April 2017

So, as you can tell, time has again gotten away from me and it's been months since either of us have posted about anything!

The first 3 1/2 months of 2017 have been a very busy time for all of us.

Juliana is nearly done with first grade and loves it.  The school has a reading program the 2nd semester of every year so she is currently reading 100 pages a week to meet her goal and receive a prize each month.  Today her class is on a field trip to Chiminike, a children's museum in Tegucigalpa.  I think they had a class on rocks and minerals, and then had a chance to visit some of the kid's favorite places like the water room and body room.  When they get back to school they will have a McDonald's lunch waiting for them :)  She has lost 2 top teeth in the last couple months, and she is very proud of this.  She had been very upset when most of her class had already lost multiple teeth and she hadn't lost any.

Levi spends his days playing with his cars and train set, often inviting his friend Gabe over to play for the morning.  He has learned the alphabet song, is getting better at counting objects, and is full of more questions than can possibly be answered in a day.  We just spent 4 days in Comayagua staying with our friends, the Mohagen's.  They have girls the same ages as Juliana and Levi.  Levi got sick while we were there and ended up sleeping most of the time, but apparently still had a great time.  He said that they rest of us could leave and he would live with the Mohagen's. 

Isabella is almost 1!  I've started planning a birthday party for her, which is in just 2 short weeks.  This tiny little girl crawls all over the place (and has started climbing inside of things, like cupboards and fireplaces) and is ready to walk.  She has 2 bottom teeth and makes all kinds of sounds (but suddenly won't say Mama). 

During Easter break, Kyle again took his youth group on a mission's trip to work with other ministries in Honduras.  They spent 1 evening feeding the homeless with Breaking Chains and then spend 4 days working with El Ayudante.  They worked on an adobe house, installed water filters and latrines, did a church kid's program, and an afternoon sport's activity.  There were 2 youth leaders and 12 kids that went and they all had a great time. 



Melodee has been busy mostly with keeping up with the house and all 3 kids.  In all my "spare" time I have fixed a few computers and worked on a number of projects for Honduran Fellowship.  Our annual retreat takes place during February and it was by far the biggest retreat we've ever done.  We had around 330 missionaries at the retreat, who registered in 3 days (instead of the normal 3 weeks).  We had to turn away a lot of people, but we ran out of places for people to eat and lodge.  Our theme of the year was "fun", so we did a carnival (including huge bouncy houses), a BBQ, and times to rest and catch up with friends. 



In other news, we had 2 days off school a couple weeks ago because of forest fires near our house.  The smoke was very strong and would have been bad to have all the students breathing it in.  So our kids spent most of the day playing outside and watching the helicopters carrying water flying right over our house.

Thankfully it has been very rainy this week, which is extremely unusual for April.  Generally the rains don't start until mid-May, so nobody is quite sure if the rainy season has started early or if we just are having several random rain storms.  The termites have not come out yet, so either they've all drowned in their holes or they have decided it's not rainy season yet. 

And our biggest news is that we finally bought our tickets for this summer.  We'll be in Honolulu from June 18-July 10 and then fly to Nebraska.  At some point we'll road trip with my parents to North Carolina and then spend some time there.  On August 1st we'll fly back to Honduras.  If you're in any of those places and want to see us, just let us know so we can make arrangements!

She's here!...and 11 weeks old already

Life just gets  really busy with a baby in the house and before you know it 3 months have already flown by.

Isabella Kate Webb was born on Saturday, May 7th at 1:27 in the afternoon.  She weighed 8 lbs exactly and was 50 cm long.  We stayed at the hospital overnight and were able to leave just afternoon lunchtime on Sunday, stopping on the way home to pick up Juliana and Levi.  A pretty amazing Mother's Day gift! 

She has not been an easy baby, but she does like to cuddle and be held and carried in the baby carrier, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  She hates riding in the car and stroller, and will always know if you put her down, even if she's sound asleep.  It has been really nice to have the slower summer weeks to spend time with her and get to know what she likes and doesn't like.  She has been sleeping 6-9 hours at night and recently she has started smiling and laughing on occasion, in particular when she has a full tummy and a newly changed diaper.  Juliana and Levi love her, although she doesn't care for being smothered by their kisses. 

