Power's On!!!!!!

Our landlord just called, our power is on!!!!!!  Thank you, Jesus!  And thanks for all your prayers!  Aaron just went to scope it out and we'll head home in the morning!  Yay!

I just had to add this....you know how you may find a spider on the wall you need to kill?  Well, last night we found a lizard on our wall.  A small chameleon, it almost looked transparent on the wall and had big suction-cup looking feet.  Um....yeh.  We tried to catch it so we could put it outside (too cool/cute to kill) and couldn't, they are too fast!  So we slept all night knowing there was a lizard in our room.....(big shiver indicating heebie-jeebies!)  LOL  

Hurricane

Wow!  What an experience!  Our first hurricane is over and we are all fine and our home has no damage, just no power!

We went to bed Tuesday night and it was kinda windy and rainy.  We woke up Wednesday morning and it was very windy and rainy, to the point that you couldn't have gone out and driven around so we were committed to staying in our place and praying for the best!  At 10:15am our power went out and then as the day progressed, from about noon/1:00pm til about midnight, it was very scary and stressful!!!!  The winds were so strong and the rain was sideways.  Our biggest concern was the wind blowing our windows in but thankfully the majority of the winds blew against the shortest end of our mobile home where there was one small window.  Around evening time, the winds changed and came from the other direction but thankfully again it was against the opposite shortest end.  We were glad we stayed instead of leaving b/c a couple of our windows leaked and we rigged up a system to catch the water.  One window was over our couch, so it would've gotten pretty wet if we weren't there.  But we stayed b/c our landlord said our place had survived other hurricanes just fine and they were only calling it a category 1 up until it had hit land, by that time it was a category 2.  The problem ended up being that it was such a slow moving hurricane.  So it just sat over us basically and kept pounding us for hours!!!!  It was so stressful and tense all day b/c when the big "squalls" would come (really huge gust of wind and rain), my whole body just tensed up and froze.  It's funny, I woke up this morning (Fri) and my abs were really sore and I was thinking that's so weird I wonder what I did for them to be sore.  Then the thought crossed my mind of all the tensing up I did all day long!  

I remember waking up Wed night at around midnight and it was still raining and it was still a little windy but their were no more squalls.  It felt so peaceful finally.  Then at about 5am I woke up and it was just drizzling a little, no wind at all.  It was the most peaceful sound after hours and hours of being slammed by huge winds!  We could feel the whole place moving at times.  

I have never prayed so much and for so long in my life!  God protected us and spared us any damage!  I felt so incredibly grateful and full of peace and love when we woke up Thurs morning and it was over.  

It wasn't too bad being without power on Wed b/c it was only about 75 degrees out and for here right now, that's cold!  LOL  But Thursday morning the sun came out and WOW our place became a sauna!  We went right back up to our usual upper 90's to 100 degree weather!  Most of our windows don't have any screens (which is gonna be our next request to be improved with our rent money!!!!) and the mosquitoes were feasting with all the water around so we couldn't open the windows.  Aaron took me and the boys to a motel in Brownsville (1/2 hour south of us, they already had power back up) and today he headed back up to Harlingen to help our landlord clean up his yard (he had tons of downed branches everywhere).  We hadn't showered in 2 days and it felt so good to do so!

I guess the area's been declared a disaster area and FEMA has headed down to help out.  We saw rescue teams with boats in some areas.  Very flooded!  Lots of neighborhoods have completely flooded streets.  We drove around a little and it is a sight!  

I thought of Katrina several times and thought about how horrible of an experience this was for me and how for them the hurricane and damage was WAY, WAY worse and I just couldn't even imagine!  It gave me an entirely new perspective on that.  

Could you please pray that the power comes back on soon, very soon so we can go home and also for all the rescue/cleanup efforts.  Thank you!

I don't know how long we'll be here at the motel or how long it'll be before we have power back.  I really hope not too long.

"On the Farm!"

We moved this weekend and our new home is such an adventure!!!  We have a large herd of goats for neighbors as well as a huge fat bull with big long horns, two turkeys who must be soul mates (I only see two of them and always together!  LOL), the neighbor's (human neighbors) chicken laid a bunch of eggs in our yard and has been perched on them for 3 days now (we're gonna have baby chicks!!!!!!), and in the front yard of the people we're renting from there is a peacock!!!!  They said it appeared in their yard 4 years ago and has been around ever since.  So weird!!!

