Homeschool

As many of you know, I have been homeschooling our kids this year. This leaves our mornings pretty full and our afternoons free to do sports activites or grocery shopping or checking out part of the city.
Most of the time, the kids enjoy being taught from home, they especially like the reading times and any hands-on activities we do.
Here is Joseph holding a clay "B"attery that is the shape of a cylinder. Can you tell he had fun with this one?

Mexico City Fun

The whole family took a plane to the capital of Mexico to complete the process for our visas. While there, we wanted to visit some of the sites with the kids and meet up with other Mexico missionaries as well. We stayed with the Grecos who are in their 2nd term as Mexico missionaries. It was 10 times better than staying in a hotel! Thanks, Dave and Cheryl! We met with Peter and Delia Breit, Josh and April Amiot, and Ryan and Christy Thomas and also had a brief visit with the Gruetzmachers and Pam Frey.

We visited "Ciudad de Los Niños" (Kid City) which is an incredible miniature city located in a huge shopping mall (yet separate) made for children to earn and spend money, working at jobs and doing crafts and experiencing what it might be like to be an adult living and working in a city. The kids had a blast!

A different day we joined our friend in visiting Chapultepec Park - it is a huge area of the city that contains a zoo, monuments, museums, and a castle. We enjoyed walking through a few sections of the zoo (it's enormous!) and the kids got their faces painted. Enjoy the photos!

Happy Birthday, Sweetie!

En un día feliz, una niña nació, que se llama Rebekah, y que sea feliz . . .

On a happy day, a little girl was born named Rebekah, and [our desire] is that she may be happy . . .

Rebekah is 8!

I can't believe our daughter is 8! Thank you to all who called or sent notes or gifts to Rebekah - that made the day extra special for her.
I decided to start the day off with a little hot chocolate in bed for my little grown up girl - yes, it is cool enough in the mornings to enjoy something hot ;-)

Later she got to enjoy some cake at the restaurant of her choosing. She was thrilled to be sung to and to be given a delicious piece of cake. Do you know the tradition here? After everyone sings they chant "Mordida, mordida, mordida" - the means basically to take a bite of the cake (whether it is a piece or the entire cake). However, when you are taking that bite, "someone" pushes your head down so that cake ends up covering your face instead of just that little bite.

After a late lunch (usually eaten around 2 or 3 here in Mérida), we took the kids to track where they had a chance to celebrate once again. I had gotten some brownie mix from Sam's Club and made 3 batches. There were about 23 kids in the class, but when someone has food, everyone comes over to see if they can have some, too. So the 50+ brownies I made were gone in minutes! :-)

I'd like to post a video of the kids singing to Rebekah - it's a very cute rendition of "Happy Birthday." Maybe Dave and I will spend part of our Friday date night working on that and I'll include the words and translation, too.

Oh, and, if you're reading this, Allyn - Happy Birthday! Enjoy the photos!

Thoughts from a 4 year old mind

Sitting at the kitchen table after breakfast yesterday morning, Jonathan declared to me, "I don't want to grow up." Thinking this very interesting for a little boy who always wants to be bigger (usually the age of his sister or brother . . .), I probed a bit. "You don't want to grow up? Why do you want to stay little?" I questioned. He emphatically, yet somewhat in a whisper replied, "It's that . . . I don't want you to get old. I don't want you to die."

Wow - he was willing to stay little if he could just know that Dave and I would be around for him. At least, that's how I look at it. What big thoughts for such a little guy. I let him know that that I would continue caring for him and that nothing could really be done about getting older or when a person died.

I dreamed last night that the reason behind a person (kid) sucking his thumb was to "stay small." Don't think there's any truth to that but strange to have dreamt it - our Jonathan still sucks his thumb and although I think it's simply out of habit, maybe he's trying to "stay small."

Our kids say lots of deep, profound things. Wish I could remember them all.