We have been here all summer, which has actually been a nice change.  We have been working on things around our house, getting our car worked on, and getting Isabella's Consular Report of Birth Abroad and US Passport.
Juliana and Levi are taking swimming lessons.  Juliana loves her 2 hour lesson twice a week and has learned a lot in the last month; Levi puts up with his 30 minute lessons.  It's a good day if he doesn't scream the entire class time.  We're talking about keeping at least Juliana in lessons during the school year.

The summer has flown by, as it usually does and I'm already thinking about buying school supplies in the next week or two.  Hard to believe we will have a 1st grader already!  Levi still has 1 more year, which I am thankful for.  He will have a few things to work on at home this year, like dressing himself, using the bathroom by himself, and helping around the house. 

Although it has been a good summer we're looking forward to new staff arriving the first week of August and returning staff over the next week.  We are hosting all of the new staff for a lunch on August 3rd, and I have 2 seminars for Honduran Fellowship that week.  Looks to be a busy start to the new school year!

April

Baby Webb
We've made it to 38 1/2 weeks!  She is healthy and everything at my last appointment looked good.    I have an appointment this Saturday, which the doctor thinks will probably be my last.  I was induced at 39 weeks with both Juliana and Levi because the doctor was afraid that I wouldn't make it to the hospital in time, so we'll see what he says at this upcoming appointment. 

We are nearly ready for her to arrive.  Kyle is done with all of his major events of the year and I have things pretty much set around the house.  We're just waiting on the school to bring over a set of bunk beds so that we can move Levi into Juliana's room.  Then the toddler bed needs to be changed back into a crib for the baby.  I'm really hoping the bunk beds will come tomorrow so that we can have them situated before the baby arrives instead of after.

Juliana
Juliana is doing very well in school.  She has been reading a lot, and working on getting higher on her behavior chart.  She usually does well behavior-wise, but if you get up to the color purple then you get a piece of candy and to take home the class stuffed animal.  She's gotten to purple 1 time each of the last 2 weeks and is pretty happy with herself. 

Levi
Levi has had a difficult last couple of weeks.  He has been potty trained for a year and a half, but he's so little that he can't get on the toilet by himself.  When Kyle was in the States the beginning of April he got Levi a stool so that he'll be able to reach and we've been trying to get him to use it...but he would rather have someone put him on the toilet instead of doing it by himself.  I have a feeling that it might get worse for awhile with a baby around, but hopefully he'll get a little more independent. 

His favorite song for awhile has been "Jesus Loves Me", and he sings it all the time.  He also insists on singing it at every meal before we pray. 

Kyle
Kyle made a week long trip to the US the beginning of April for his Grandpa's funeral.  He was able to spend the week with his sister and parents.  It was a pretty long & tiring week for the rest of us, and we were all glad when he was back. 

After he returned he spent several days and nights trying to catch up with the work he missed, in addition to coaching all 3 of the girls High School volleyball teams.  Last week was the national tournament.  Although they didn't win anything, it sounds like they enjoyed themselves.  High School volleyball is over, and Kyle is now coaching 5th & 6th grade volleyball a couple times a week. 

Kyle has also been playing in a basketball league for the last couple months with several teachers from our school and another school.  They called themselves Los Maestros, and they had their final game this past Saturday during which they won 3rd place.

Otherwise, not too much else is going on, just waiting for a baby!

March 2016

So I realize this has probably been a record amount of time not blogging, but I'm hoping to pick back up and keep this a little more up to date.  However, that may be a lot of baby pictures and info in the near future :)

This year has been very busy...Kyle has had one event after another the whole year long.  I do my best to keep up with the kids, the house, and Honduran Fellowship. 

Juliana
Juliana is loving school this year.  She is in Preparatory, which is the same as Kindergarten in the US.  She has started to read a little more and tries to read everything she sees.  She really likes her teacher and has several good friends both in her class as well as the other 2 Preparatory classes. 

