Enjoying Summer Break with Velcro Toss and Catch!

  So, I guess it's safe to say our kids are thoroughly enjoying their summer break from school!  Interestingly, it seems that now that school is on break they are much better at being creative and playing together.

  On furlough, a family gave this set of Velcro Toss and Catch to our kids but I'd been keeping it packed away until a nice day like today!  The kids sure had fun with it!

Both of the kids developed their own pitching style - quite intimidating, obviously! 

YAY!!!!

Passport Photo Renewals

Well, it’s almost time to renew our kids’ passport photos, which of course means new passport photos.  I thought I’d let you see what I go through to try to get one good shot of both kids! (we try to keep it fun!)

Vala's Pumpkin Patch - Furlough Days

   Well, though our schedule has been very full with visiting our supporting churches, I thought I'd post some pictures and let you know that we are able to get out and do some fun activities once in a while.  

    We recently got to visit Vala's Pumpkin Patch near Omaha, NE.  Of course the kids loved it and we all had a great time!

  And what good would a pumpkin patch be without a pumpkin-eating dragon, right!?!!

Thought this was interesting: this is a string of all the pacifiers that they have found on the premises since 2002!

The kids also enjoyed playing all kinds of neat things including a giant spiderweb, slide, and bouncing pad!

 

Then we got to take a little train ride tour of some of the other parts of the patch.  They even had an old-west town set up for us!

Then they had this awesome machine: a mannequin stuffed pumpkins into the machine on one end and pumpkin pies came out the other!  Wow!  If this were real, I would pay whatever the price to get one! :)

Nice little signpost here in case you need directions to get to any major international city!

Wow! So many kinds of apples throughout the years!

 And finally we got to rest in a rocking chair!  I've always known we are "small" but this was extreme! :)

John 3:16 in Portuguese!

      Our kids memorized John 3:16 in Portuguese for their Sunday School class!  This is really a tribute to Tracy's patience and time spent to reach this goal!  I'm proud of all of them!

They Just Keep Growing....

Well, here's a little update on our chillins.  Omar got a chance to take a few pictures of the kids this past weekend, so here's a peek:  

Mahalia is about as ornery as they come - no REALLY - she has quite a stubborn streak in her that will hopefully one day be aimed in the right direction.  Until then....she's ornery.  

But she is fun, loving, and very, very girlie.  She LOVES getting dressed up with dresses,  hair bows, and bracelets.  

She loves her dollies, and drags them all over the house and yard, whether they like it or not :)  

Johnathan is growing up so much already.  He is his daddy's and my big helper, and his sister's protector.  

And he's getting to that "please stop taking so many pictures of me, Dad.  I'm only going to make silly faces for your camera now" phase. (As you can clearly see below.)

He is starting to learn his alphabet, and loves to "read" books all day.  

That is, when he's not outside riding his tricycle, aka: motorcycle.

By the way, if you were wondering, this is his "tough guy" look.  Try not to laugh be frightened.

Family Camp 2012 - Services

Here's a look at the services that went on during the week of Family Camp.

The theme of the year was "Passo a passo com Jesus" or "Step by Step with Jesus."

This is the main service for the adults with the Camp's special speaker, Pastor Marcelo.  He and his family are from a different state in Brazil, and they continually commented on how HOT Cuiaba is. (It makes us feel a little better about feeling so warm when the Brazilians complain about the heat too!)

During the morning services, the kids split up into different classes.  This is the 2-4 year old's class that Johnathan was in.  The teacher is holding up a card that says, "sin" in Portuguese.  Hmmm....I wonder if she's pointing that toward my son for any particular reason....

Here's Johnathan and his teacher working on a craft paper.

This is the "juniors'" class with their teacher.

Here is our co-worker Jeremy Lockhart teaching the young teen boys' class.

This is the young teen girls' class...

...And, the singles class.

For the evening service, everyone would meet together.  There were many musical specials before the preaching service would start.

Even though we still can't understand everything that is being said during the preaching time, we're able to understand more and more, little by little, "Step by Step."

Johnathan's 3rd Birthday

Our little man turned three years old on the Saturday.  Here are a few pictures from his special day.

Daddy hung some balloons from the carport.

One of the neighbor boys was pretty excited to have a couple of the balloons when Omar took them down later.  He even went back home and got "dressed up" for the occasion.  

I (Mommy) made a Suzy-Q cake for his birthday.  I normally make a separate little cake for the kids' birthdays (less ummm...."sharing" when they blow out the candles :)  So, anyway, our cake is the one in the background, and Johnathan's is the little one in front.  

We sang "Happy Birthday" to him in English and Portuguese. 

Here are his little friends that we had over to help celebrate the day.

He was pretty excited to open his birthday presents.  We had been telling him that he was going to have a birthday and turn three years old, but I don't think that it ever crossed his mind that he would get presents too!

This was definitely his favorite present.  Now he can stop riding pieces of wood and his sister's walker around the yard (yay!)

I think this was supposed to be a "Hey, I look pretty cool with my new wheels, huh?" pose. (Yeah, might have to work on that a little bit.)