Family Pic - June 2018

Family Pic - June 2018

4.21.2017

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!