  

Preparatory C Father's Day Party

In Honduras Father's Day is in March (it was this past Saturday), with a big program last Friday.  Preparatory takes part in the program, which involved them singing 4 songs (2 in Spanish and 2 in English).  She worked really hard to learn the Spanish ones and did a great job.  The class had a party as well and invited all the fathers to come.  The kids had made t-shirts and a couple other projects for their dads. 

She has this entire week, plus next Monday off for Semana Santa, or Holy Week.  Next week her class goes on their first field trip.  They will go to Chiminike, the children's museum, for a class on transportation (they have been learning all about transportation in Social Studies).  Then on Friday they will have a Transportation Parade for all of the elementary and their parents.  Juliana has to wear a school bus costume (made out of cardboard and paint).

Levi
This boy has gotten super silly.  There is no mistaking that he is Kyle's son.  His favorite things to do are playing with his cars and in his sand box (or even better, taking his cars into the sand box).  He has this plastic ride-on "car" that he rides ALL THE TIME...even when we take
Juliana to school in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon.  He really likes to stay at home with mommy, but every morning he asks who is coming over that day.  His friend, Gabe, who is also 3, usually comes over a couple times a week to play...which makes Tuesdays and Thursdays especially good days.

Lately he has been working on figuring out how to choose clothes and dress himself.  He's also started to count and knows a lot of colors.  And he likes to choose 1 cartoon to watch every morning...lately he's been alternating between Chuck the Truck, Chuggington, Thomas the Train, and Little Einsteins.  It's pretty fun watching him mimic what the characters say and do :)

Baby Webb
If you ask Levi what the baby's name is, he will tell you Baby Webb because she doesn't yet have a name, or really any good possibilities at this point.  Hopefully Kyle and I will be able to agree on something fairly soon, as her due date is in just over 6 weeks.  The doctor that I go to does an ultrasound at every appointment, and in addition to measuring her body size, he tries to get a good picture of her face.  The last 3-4 appointments he's been unsuccessful as she keeps her hands and feet tucked up in front of her face.  She is measuring perfectly, which is good, however she is still head up which had the doctor a little concerned at the last appointment.  He said that she needs to turn by the next appointment, which is April 6th...although I don't know what he will do at that point if she hasn't turned. 

Kyle
Kyle has several different activities going on this past month.  March started with the national soccer tournament for bilingual schools in Honduras.  All of our school's teams did well, but one of our girl's teams got first place in their division.  The tournament was in Tegucigalpa, so the kids and I were able to go to the championship game, which was very exciting.  Most of the rest of the games were while Juliana was in school during the week, so we weren't able to attend. 

Two weeks ago our school hosted Family Fun Day, where the high school classes all set up carnival type games and a number of different food venders come and set up on our soccer field.  Then several hundred kids come on a Saturday and spend the day playing games with their parents.  Kyle has a basketball shooting game that he sets up, so I went with the kids and let them play a few games and eat snacks.  Then we went to Kyle's booth to help him for awhile.

After that Kyle was gone for 4 days for Model UN.  This was the first time that our school has participated in this.  The kids seemed to enjoy it and Kyle said it was an easy activity for him to attend.  Generally during sports tournaments, he has to be very involved and know what's going on the entire time.  Model UN is primarily student led and they all actually go to bed when they're supposed to, so he doesn't have to stay up all night monitoring the hotel hallways. 

He returned from Model UN in time for the Father's Day celebrations last week, and then had to be ready to leave again early Saturday morning for a Youth Group Mission's Trip.  He's been wanting to do an in-country mission's trip with his Youth Group for the past year, and has tried to get it put together since August.  After many different delays things finally came together over the last month.  The kids all had to raise their own money to attend (which they did in about 2-3 weeks) and then they spend 3 1/2 days at a ministry a couple hours from here.  They installed water filters at several houses, a couple of latrines, worked on a cement wall for a new High School, and participated in a village church service.  Their focus during the long weekend was learning about God's call on the life of a Christian.  The kids and I went along, but didn't participate in the work projects.  The ministry is run by some good friends of ours, whose daughters are the same ages as Juliana and Levi...and the 4 kids have been begging to get together for months.  They have a studio apartment above their house that was empty this weekend, so the kids and I were able to stay there. 

