Family Pic - June 2018

Family Pic - June 2018

1.23.2014

Catch up...

So I've been telling myself that I should update the blog since probably Thanksgiving...and now it's the end of January.  Sigh.  Let's see...I've missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and Juliana's birthday, just to name a few of the big events.  If I catch you up on everything you'll probably be reading all night :)  So I'll try to make it brief...

Christmas & New Years
We celebrated the holidays here again and had a lot of nice, restful time with friends and as a family.  We attended a number of dinners, a birthday party among other things.  The weather was beautiful most of the time, and since the kids got a sandbox for Christmas, they spent a lot of time playing outside.  Most of the teachers left for Christmas, so it was very quiet around our house, which was a nice change.  Kyle also had a month off from his grad school classes, which was GREAT!  The last quarter was really rough and we were all pretty burned out from all the work he had to do.

For me the best part was planning a service project with Kyle's youth group at a low-cost daycare for kids of single working moms, run by a family in our church.  I had wanted to do something to teach our kids about giving in a way that they (at least Juliana for now) could understand, and was talking about it with a couple friends of mine.  We came up with an idea and Kyle wanted to get his youth group involved.  We bought gifts for 21 kids and 3 workers, went to the daycare on their last day before Christmas, and got to sing songs with them, play games, eat a snack, and hand out the gifts.  The youth took on leadership roles (all on their own!) and everyone had a great time.  Juliana got pretty shy, and had just started warming up not long before it was time to go, but I think the more she's involved in projects like this the easier it will be for her.

 
 Juliana's 4th Birthday
Juliana always has big parties.  And every year when planning her next party I try to get her to invite a few less people.  And every year she has more and more people that she wants to invite.  In fact, she has so many people from school and church that she wants to invite, that I'm afraid I'll just be leaving out 1 or 2 people accidently.  So this year I basically just opened it up to anybody and everybody who wanted to come, and made it a Grilled Cheese Potluck.  Good thing we have a bigger house this year, because I believe we had 61 people who came!  It was crazy, but she loved every minute of it.  Her cardboard kitchen that we had given her for her 2nd birthday was completely worn out, so I started looking for a used plastic kitchen in October or November and had it hiding in the closet.

My silly 4 year old
and her huge crazy party!

The kitchen (as well as the rest of her new gifts) is getting a lot
of love from both kids as well as several of Nana's friends.
 
Juliana is getting to be such a big girl (not really in size, more in how much she's learning)!  She can be really helpful and a very loving sister.  She has a sight words video and placemat that she watches on occasion (maybe once every 3-4 months) and the other day when she was using her placemat at dinner she started "reading" about half the words!  Both Kyle and I were shocked!  She's also figured out how to ride her bicycle by herself...although she has trouble steering and falls off the sidewalk sometimes. :)  AND she has finally stopped wetting the bed at night!  It would only happen occasionally before and only when we would forget and let her drink too much in the evenings.  Now, she calls me during the night to have me take her to the bathroom!  The downside is that she calls me almost every night, but at least she goes right back to sleep and no more washing all of her bedding :)
Hardly anyone was around at Christmas so I let her go ride
her bike in her jammies :)

Levi
My big boy can walk!  Actually he still prefers to crawl and climb, and if you try to get him to walk he'll more than likely give you a big grin and a laugh and sit down.  But at least he's able to walk.  And it was at Bible Study with about 15 people cheering for him, so it was memorable and perfect.  And when he thinks no one is watching he'll stand up on his own and balance and bob up and down on his own.  He's got 9 teeth and a 4th molar is trying to push it's way through.  He has gotten very jealous of his favorite people, especially mommy...and he doesn't like it when anyone gets too close (especially in the evenings when Nana wants to cuddle).  He wishes he was a bigger boy than he actually is, and gets pretty upset when Nana gets to play with friends and he can't go.  He likes to babble a lot, but I'm pretty sure the only word he says in correct context is "Hola".  At least he likes to pick up my phone, put it to his ear, and almost always says something that sounds an awful lot like hola :)  But I'm sure he understands a lot more...whenever he wants something and I'm trying to guess what he wants, he claps his hands if I say the right thing.  He can FINALLY drink out of a bottle!  Only a bunch of months too late, when he should be drinking from a sippy cup instead of a bottle...but he loves loves it, and he loves to drink warm milk from it, so for now we'll allow it.  AND he will still only nap in his swing.  I've started trying to transition  him to the crib (he sleeps there at night, you'd think it wouldn't be a problem!) but he sleeps so much better and longer in the swing...and having a whole hour after lunch when he's sleeping and Juliana's in bed looking at books is just a REALLY nice luxury.

Kyle
Kyle started his next semester of grad school about 10 days ago.  His 2 classes this quarter are Ethics in Sport and something about sports and law.  Yuck!  So far there's been a LOT of reading.  He's already had a few nights that he's been up till 1 am or much later trying to finish his work.  He even asked me to buy some coffee to keep in the house (we've never owned coffee or a coffee maker since we've been married). 

Melodee
I've been spending a lot of time working for the Honduran Fellowship.  The Mattica's found an office to rent the end of October and moved into it in November.  Around the same time, a guy who used to go to our church (still goes to the church, just one of the Spanish services) emailed John and asked if he knew of any ministries needing a Honduran volunteer.  John had been praying for a couple years probably for an assistant, and JuanJo was PERFECT for the job.  He spends a lot of time at immigration and running errands for John.  So this past Friday we had our first staff meeting, in the office, with all 5 of us! (We also have a Director of Member Care)  I believe we will be having regular meetings for the next couple of months as we are working on planning our yearly retreat.  It's a free 3 1/2 day retreat for missionaries within the Honduran Fellowship, and we can fit about 150 people.  We opened registration almost 2 weeks ago and already have 143 people registered.  I'm also working on changing a bunch of things on the website, and the company who designed it originally is adding our new logo to it and making it more modern looking.  We often have 2-3 missionaries a day apply to be members, so its growing VERY quickly.  This week we realized that almost all of our members have only been members  since 2009 or later so we're definitely attracting a lot of new missionaries.

Time to go make dinner--we have bible study right after supper!  Hope this wasn't too long :)