Beach Birthday!

Julianna's 13th birthday is Friday and we gave her the option of a party or a day with a couple of friends. She chose to take a couple of friends to the beach, so we spent the day at the beach. We had a great time, until the end when Jesse stepped on a Sea Urchin and had several of the spines break off in his foot. He is hurting but we have his foot soaking in vinegar right now, hoping that will dissolve them. We had cupcakes and somehow the icing ended up all over Juls' face. :) Then we came home and had pizza and coke! Now we are all ready for bed and it is only 6:30. It's back to work tomorrow, we are still working on school and I'm still trying to catch up on finances  reports. Maybe I can stay awake until 8:30!

Happy 17th Anniversary!!

Yesterday was Canada Day and our 17th anniversary. It's hard to believe we have already been married 17 years. During those 17 years we have lived in Texas, Canada and the Dominican Republic. We have been through deputation twice and took a trip to Papua New Guinea. We have had many adventures and are looking forward to many more.

Today Stu and the girls left for camp. The girls love going to camp, although they really miss Camp YES.  They were so excited last week they were counting down the days. I know they will come home Thursday and fall into bed exhausted! As for me I am going to try to catch up on some office work while they are gone.

What a crazy Friday we had this week! It was one of those days where all kinds of things happened.  We had an electrician come over to install an air conditioner (Yes, we finally will have one room that we have air in sometimes) in our office. We have used this electrician many times and he is very careful and thorough, but he must have been having a rough day. First thing that morning he drilled a huge hole in the wrong spot, so he had to move over and start again. We later had to patch the hole and still have to paint it. Then they had to go get some parts that they were missing. When they came back they realized that some of the parts were the wrong size, so Stu had to go back out (in the Friday traffic) and get them changed. When he came back from that an hour or so later, the electrician pointed out that we had been given the wrong size A/C. We had paid for a 18,000 BTU and only got a 12,000 BTU. We are not sure why he waited until 5pm to point that out, but at least he finally did. So they had to take it down off the roof and go back to the store to exchange it. They finally made it back and after a few more small problems, finished installing it. Then because it was so late, the electrician called a taxi. After waiting around for a while, he finally decided to walk to the entrance and try to catch the taxi there. I'm not sure exactly what happened from there except that the taxi finally came and was mad that the electrician wasn't there and said he was going to sit at my gate until I paid him! About the same time a bucket caught fire in our backyard, thanks to my boys, and Stu had walked around the corner and I had no keys to lock my front gate! It may not seem very chaotic in writing, but it was a crazy day.

Last Saturday we celebrated Delayna's 15th birthday with a Quince ( a tradition in Spanish cultures). We didn't do it up as big as some do, but we had a nice party. Stu did a nice service and presented her with several gifts that had special meanings. Afterwards we had food and games and cake with purple and black icing that turned everyone's mouths black. :) She looked beautiful and had a great time. Her only disappointment with her birthday this year is that she hasn't received any cards in the mail yet. Every mail day she runs in and grabs the mail to look for cards. I keep telling her they usually come late here, but she's not sure about that.

Juls' birthday is coming up on the 13th of this month, she will be 13. She chose not to have a party this year, instead she is inviting two friends over for a special day at the beach.

Mail Day!

There is no mail service here in the DR,  but we are blessed to have Agape Flights. They fly our mail in every Thursday. The boys are learning the days of the week and they know Wednesday as church day and Thursday as mail day. We are so thankful for Agape Flights and the service they provide us. We were honored to host the pilots this week. When they fly in on Thursdays they spend the night and fly back to Florida on Friday morning. The missionaries here take turns hosting them. My kids love having the pilots here,  but the boys were a little confused last night. They were expecting the pilots to bring them lots of mail since they were staying at our house. I really don't know why they thought that, but they kept asking where their mail was. :) Thankfully they at least got a box of Goldfish that I had requested(Agape also picks stuff up for us and brings it in) , since we can't get them here and they are my boys favorite snack!
Thanks guys for spending a day away from your family to bring us our mail!!!

War on Rats!