We returned Tuesday afternoon and we've spent the rest of the week around the house.  Kyle has repaired a few things and I've been working on organizing the closet under our stairs.  Last night we hosted a movie night and this afternoon have a couple friends coming over to play games.  We also filled up the kiddie pool and the kids have had friends come over to play Littlest Pet Shop on our back porch.  They've had an entire town set up the last couple days and its pretty fun to listen to them play. 

Melodee
I've been moving pretty slowly the last several weeks and will be glad to not be pregnant anymore...although there are still several things I want to finish over the next several weeks. 

Honduran Fellowship hosted our annual retreat near the end of February.  It was very good, although I was exhausted when it was over.  Kyle was only able to attend the first day, and then had to return home for meetings, so I had to juggle all of my responsibilities as well as the kids.  We added 2 new volunteer staff members a few weeks before the retreat, who came in with a lot of new ideas.  It was a little late to accomplish any of their ideas for this year, but they were a lot of help during the retreat and we'll work of some of their ideas for next year.  This years retreat was the biggest we've hosted so far--we had 290 missionaries in attendance, 90 of those kids.  This year we also brought in a couple teams to work with the kids for the first time.  They did a great job, and are already planning on returning next year!  We are very thankful for this, as our retreat has tripled in size over the last 3 years.  It is very exciting to look back at retreats from the past and see how much they have changed.  As exhausting as that week is, it is definitely worth it to see 290 missionaries be able to attend a free 4 days where they are able to relax and reconnect with others. 

After it was over, I took a week off...at least from working on HFMM related work.  I was able to take a few naps, catch up on a few things around the house, and repair a couple computers for friends.  Since then we've had a couple HFMM planning meetings...one for next year's retreat, and then other for some changes coming up with our fiscal year (moving it from November to December and trying to figure out how to adjust to make this work smoothly). 

As this is pretty long I will stop there and do my best to update more frequently :)  I'll leave you with a couple clips from Juliana's program last week.  Unfortunately she is almost impossible to see in the video.  She was about 4 rows back, with a bright pink headband, but hard to spot with so many kids. 

End of the year

Juliana & Levi 
The kids have been pretty busy the last couple months.  They were both sick a number of times (it seems like one of them is sick every other week!), but they've been fairly heathly since school got out. 

Juliana has finished Pre-K!  She's definitely excited to go on to Kinder, but I don't think she quite realizes that she'll have a different teacher and classmates.  One of the Kinder teachers is her very good friend Gerardito's mom, and she keeps hoping that she'll have her for a teacher (with Gerardito and all of her good friends in her class too).  There were a few special days at the end of the year such as sunglasses day and favorite character day (she went as Elsa from Frozen). 
 
 It is crazy how much she has learned in the past year--she can count to 100, has started to read, and speaks Spanish like crazy (not correctly, but her friends understand her :)

Levi has also started talking more, and will attempt to say just about anything that people want him to say.  His personality is also showing more, and he can be pretty silly.  Right now he calls everything cute, asks to pray at every meal, and loves to tell his knock-knock joke ("Knock, knock.  Who's there's? MOO!!!" And repeat for the next 5 minutes....)  He's learning his colors, although the other day everything was blue and today everything was pink. 

About a month ago our school hosted a 5K run/walk, which our whole family participated in with several hundred other students and families.  Juliana probably walked about a 3rd of it (and rode on front of the stroller the rest of the way) and Levi rode in the stroller.  The fun part for them was the medal that all participants received, the food and drinks passed out at the end, the bouncy house and face painting. 

HFMM

Not really a whole lot exciting happening at the Honduran Fellowship.  Melodee has been working on making some improvements to the website, and has helped work on a Welcome Packet to be sent to all new members.  While working on this a number of things such as the vision statement and goals had to be updated, which has made it a slow process.  HFMM currently has members who are missionaries from at least 14 different countries around the world and helps obtain residency for over 400 people.  Each week several new missionaries apply to join and its always interesting to learn about the different ministries working in Honduras. 

