Happy Birthday Shiloh...

This is my 7 year old boy! This pic was taken a couple of days ago after he lost his 8th tooth.




This was him fresh into the world, umbilical cord and all.





Shiloh, myself and my most wonderful doctor, Dr. Soundararajan (Dr. S for short).




Because I was a high-risk pregnancy, I had like 10 people in the room in case of an emergency. When everything turned out alright, a nurse volunteered to take my Mom's camera and take pictures. I thought that this one was so special.




My first and chunkiest monkey, at 6 months old.




He was 2 years old. I was pregnant with Abigail. It was Christmas Eve. About an hour after this picture was taken he puked all over Derrick's shoulder. Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a virus.




Shiloh was 4 1/2 in this picture. We had just moved to Mexico. He and Abigail were getting ready to do a performance with their school.


I can't believe my boy is 7. And as the years go on I will still be in disbelief at every birthday for every child that we have. These past 7 years have been some of the most adventurous and wonderful years that a Mom could ever have. All thanks to this child that God chose to put in our care. What a miracle. The miracle of life and parenthood astounds me daily. I feel that I have so many things to say but I don't have enough time and my readers don't have the attention span for it.

I will end with this, not only is this day a celebration of Shiloh's life, it's a celebration of the day I pushed a 7 lb. 9 oz. baby out of my body all because the medicine forced me to, not because my body said it was time. That, my friends, is a miracle in and of itself. Happy Birthday to Shiloh and Happy Labor Day to me :-).

Update in pictures...

Our oldest and Solomon are checking each other out.





Grandma and the kids.




PaPa Brooks and the kids.





Aunt Katie got the prize with the baby's smile! The 2 older kids love hanging out with Aunt Katie and messing around in her room.





Gabby and our baby falling in love with each other. Did I mention that Gabs & her family are moving down with us in January (wink, wink)? I think our baby is already smitten on his future babysitter.





Cassie & I! I love her so much. She has discipled me in so many ways...both taught & caught. I've learned so much about being a Mom from her. I met Cassie right around the time that I met Derrick. I spent many Friday nights at her house just watching her with her kids, listening to what the Lord has taught her, and eating some delicious food. I can't wait for us to be together in Mexico.



Seriously, I don't think that Guadalajara knows what it has coming to it with Derrick & Ben together. I think Caleb has learned a little too much from his Dad.



Ben trying to imitate our baby's cheeks. And doing a pretty good job I think.


Update on Peru: Derrick arrived last night in Peru. Today they had a fun day and went to the beach. As a spur of the moment deal, Derrick & Scott went surfing! How cool is that? I can't wait to see pictures. Derrick said that it was the most intense aerobic workout that he's ever done. I'm so jealous because I really want to learn how to surf. Now that my hubby knows how maybe he can teach me :-). I'll update more as I get more info. throughout the week.

Revelations & Vanity...

This visit to the States has been a little different than the ones before. It seems like I have truly forgotten a few "American" things and I'm just taken back a little bit. I still want to automatically throw my toilet paper in the trash instead of flushing it. My kids will always throw it away. I can't teach them otherwise, so if we come to your house and that happens, SORRY. I love how there are like 20 brands of shampoo & body wash to choose from. I love that I can order a pizza over the phone and not have to ask the person on the other line to repeat everything.



One of the biggest changes is in my mentality of America and the "American dream". I used to always want a decent-sized, 3 bedroom house with a playroom and a huge back yard. Even though I knew that God had called us to Mexico, I still wanted it maybe someday. Derrick, our little girl and I were driving to Kroger after getting her ears pierced. We were driving along a road that we have driven many times and I have loved the houses on this road for many years. This time, as we drove along, I didn't desire these houses. I didn't pass by them and imagine what they look like on the inside and what our family would look and live like in those houses. I no longer have that craving to live in the States under the title of "living the American dream". My "American dream" is to be where ever God wants me. Now if that is back here in the States, then that is where I want to be. For now it is in Mexico and I am happy to serve Jesus there. I have so many friends, many of them are bloggers on here, that are serving Jesus right where He wants them, here in the US. Ministry is not about where you live it's about doing what you feel that God wants you to do and obeying Him. So instead of calling it my "American dream", I will call it my destiny. I want to live out the destiny that God has for me. He knows me way better than I know myself so I think that He knows way better where is the best place for me to live.