Well, since I have officially declared war on rats the body count is up to 4 plus the one that I let go. I think in my last post we had found one dead and one spotted, but not caught. A few days later we found a dead one in the front yard, that was easy! Then we were doing some cleaning in my craft room and when the bottom drawer of my dresser was taken out a rat came running out. Stu and a guy that was here working on my washer shut themselves up in that room until they chased the rat out and killed it. Yay, another one gone! Then last night while Stu was gone on visitation, before dark, I went down to the kitchen to make sure everything was cleaned up and I heard something. I slowly started looking around and then I saw it! I huge rat on top of my stove! Gross!!! I quickly walked outside with the heebie jeebies!  I saw my neighbor out, another missionary, and asked if he wanted to chase down a rat. He came in and tried to find it but never could, so he set up a slue trap by the stove and blocked all the other ways out. When Stu got home we went on the attack! We brought in Myra, our German Shepherd, (who was actually a big chicken) and shut all the doors. Stu then started banging on the stove and pulling it apart to try to find the rat. After probably 10 minutes, the rat finally ran out and toward the living room where me and Juls were standing. I'm ashamed to say I took off screaming and running for the stairs. I came back down and Stu started flipping couches over and pulling everything out from the walls, as I stood guard by the stairs. :) We checked everywhere, banging everything and it seemed the rat had disappeared. Then I saw it! It had been hiding up  on a ledge under the table and had finally come down. After running back and forth for a few minutes it ran to the top of one of my dining room chairs and stood there on it's hind legs looking for a window to escape out of.  That made me think of every rat movie I had ever seen where the rat always seems to outwit the person hunting it. I think I will ban those movies from our house now. :) Anyways, it finally ran back into the kitchen with all of us chasing it and thankfully got stuck to the glue trap. Stu put it out of it's misery and got rid of it. He immediately wen to the store and bought about 10 more glue traps.
So now, we were up to a body count of 4. We checked all the traps this morning and hadn't caught anymore until lunch time...
This is what I found!

He was such a cute little rat that I decided to let him go!!! :)
So the war continues...

Rats!!!

We have still been crazy busy trying to catch up! We finally have all of the kids school work so they have been working hard at that everyday. I have been teaching the boys which has been a challenge. First of all, my talent is not teaching! Second of all, Jesse, well, let's just say he is a bit of a challenge. He can not sit still and will not focus and stops every 30 seconds to do something or check something out or ask a question about something totally off subject or pick up his pencil which he knocked on the floor. I think you get the picture. One day I was so frustrated because he would not say any of his letters or read any blends. Stu walked in and asked what was wrong, so I started to tell him but decided to show him instead. So I had Seth read through a blend ladder, he did it perfectly. Then we went to Jesse, who had not even got one letter right all morning, I told him to read the blend ladder and he read through it perfectly also! Obviously Stu couldn't figure out why I was frustrated. So now I know that he knows it and can do it when he WANTS to!
Speaking of Jesse, we took the kids to a new Wendy's here with a nice indoor playground (hard to find nice ones here). He was playing and he stood in front of the slide as a Dominican kid came down. The kid, in Spanish, told him to move. Jesse stood there, not moving, with a big smile on his face and said "si" (which means yes). So the kid punched him in the face. Poor Jesse hadn't understood what the kid said and thought he was doing good by answering in Spanish. :)

Doesn't he make you think of Dennis the Menace?

"Toothless Wonder"
He is actually missing two now, I just didn't take another picture.

Besides school and catching up on paper and office work, we have waged a war on rats! We started seeing evidence of them in our house and so we did some cleaning and put some poison out. A few days later we found a dead one in the school room, it was as long as my hand without the tail. Good Riddance! Then last night the boys were downstairs and started yelling, "a mouse, we saw a mouse!". I went down and couldn't find anything but a while later Juls was downstairs and I heard her start screaming, "a rat!". She had seen a rat in the kitchen longer than her had without the tail. So when Stu got home, he checked it all out and couldn't find it. He fixed a hole in the screen that we suspected it had been coming in and he shut the windows. This morning when I went down, it had already chewed another hole in the screen! Thankfully with the window shut it couldn't get in. So we are hoping to kill a few more of those in the very near future. I have been watching my step when I go down in the mornings. I will win this war!!!

Little Boys

On Sunday nights I teach the 3-6 year olds. It is a bilingual class since mine and Joy's little ones don't speak much Spanish yet. So for the past few weeks I have had a new little boy in there who is about 5 years old. He is very cute, but very talkative! The other night was a very hectic night in class, I had a class full of kids and was having a bit of trouble keeping up with them all. It was one of those nights that I felt like I would rather be somewhere else (admit it, we all have those days). Then this little boy walks up to me and starts whispering in my ear...."Tu eres la mejor profesora en todo el mundo" (you are the best teacher in the whole world). Of course my heart melted and I realized I was right where I was supposed to be.
Here at home, one of my sweet boys had quite the experience today. Seth and Jesse were playing and Jesse accidentally kicked Seth in the mouth. He hit him right on his loose tooth and it came out, and Seth swallowed it. When he came up and told me, I didn't believe him at first because Delayna had been teasing him about losing it while he was eating and swallowing it, so I thought he was joking. But, no, he really did swallow it. :)

School

I started the boys in Kindergarten two weeks ago and was not looking forward to it. It has been going ok, but yesterday Jesse was having a rough day. He couldn't seem to concentrate or do anything right. He kept getting frustrated and upset, and then I would get frustrated and upset. At one point I guess he couldn't take it any more and he burst into tears and said, "I want my Nanny!". It was so sad and cute at the same time. :)
We were hoping that Delayna's school work would come in our our mail flight yesterday, but it didn't. She now has another week with no school and is getting further and further behind. Please pray that it comes in next week. We are not looking forward to doing school all summer, but I guess it could be worse. Although I am trying to figure out how it could be worse. :)