Volleyball

Volleyball season came and went in a flash and was probably the most challenging of the sport seasons to get the students to buy into the program’s focus of Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be the Glory).  The reason being was that it is hard for the players to really seek to give Him the glory when their level of play and competitiveness was considerably lower than most of their competition.  It was a challenging uphill battle fought with the old recipe of blood, sweat, and tears, along with a whole lot of prayer.  In the end, Kyle is confident that the guys’ team he coached, ended the season with a good foundation laid of humility and unity.

10 Best Basketball Tournament

On the other side of the competitive spectrum, our school’s basketball program is hitting new heights.  For the last four or five years, Kyle has entered our boys’ and girls’ top players in a select basketball tournament to compete against other schools in the city.  Since coming to Pinares, Kyle has never recalled a time where our boys’ basketball team had ever beaten the perennial powerhouse, The American School.  That was until this year, in this tournament.  After being down by as much as 15 in the first half, the boys battled back and finally took the lead in the fourth quarter.  In the end, our boys came out victorious, 63-57, knocking The American School out of the tournament.  Also a first, Pinares placed 2^nd in the tournament in both the guys’ and girls’ divisions.  In the past the closest we had ever gotten in this tournament was 3^rd.

Youth Retreat

As a Youth Leader at our church, Kyle and the rest of the youth leaders try to schedule at least one retreat per year.  This year the group started studying The Truth Project and also drove out to Talanga, a city located about 2 hours away, to do some ministry.  While in Talanga, our plan was to help out with a ministry that focused on women and children affected by rape and/or incest.  The major prayer that Kyle had before the event was that the group would learn to pray being led by the Spirit rather than by our flesh and that our prayers would be real and full of faith.

One testimony from Kyle about the trip was that when his youth group was asked to pray for the family of the lady who ran the ministry (Gracie), after Kyle had finished praying, he had asked Gracie to pray for him.  He had been having a nagging headache throughout the day and had meant to take some ibuprofen for it but for “some reason” kept forgetting to ask for some.  Then after he finished praying during the youth prayer time, he was about to ask Gracie for the medicine but got convicted that if he really believed in prayer, why didn’t he just ask someone to pray for God to take the headache away and believe that He actually would…and God did.  Poof.  Just like that.  Nagging headache with pain one second, then no headache or pain the second Gracie starting praying for it to be taken away.

After Gracie finished praying for Kyle, she mentioned that he was the one that was supposed to be praying like that more than her.  Which Kyle tried out later on and there were a few more cool things that God did through prayer that if you are interested in hearing about, just ask him when you see him.

Good-Byes

So wedding are supposed to be happy, and Kyle is happy that John Garrison has met and married his mate Kirsten.  But that does not mean that he isn’t just a little bit sad that after 6 good years of friendship, he will no longer physically get to do life together (our church’s motto) with his good friend Johnny G. 

Good byes were a little harder than normal for Kyle this year as not only did he lose a

longtime coworker/coach/co-youth leader/close friend/brother with John Garrison leaving for the States next school year, he also lost his office-mate/coach good friend Steve Hunt.  They say that good friends are hard to come by and these two would definitely fall in to that category for Kyle.  May the Lord greatly bless these two men and their families as they have been a huge blessing to Kyle. 

February - March

Blessings!

Since our last update… in January (sorry), there have been quite a few happenings going on with the Webb Family.

 

HFMM:

As many of you know and as was mentioned in our last update, Melodee has been taking on more and more with the Honduran Fellowship of Missionaries and Ministries (HFMM).  January and February were the busiest months for HFMM as they prepared for their annual missionary retreat.  One blessing this year was that Kyle was able to attend the event in full.  They actually planned it around him this year so that 1. Melodee could be free to do what she needed to do and not have to focus on the kids on top of loads of other things she was responsible for and 2. people would actually believe that she was not a single mother (since Kyle usually had some sort of AD/sport thing going on at the same time as past HFMM events). 

The retreat this year went extremely well with numerous positive responses given by the other missionaries being served.  One highlight for Juliana was Brad and Rebecca (worship leaders who came down from the US).  They left their child behind in the states with family and had a quick replacement for their child in the form of Juliana and Levi.  Juliana of course loved the extra love and attention she was given and was heartbroken when they had to go back to the states.  She even tried to convince us to let her skip school in order to see them off at the airport so she could give them one last hug. 