Enough rambling...I'm sick from living in no central A/C & no humidity to now living in A/C and humidity. It's like when the weather changes and you get sick. My climate & altitude has changed and I am sick. I don't like taking medicine, especially since I'm nursing. But I'm going to try something to help me sleep. OH, and the following are pics of our daughter's ear piercing adventure. She had one ear done at a time and she didn't even flinch, thank you Jesus!!





Here she is getting ready. She's holding the Claire's bear and stroking the tag between her fingers. That what she does w/ her animals at home to calm herself.



The second ear. Didn't flinch and didn't even whine. Maybe she has a high tolerance for pain thanks to her older brother.




Tah-dah!!! That was the extent of her unhappiness. But let me just tell you, she walked with increased confidence and a hip-shaking strut when we left the store.

Cousin time...

Cousins that are all about a week or so apart.

Baby trying to eat Paige's hand.


Now he's trying to eat David's hand.


I ate Steak N Shake last night...good for the taste buds but NOT on the stomach. Hence I had a grilled chicken sandwich today when we ate at Mom's office. My Mom works at Coca-Cola. We went into the company store. There is a big, plastic polar bear in there and when you sit on it, it growls and makes a noise like it's popping open a Coke and gulping it. After the bear growled about 5 times our daughter turned around to it and said, "Could you please stop growling?" She was drop-dead serious, as usual. Once again, as always with her, there are no words...

Brotherly love...

I should probably save this for a Wordless Wednesday, but I'm not going to have my computer with me for the next 3 weeks. It will be staying here, watching over the house, while we are gone. I took the following picture a couple of weeks ago. I didn't really pay attention to it until the other day. And I saw something very typical that was captured on camera.

I was trying to capture the sweetness of all of the kids together with their Daddy. It turned into a "shushing" match. If you pay attention to their mouths, our 2 oldest are simultaneously telling each other to "SHUSH, NO YOU SHUSH, NO YOU SHUSH!" Also note that Derrick is lying there, playing the Playstation like nothing is going on. The baby just hasn't learned what's about to hit him once he learns how to speak. And as I'm writing this, my oldest is yelling "SHUSH" to his sister because she is singing. And I, in turn, tell the BOTH OF THEM to shush. See how polite we are? We don't say "shut up", we say "shush" :-).

Our dear readers from GEORGIA, if you would like to see us while we are in the States, let me know! We will be back & forth from Douglasville to Marietta. Also, we will be making a very short, one-night appearance in Concord, NC and we will be staying w/ the Nicholas' next Thursday. I'm not sure how much visiting we will be doing, but we will be there. I hope that I get to see some of your beautiful faces. If not, then there's always Thanksgiving!

Wordless Wednesday...

~ MAKE-UP ARTIST FOR HIRE ~







Most of the time I look like I've been beat up. She went light on the blush today :-).

Signs that you've been in Mexico too long...

Here in Mexico, as with other countries BESIDES the States, the kids do things at the red lights to try to make money. Many of them juggle. When they are done they walk around to the cars with their hands out so that you can give them money. Shiloh was just trying to juggle 2 bouncy balls. He said with all seriousness, "Mommy, I should go out on the street and juggle and then I can walk around and collect the money." I'm speechless....

Fun times with old friends...

Derrick and I did his Bible school internship here for 4 months in the year 2000. We made a lot of friends and that was really what helped us in moving here again permanently. Two people that we were friends with were Celso and Cristina. Celso was the youth pastor at the church that we attended. Cristina was a friend, and a tri-lingual friend at that...she speaks Spanish, English and French. She was such an asset in helping me with my Spanish. At this point Celso & Cristina weren't dating, and they weren't even thinking of dating each other. Some time after we left they fell in love, got married, and moved to the country, where they have been up until recently.

They recently moved close to the Bible school. Celso is a teacher for the government and it is a much closer commute. They visited the Bible school the other day and it was like 8 years had never passed between our friendship. They invited us to go today to their daughter's birthday party. It was at Cristina's parents place out in the country. It was beautiful and another true Mexican experience. It was also so wonderful to spend time with my dear friend and her amazing family.

Their home is on some property that has been in their family for over 50 years. Not only is it home for them but they also raise cows, chickens and they grow corn. They truly live off of their cows and the land. Imagine this, we had steak for lunch :-). OK, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell the story with the pictures.





This is the house that Cristina's dad grew up in. It is a one room house. Cristina's grandparents raised 14 kids in this house. You know not all at once, but nonetheless, imagine trying to be just a couple in that house.





