clothes were strewn all over my closet floor. She kept picking up the pink things to try and put over her head! Her favorite pair of shoes are her pink ones shown above, so I'm guessing she likes pink. 
She likes wearing this hat too!
She loves putting on my jewelry. 
We stopped to stretch our legs on a long road trip the other day and I didn't think I was going to get her out of this store! She loved all the beads and sparkly things. 

She loves playing in my makeup drawer, especially with the brushes.
She likes to brush her own hair and enjoys all of her bows.
 If she takes them out to play with, then she'll try to put them back in her own hair. 
{Her bow travel bag}
She loves looking at herself in the mirror. This morning she was playing in her suitcase and found her sunglasses, so she immediately walked over to the mirror to see how cute she looked!
She has just started being interested in dolls. She can say "baby" and then will hug and kiss them. She likes to sleep with her Raggedy Ann doll that my grandmother bought her before she was born. 
She loves bath time!
{Getting a bath in a hotel sink!}
She has this little scowl that she does when she's thinking... or when someone is taking her picture, haha! 
She also still has that wild leg thing like Jonah. 
{Napping on the potty bus}
Since she has been weaned, she has become a serious Daddy's girl!
Together these two are pretty irresistible!

Once we got to Jacksonville we celebrated her birthday with Papa, Kiki, & Becca!
And I made her a girly pink cake!
 Eden loved all the attention...
and she really wanted that cake!
Eden had a blast opening her presents! She liked us all watching her... funny girl!
 Her reactions were fun to watch!
Her brothers liked playing with some of her presents too!
She got a doll, cookie baking play set, jewelry, sparkly shoes, a sparkly bag, some girly stuff like a pink hairbrush and mirror, and a new ride. 
Can you tell she likes her new wheels?!
Here is a little clip from our day:
We are so thankful that God chose to bless our family with this precious little girl!
None of us will ever be the same!
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