Another blessing the HFMM has received is a new full time assistant.  It had been months since the last assistant had left to follow a call to Africa to study and become a pastor.  This meant that all remaining HFMM staff pulled extra duties, dedicated extra time, and brought more work home to make sure the ship still sailed smoothly.  Lets just say the finding of this new assistant as well as the Semana Santa vacation break were both looked forward to with much anticipation.  

 
Soccer:
This year, Kyle’s soccer teams did very well with 4 out of the 5 teams qualifying for the national tournament.  Because of school regulations, only 3 teams were allowed to travel and participate in the tournament and all 3 of those qualified at least to the quarterfinals.  Unfortunately, Kyle’s heavily favored Juvenil (Varsity) Boys team suffered their first loss of their season in the quarterfinal play, ending their anticipated run at the championship.  They ended their season with a 9-1-2 record.  The Pre Juvenil (Jr. Varsity) Girls also had an impressive showing and ended up losing their first game of the tournament in semifinal play after dominating most of the game but ending in a tie after regulation play.  After losing that game in penalty shots they won the next one for 3^rd place (a first time happening in this category since Kyle has been at the school).  The Juvenil Girls team also did well and qualified for the semifinal match and ended their season winning 4^th over all (also a first time happening in this category since Kyle has been at the school.)  Next season looks to be pretty promising as there will be a lot of returning players for these teams with not a lot of turn over.   

As soccer ended, Kyle has started coaching volleyball again and has entered two of his basketball teams into the local “Diez Mejores” (Ten Best) tournament.  At the moment he is considering/praying if he should place a bid to host next year’s national Track and Field Event, Basketball Tournament, and/or Knowledge bowl. 

“Mr.” Sparkles:

Snowflake is officially gone and has been replaced by Sparkles (an answer to prayer).  You many be thinking to yourself…What?!?!  About five weeks ago Kyle had to go to San Pedro Sula (SPS) for a pre-national tournament soccer meeting.  He normally takes a four-hour bus ride that gets him to SPS one hour before the meeting but decided to catch the early bus (6:00am) so he could get to SPS earlier.  This gave him time to call around and look at cars since the prices of cars are slightly lower there in SPS than here in Tegucigalpa.  To make a long story short, he had found a minivan that he really liked that was “slightly” ($2000) out of our price range, but they were willing to come down some.  So on Monday he called the car dealership to offer our top price and after some deliberation, they agreed to bring the car to Tegucigalpa (a 5 hour drive) so our mechanic could look at, and if he cleared it, we would buy it for the price we had offered.  So that Tuesday, Mr. Sparkles (Juliana and Kyle have an on going debate on whether our cars are boys or girls) became part of the family. 

On the Friday afternoon after we got our minivan, Kyle got our other car (Snowflake) washed and vacuumed out, and then posted pictures of it on the HFMM facebook group late that night.  On Saturday, three people contacted us who were interested in it, two of them being people from our church.  On Sunday we brought it to church for one of them to test drive it and she ended up taking the car home with her so that her mechanic could look at it on Monday. Then on Tuesday she gave us a check for our asking price.  She didn’t even want to negotiate (blessing)!!! 

50^th anniversary and Family Fun Day:



Field Day during the 50th Anniverserary

The end of February and into March was a busy time as three weekends in a row were filled with school activities.   As mentioned earlier, the national soccer tournament was one of those.  Along with that included the school celebrating its 50th anniversary, and a few weeks later, Family Fun Day.  The anniversary celebration included an open house, reception, and a VERY long thanksgiving celebration/service (Levi went to the bathroom three times during the service).  A lot of alumni and former staff came back for the festivities and we got to have dinner with the Birky’s (former athletic director of the school and his wife who were both long time Pinares staff) one night. 