Here's the inside. They now use it to house the food for the cows. The house is made of adobe bricks. It keeps the house cool in the hot season and warm during the cooler season.





This is a view of their property.






This is Cristina getting some guayabas, which she made me eat, skin and all. They're not too bad. A little sour. My kids didn't like them but the Mexican kids ate them like candy.




This is Cristina's mom cooking some chorizo. I didn't get a picture of it, but before she cooked this she had the steak, whole onions & whole peppers all cooking together in the pan. When she served it on tortillas it was the steak mixed with the chorizo with beans and salsa.




This is our daughter after she fell into a SERIOUS mud puddle. Being the good Mommy that I am, I grabbed my camera to get a few shots before I stripped her down and threw her in the shower.




The birthday girl, Johana, biting the cake!



Cristina and I.



Celso and Derrick!



Cristina's parents gave us some fresh cow's milk. I have never, ever, in my life, EVER had fresh cow's milk, let alone have to prepare it. I was told to boil it for about 30 minutes. Something else that I also noticed in this picture. I have my eggs on the counter. Many people do not refrigerate their eggs. If they are sold in the refrigerated section, then we have to refrigerate them when we get home. But if they are in the fresh section, we don't.

We had a wonderful day! I know that this blog will have many more posts about our adventures with Celso, Cristina, and their daughters, Fara & Johana.

A new experience...

If you know me then you know that I am NOT a high-maintenance babe. My hair is almost always all long with layers, ready to be pulled back into a pony tail at any given time. That has also made it easy for me to just get my hair cut every time that we visit the States. This past February, my friend, Darcy, was here to visit. She's a hair dresser and she trimmed my hair. So I have had a hair cut here. Lately I've been at my wits end with my hair. All of my layers had grown out and my hair was one insane mass of thickness in the back. I got the phone number of Kelley's hair dresser. I called to make an appointment and no one answered. I was fed up. That was it! I was going to the mall.

I walked right in. Since I've never had to get my hair cut at a salon here before, I didn't know all of the vocabulary for it. So on top of losing 5 lbs. of hair, it was a learning experience. The girl that cut my hair was an apprentice, which also made the cut less expensive. I was a little concerned at first because "stylish" mullets are very popular here ( I don't think that they are stylish and I don't like them, but all of the Mexican girls like them). I was so praying that when I said "layers" that she didn't think "mullet". Well, I don't have a mullet, THANK GOD!! She did a good job on my hair. I think that I will no longer have neck pain since my hair is so much lighter. And I'm not going to post a picture because it's not a drastic enough of a change to make that big of deal over. If I post recent pics of the family and you notice it, that's great. This story was really more of a "I HAD A NEW EXPERIENCE IN MEXICO" story.

Funny stories from my daughter:

Let me preface this with the fact that our daughter is insanely serious. She does not get jokes, take jokes well, or make jokes. She's just no nonsense. This past Wednesday, we were sitting in the food court waiting for our pizza order. She looked at her older brother and said, "Ha ha ha ha ha...that's not funny." And she did it where she was laughing during the "ha ha ha" part and then totally straight-faced. We all busted out laughing. She maintained her composure and said, "That's from 'Zack & Cody'!" It was like she was doing it to show her acting ability and not to really tell her brother that he wasn't funny. She was getting frustrated with us that we were laughing at her because she was totally serious in her ability to recreate a line from "Zack & Cody."

Another one: Last night we had a cheesecake sitting out to thaw. Our daughter really wanted some and was having a hard time being patient. We were upstairs in our room and she was downstairs. She yelled upstairs, "I really hungry! My tummy is growling! Can you hear it?" We died laughing. We know that she really thought that we could hear her stomach growling all the way upstairs.


Time to go fix lunch for the kids! I have an almost 7 year old boy...his stomach is a bottomless pit and he eats ALL OF THE TIME, no joke! He's reminded me 3 times already that it's lunch time. :-)

And it don't stop...

OK, where do I begin?

Derrick made plans to go to a cell church tonight. Andy is in the mountains and Scott & Melody were on their way back from the border, so Derrick agreed to go. Well this morning we get a call that the guitar player (barely pictured in the pics below) was killed by a tractor trailer early this morning. He is also the Pastor's son. They were holding a memorial service for him. We thought that it was at 2 p.m., but it turns out it was later. See as this church is about 45 minutes away from our house Derrick couldn't come home. So Derrick hung out for a while and then went on to the cell church and decided to go to the memorial service afterwards.