Ok, so a little explanation....we are renting from this older couple who lives on 10 acres.  They have a mobile home (trailer) behind their house that faces a field they lease out to a farmer.  Their neighbor on one side has all the goats and the bull and it's also his chicken who's shacked up in our yard.  We're on the outskirts of Harlingen, not totally in the country but kinda.  The street we're on is like a normal neighborhood street ya know with houses, it's just that interspersed ever so often, now and then, not many, is a field that's farmed.  But I haven't noticed any other yards with so many animals!!!!  Oh, we also have lizards, I think they're chameleons.  Pretty weird for this city girl and city boy (from DE-troit!), but the boys love it!!!!  Oh, and there's plenty of mice to go around!  One day when we were painting, I walked out the door and startled a cat that had a very large mouse in its mouth (at that point is it called a rat)!  It dropped it right there, dead, and I had to clean it up!  Ick!!!!  I had the heebie-jeebies about livin with mice but haven't seen evidence of one yet!  Phew!  AND no cockroaches!!!!!!  Whoo hoo!  Actually haven't seen hardly any bugs in the place which is wonderful compared to our last place.  The cockroaches are actually palm beetles.  And where we used to live, there were a lot of palm trees but not here so I guess that helps!

This couple used their trailer as a guest house but want to fix it up so they are charging us so wonderfully cheap rent and using it to put right back into it!  Like for example, right before we moved in they replaced the living room carpet using the 1st month's rent!  So awesome!  This place wasn't even advertised, we just happened upon this guy who offered us this place!  It found us!  It has so many perks and I am daily amazed at how God has answered our prayers about finding a place and our specific hopes and desires.  I'm so grateful and so in awe of Him, so humbled.

Anything like this is an adjustment but we have all found our groove and have very much settled in!  God has provided, supported, and loved all the way!  I'm so glad that He cares about the details because I couldn't be more detail-oriented.  LOL  I can get freaked out by the littlest thing.  I have to have things all laid out, organized, planned, detailed, and in order with all my thousands of questions answered.  And I don't deal well with stress or chaos.  Well, moving is not conducive to my need for order!  But it was wonderful that we could get in early and clean out, paint, and even start moving things in before the actual move in date!  Our landlord has been so wonderful and laid back!  We were almost completely unpacked and even had everything decorated and hung by the next day!!!!  

I remember when we first moved here to Texas and ALL our stuff was dropped off (we must have had 7-10 people helping unload, it was all unloaded in a 1/2 hour!!!!) but then they all left and there we stood in our 2-bedroom apartment (needing a desperate paint job) with ALL our stuff all over the place and a 1 and 4 yr old climbing all over all the boxes.  Shoot, this was nothing compared to that!  That was hard!!!  :-)  On moving day last Saturday, the boys were being watched by friends, the place was all painted, and we already had some stuff moved in!

Language school in Guatemala is just a month and a half away!  Aaahhh!!!  Kinda startin' to freak out but also pretty excited!  The boys are too!  They talk about the big pool in "Wa-ma-ya!"  Our apartment has pool access so they are excited.  Also the boys have a "Land Before Time" movie they love and in it is a volcano and lava so I've been telling them how they're gonna see a real volcano in "Wa-ma-ya!"  LOL  And of course get to fly on a plane which they are WAY excited about (and which they've both done before but both were too young to remember).  

Oh, Otto had another bravery day today with the kiddie pool!  He jumped off this little slide we have into the pool.  Owen has been doing it (as pictured at right) and I guess it inspired Otto.  He tried practicing it several times with much hesitation but finally did it after I just pushed him!  LOL  He got up and did it again on his own and that was it!!!!!  He is so cautious, sometimes I have to SHOW him he can do things!  LOL  He was so proud of himself and just kept doing it over and over again, had to call Papa out to show him, and when it was time to go inside, he didn't want to go!  I love seeing him overcome things like this!!!!  Uh, to die for!   

Pool Bravery!!!!!!!

These pictures say a thousand words to me!  I can't express enough what a huge deal this is what this picture represents!  I want to blow it up and frame it on the wall!  With Otto's anxiety issues, he is sooo fearful.  When we first got him, he wouldn't even walk on grass.  He never had, so he cried and screamed in fear as opposed to looking at it as an adventure and a fun new thing to try.

Don't even get me started on swimming! In a kiddie pool, he's fine but just stands in it.  It is an extremely rare occasion that he would get down on his knees, nevermind his butt.  