Getting nails done during Family Fun Day

During Family Fun Day, each of the different grades and classes of the school either create and run carnival-like booths or host a food booth.  Kyle has been in charge of his own booth as athletic director where he sells t-shirts and polo shirts as well as gets rid of old athletic department balls using a game he calls “Ball Box,”  a simple game where you have to shoot the ball…into a narrow box.  If you make one of your two shots, you win an old ball (soccer, basket, or volley).  If you make both shots, you win a polo shirt (only two people in the last 5 years has made both shots).

Fathers’ Day:

Fathers’ Day comes twice a year for North American fathers who live in Honduras.  That is because

All ready for the Father's Day program!

Honduras celebrates Fathers Day on March 19^th.  Being that Juliana is in Pre-Kinder, she and her classmates were involved with putting on a Father's Day Assembly in the gym and later invited their dads back to the classroom for breakfast.  A special blessing was when Kyle was presented a paper tie that was colored by Juliana and contained “interview” questions and answers.  Apparently Juliana thinks that her daddy is really good at volleyball and has no idea what he isn’t good at. 

Semana Santa:

Semana Santa finally came and went.  It was a much needed break for the Webb family which they spent cleaning the house, visiting with friends, going out to Comayagua to visit other friends and see the Alfombras (sawdust carpets), preparing for the Easter service, and a “special surprise” for Juliana because she was such a well behaved and helpful girl for most of the week.  The special surprise was that Melodee took her to see a special showing of the new Cinderella… in English!  Most children’s movies are only shown in Spanish, but one of our friends convinced one of the local theaters to have a special showing (what a blessing) for the Gringos in English today.        



Our yard had to be dug up to find a broken pipe / Juliana's class field trip

Poor sick boy

  
Thank you Lord for your many blessings!!!
 

A New Season!

                Free at last, free at last, praise the Lord, Kyle is done with his studies!!!  On December 12, Kyle turned in his last project.  By doing so, he has completed the final course of his master’s program.  With Melodee picking up a lot of slack and after many late nights of Kyle reading books and writing papers, Kyle has officially graduated with a Master’s of Science in Sport Administration.  We thank all of you who have supported us through the season with encouragement, prayers, and financial assistance.

                With the seemingly lighter season ahead for Kyle, Melodee has transitioned into a period of workload overabundance.  In addition to her usual daily tasks, Melodee’s work for the Honduran Fellowship of Missionaries and Missions (HFMM) has increased.  With the loss of an a office assistant and the annual missionary retreat coming up, all staff members for the HFMM are having to kick it up a notch by dedicating more hours.  Please pray for Melodee as she juggles both work and home life and for wisdom and grace for Kyle as he transitions back into roles where Melodee had previous held the rope within our family.    

Christmas Vacation and a New Year.

                “This is the worst Christmas ever,” was the exasperated statement of a helpless little girl that had spent the last few days with stomach pains, vomiting, and bathroom accidents.  Not long after Christmas vacation started, Juliana came down with the Flu…then she passed it on to Levi, then Daddy got it, and then finally Mommy.  With weeks that seemed like a month for the JKLM Webb household, slowly but surely, they recovered and were finally able to eat normal full meals. 

                Unfortunately for Kyle, normal meals may not be as normal as they use to be as he also experienced his first kidney stone over the vacation.  The rumors are true, the pain is legit, and no matter what position you are in, it just don’t quit.  On December 30, at 6:15 am, Kyle awoke to some back and/or stomach pain.  At the beginning of Juliana’s stomach sickness, she also had some seemingly painful stomach issues, so Kyle thought that he might be experiencing the same thing.  Being that Juliana felt a lot better after vomiting and using the bathroom, Kyle tried to alleviate his pain by doing the same.  When that didn’t work and the pain did not subside but actually substantially increased, Kyle thought that maybe he had appendicitis or maybe had his appendix rupture.  He then politely (ha!) asked Melodee to take him to urgent care. 

                After arriving, the doctors quickly put Kyle on some pain medication.  This seemed to dull the pain for a little while, but after 15 minutes or so, the pain would return.  Doctors then fed more pain medication into Kyle’s body and for a few minutes again, the pain would lessen.  After blood and urine tests returned, and Kyle’s pain could not be alleviated by the medication at this urgent care, it was determined that Kyle needed to be ambulanced to a hospital that could give him stronger meds and run tests that could not be run at urgent care.  