During the cell church Derrick gets a phone call from Scott & Melody. They were about and hour or so outside of the city and they had a flat tire on their trailer with no spare. Derrick & Ken (a Mexican Pastor) came to our house to get the spare from our trailer. Remember, Derrick is 45 minutes from our house and then had to drive about an hour & a half outside of the city the other direction. Talk about a late night. They drove out to find Scott & Melody to help them change their tire. The tire is changed and they are safely home, thank you Jesus!

On top of it all, I was cooking a delicious steak dinner with some homemade macaroni & cheese. The mac & cheese was a last-minute deal because I had noodles left over from spaghetti last night. For not having a recipe and shooting from the hip it was dang delicious! Ken tried it and loved it.

A side note about the death of the young man. Our oldest had made plans to go with Daddy to the cell church. But because of the memorial service we thought it would be best for him to stay home. When I told our son why Daddy had to leave he said, "Oh to go pray for him?" And I said, "Pray for what?" And he said, "For him to come back to life!" Our son has prayed for sick people before and seen them healed. But we've never talked about praying for the dead. We've heard testimonies of other missionaries & ministries seeing people raised from the dead. We've never, ourselves, prayed for a dead person to come back to life. So I was so amazed that that was his initial thought...that Daddy was going to pray for this guy to come back to life. Then he asked how he died. I told him that he was killed in a car accident (this was before I knew that he was hit by a tractor trailer). He came back with, "See! This is why we need to walk every where so that we don't die in a car accident!" You gotta love the mind of a kid. Like Bill Cosby says, kids say the darndest things.



This is the church. Melody turned around just in time for the picture :-). As you can see, the church has no roof. Deal with that during rainy season, folks. It ain't easy.



Another shot of the Pastor and his son is off to the right playing the guitar.


On top of everything else, I got all of my kids clothes organized into girl & boy containers AND separated by size. I refuse to get rid of our kids' clothes until Derrick has a vasectomy. I've heard too many stories of people getting rid of all of their stuff and then showing up pregnant again. Just trying to be a good steward of what God has blessed us with. And since we don't have a Babies-R-Us down here, I'd be struggling because that is my absolute favorite baby store.

VBS Part 2...

Whole lotta kids there...about 135!



Once again, this is our daughter's 5 minutes of participation. We thought putting her on the same team as her brother would help, but it didn't. Our son was a trooper and had a blast, as usual.



She decided she would put rocks in the drain. I then had to stop her so that Jer & Kelley don't have a flooded church.



When she found out that you needed an art project to get a snack, she quickly participated.



Valarie wondered where the baby was. He was with us, just in the background of most of the pictures :-).


SHRINES TO MARY...

As most of you know, Catholicism is the main religion here. They are very devoted to Mary and they have shrines and altars to her everywhere. These are some pictures of just a few within a 5 block area.











We finished off VBS today! It was fun and crazy all mixed together. Now it's time for a nap.

Vacation Bible School...Part 1

Taking a head-count before we walked to the park.



As a friend of mine put it when she saw this picture, "VBS, brought to you by Corona". This is us walking to the park for VBS.



These boys swarmed Chuck and wanted him to take their picture so that they could look at them.



Our son & Monica doing the moves to the song.



Kelley (with Sophia in toe) and I helping with the moves.



Our little girl singing but definitely not dancing.



She actually stayed in her group long enough to participate in a game.



He's a pro!



The group from Florida leading in "The Great Adventure" by SCC in Spanish.




They got some swing time after it was over.



My little princess & Brittany.



Crazy kids!



Anna looking cute as always.



Monica swinging with her friends. Her Dad was one of our language school teachers.



This past week has been VBS for a friend of a friends ministry. We are friends with Jer & Kelley. The have a Saturday Awanis program for kids in El Colli and they also planted a church there about a year and a half ago. There is another Saturday kids program that's on the other side of El Colli run by some other missionaries, Chris & Julie. This year they combined their VBS's. And to make it even better, a missions team from a church in Florida has come to do all of the work. Tuesday and Wednesday we took our kids to the VBS. We will probably go again tomorrow. Our daughter stayed with her group all of about 15 minutes. However our son L-O-V-E-D it! He loves playing with other kids. That is why he understands & speaks more Spanish than his sister because he just gets out there, plays and listens; that forces him to communicate with the kids without us to translate.

These pictures are courtesy of my father-in-law, Chuck. He was able to come the first day. Tomorrow I will post my mother-in-law's pictures. She came on Wednesday. There are just too many pics for one post.