But by the end of our week in San Fernando, MX last week, after much coaxing and practicing and sometimes forcing.....Otto could stand on his own in the shallow end (3 ft deep) with his wings on.  But I had to be nearby.  So for me to get out of the pool, leaving him in there by himself so I could take this picture and him be happy about it (smiling for the photo) was a sheer miracle!  I am so proud of this guy and how far he's come!  

He even would let me push him off the bottom step (he couldn't jump off voluntarily but would let me push him off) and he would flail around (floating just fine with his wings on in the meantime!) until his feet found the floor.  But he would be screaming is sheer terror!  Well by the last day he could do all that without screaming.  That was a huge feat too!  I am amazed at his progress!  I don't think I can express enough.  If you lived with this child on a daily basis, you would understand how huge this all is!  Thank you God for baby steps, improvement, hope!

Back from Mexico!

We had a good week in Mexico last week, San Fernando!  The group and staff had long days, 10 hours, going out and evangelizing.  The boys and I stayed at the hotel and swam mostly, went for walks, took naps, and played with horses!  Yes, many horses (1 day I counted 9 of them) would wander in the complex and drink from the swimming pool!  We got close enough one day to a couple of them and they let us pet their noses!  I also got to practice my Spanish in talking with the hotel staff.  It got me very excited for school in Guatemala!  It makes such a huge difference when you HAVE to use it!!!!  It was fun, I loved it!

I basically did swim lessons with the boys all week long.  It was great b/c their confidence and ability progressed so much from the beginning of the week to the end of the week.

Sunday was a "day off" and the group took the 9 orphans from the orphanage out to lunch and then brought them back to the hotel pool for an afternoon of swimming.  It was neat!  

The last day, everyone had to check out of the hotel but I didn't want to go out with the boys with everyone b/c it was sooooo hot.  So we st

ayed back at the rehabilitation center which was across the field from the orphanage so we walked over and played with the kids for a while, came back and ate lunch, then attempted to nap.  It was so hot though, no a/c like at the hotel.  I'm glad we went!  We got to eat dinner with Aaron each evening and see him a little before bed.  Otherwise we wouldn't have seen him for a week! 

The facility was very nice.  A church from Dallas built it!  Very beautifully decorated too!  It was crazy to look at these kids and think they had no parents.  I wanted to rescue all of them!  I pray God will bring them families soon!

 

Traveling to San Fernando!

We, the boys and I, are going with Aaron tomorrow to Mexico for a week!  He's gonna be gone for 2 weeks (coming home in the middle to sleep one night at home) and so we thought it would be good to go too!  They are travelling to many different villages sharing the love of Jesus.  We don't normally go b/c Otto had school and I had school.  But now, we are free!  (and we were invited!)  We could go the 2nd week too, but it's a 6 hour drive and I'm not sure I'm up for ALL that traveling.  We'll see though!  I love and sooo appreciate that we can go and be together.  It gets tough after long periods of time!  The boys' behavior gradually starts to get worse.  And they miss their Papa!  ....especially wrestle time!  Besides the stress of all the details my brain focuses on ( I was up at 4am this morning thinking of things for the trip), I am pretty excited! This week in particular will be nice b/c it's only a 2 hour drive and our accommodations are a hotel that just so happens to have a pool!  So the boys and I will hang out and play, take their much needed naps and be able to have dinner with Papa and hang out in the evenings.  There is an orphange very near by which would be so neat to go visit and just play and hug them all day.  At the same time, my adoptive heart already fears the pain I'll feel at wanting to rescue them all!  Sunday is a "day off" so to speak, so Aaron and I are thinking of going that day.  I can't imagine!  Please pray for very safe travels and for people to receive God's love truly in their hearts.

Pee-Pee Success!

What a great potty training week!  It surpassed my expectations!  My friend suggested I pray before we started.  I thought, oh yeh, that's a good idea!  LOL  Owen did great!  We started last Saturday.  For his 1st week he had 2 days with NO accidents (and they were both in the past few days here), 1 day with 2 accidents, and 4 days with only 1 accident.  And here's the real kicker....he wakes up in the morning, and from naps, dry most of the time!!!!!  Wow!  He's got control!  We've even gone places in the car...stores, the park.  Thank you Jesus for caring even about potty training!  Still praying for week 2 and 3 though!  

Here is Owen's Pee-Pee Chart.  We did a sticker chart and the columns started with Sat and went through to today, Friday.  He got to put a sticker on his chart and get a piece of candy.  The boys don't get much candy or junk so it was a big deal!  And everytime, he had to share some candy with Otto.  (That's what Otto had to do with Owen when he was training!)  :-)  It's cute b/c it got Otto cheering Owen on!  LOL