                At the hospital, Morphine mixed with 5 or 6 other drugs, seemed to do the trick for managing the pain.  When the results from a ct scan with contrast came back, it was confirmed that Kyle had a kidney stone, that it was too big for him to pass on his own, and that surgery was required.  After a successful surgery and a night’s stay at the hospital, Kyle was sent home… only to return the next morning (January 1^st) with the same type of pain.  This time it was determined that the kidney stones were only “residual dust” and after doping him up with morphine and other drugs, he was again released from the hospital. 

                Unfortunately for Kyle, the lab test of the kidney stone came back and stated that it was made of calcium oxalate.  This means that Kyle’s days of eating a big bowl of cereal in the morning, coming home to snack on another bowl of cereal in the afternoon, and then occasionally drinking a tall glass of chocolate milk at dinner, are over.  More water, water, water, and dairy ONCE A WEEK, is what the Doctor ordered.

Juliana’s Birthday!

                What’s 4+1, 2+3, or 5+0 = ?  One happy 5 year old birthday Girl!!!  Juliana spent her birthday celebrating with her classmates, family, and friends with Mommy and Daddy throwing her a Little Mermaid themed party.  Juliana’s party started after school when about 10 of her classmates and their moms and dads showed up at our house.  The first item on the docket that day was a one-on-one photo shoot with Juliana.  We had a photographer (friend) take photos of Juliana and her friends in front of some red flower plants that we have out back.  As more of Juliana’s kid friends would show up, we would have them take a photo with Juliana. 

Next up was the Ocean Snacks.  In preparation of the party, Melodee whipped up some Blue Ocean Drink (lemonade w/ blue food coloring), Sea Snails (Pigs in a blanket), Gold Fish (Gold Fish cheese snacks) , and Octopus Legs in Humus (Veggie Sticks w/ Humus Dip).  Kyle regrets not thinking ahead and bringing back some dried ika (dried squid) for the event.

Following the food, Kyle set up a game where we used the ball pit balls that the kids got for Christmas (thanks Marcy!) and gym mats.  Following the theme of the day, the game was called pirate ship.  With this game, the kids were split into two teams and were to uses the balls (cannon balls) to try to sink the other ship.  In order to do so, they were to throw the balls into the other teams ship while one person from the other team who was inside of the ship, would try to throw the balls out.  After the music stopped, so did the game, and the number of balls found inside each team’s ship would be counted.  The team with the most cannon balls inside of the other teams ship was the winner of the round.

The next planned activity of the day was an artsy sea craft.  For this, each child was given a construction paper of their choice, stickers, crayons, glue, and a printed photo of them and Juliana (taken earlier in the party).  After we did this activity, we now have a better understanding on why pre kinder kids require the use of glue sticks rather than the normal white liquid Elmer’s Glue.  Either way, fun was had by all. 

After the craft, the kids’ attention was grabbed by an announcement from King Triton that it was now time for the Royal Treasure Hunt made in honor of his favorite daughter, Princess Juliana.  During the hunt, the kids were sent to find a singing Siren (Christa) who asked them to help her collect all the gold (5 and 10 Honduran Centavos – Thanks for the idea Adriana), then the kids were given a map to Santa’s vacation house.  When they found it, Santa (Harold), told them about the greatest treasure they could ever find (Jesus).  He also pointed the group to a pirate friend of his, Captain Cranky (Dan).  Captain Cranky told the group of how he came across a pirate treasure chest that he could not open.  He also told them that he heard a tale of how to open said chest with the help of a magic wooden stick and a birthday girl. 

After the piñata, the kids were ushered back to the house to sing happy birthday, and to eat cupcakes.  Before they left, each kid was also given a goody bag to take home with them.  We are definitely blessed to have such a wonderful community and friends, as without them, the party would not have been such a success.  There were some kids who actually though Harold was Santa, and it took Juliana quite some time to figure out that Dan was the Pirate Captain.  Thank you to all who helped us make Juliana’s birthday, such a memorable one.