10/17/10-10/24/10

Sunday, October 17, 2010

The Bottema family came to our ward today.  They were put to work right away when Taylor was asked to help pass the sacrament with Juan Fer.  I am amazed at his willingness to participate on his first Sunday!  What a great example he is to everybody around him!
During Relief Society, I got to introduce Polly.  I managed to do it with only one major mistake...I said she'd be here for about 3 weeks instead of saying 3 months!!  I quickly corrected it though!  The teacher for Relief Society has definitely become my favorite teacher.  She uses visual aides and writes on the board, which really helps me to follow!  She has also been coming to the quilting class, so I've gotten to talk with her a lot more and I am getting more used to the way she talks.  She's a really nice lady!

After church, it got really rainy and everybody was tired and had headaches.  I was loving that we had so many leftovers!  

Monday, October 18, 2010

It was Juan Fer's 13th birthday today.  He got his mom to make his favorite type of cake, Tres Leche cake.  Chris was still working and Morgan wasn't feeling too well so the 3 younger kids and myself went.  Cole was ecstatic when Lily's sister, Claudia, brought him the first 5 Harry Potter movies.  I told him he can't watch them until I finish reading the books.  I started the 4th book after we got home!

Cousin, Juan Fer, Fernando, Georgie, Claudia

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

I am definitely not used to lots of boys!  Cole has always been the lone boy, but not today!  I dropped Alysa, and Laina off at Lily's when I picked up her 3 boys, then went home for piano lessons.  Paul dropped off his boys so they could have a chance to play also.  Cole was so excited to have so many friends to play with!  After I was done with piano lessons, we went to pick up the girls and take all of the boys home.  Instead of dropping off the Orellana boys, we took them with us to the Bottema's for lunch.  I had 8 kids in the back of the van while we were driving up a crazy road to their house.  I also made the mistake of introducing all the kids to my kids favorite Christmas song, "I Farted On Santa's Lap"  Wow, that was a noisy car ride!!
The Bottema's house is gorgeous and it has a great view.  I don't know that I'd ever be able to find my way back up the road again though!  The kids played for 3.5 hours!!   They killed spiders, played basketball, played the wii, etc.  When we went back to drop off the Orellana's, nobody was home so they went back to our house for some more playing.  They flew kites while I rushed to make dinner.  It wasn't until about 5:15 that the boys went home, and then I left at 5:45 for piano class and choir.  What a marathon day!!  Needless to say, I didn't get much homework correcting done today!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

I was a little surprised today to only have 3 adults and no children show up for the quilting class.  The ladies that did come, told me that it was a festival day and people didn't go to work or school.  Two of the three women that showed up were nonmember friends of my visiting teaching companion.  I was quite shocked that they felt comfortable enough to go to a gringas house without their friend!   The other lady is one of the Relief Society teachers. During the class, she finished her quilt.  She had such a look of accomplishment on her face and she said that she is going to take the quilt to church to show everybody what she had made.  

All of my kids were pretty disappointed that none of the kids showed up to play with.  They had even taken the big box of balls/rackets/jump ropes, etc to the park.  Maybe next week!

Since there were so few people who came for the quilting class, I doubted that anybody would show up for piano lessons.  I was surprised to have two of them show up!  We are starting to get ready for our Christmas recital.  It has been fun trying to figure out what Christmas songs they have in Spanish!  There aren't as many people still taking the class, so I think after December I'll start a new piano class.  The people that have already taken the first class can just come over for private lessons.  It works out better for everybody....I think!

After we finished all of our activities for the day, we started packing to go to Mexico.  I am definitely in need of a little break! 

Thursday, October 21, 2010

We headed off this morning for Mexico.  It is amazing how much our family has changed since our last trip to Tapachula about 1 1/2 years ago.  (Yes, it has really been that long ago!!)  We are all so much more confident and more familiar with the way things are done here!  There were no problems with sick kids on the drive (thanks to the best invention, Dramamine!), no wrong turns sending us into unchartered territory, and no difficulties with crossing the border!  The stress level was so much lower for everybody.  It was actually a pretty pleasant trip!

About 5 miles past the border, we stopped at an archeological site called Ixtapa.  I have to admit that it was a huge let down!  The only thing that I was glad to see were some stone carvings.  Morgan is studying sculpture in art this year and so we were able to make our real life application of her lessons.  

Once we got into Tapachula, we found our hotel pretty quickly.  It is a newer hotel that is right next to a new Walmart!  I never thought I would be so excited about shopping at a Walmart!  There wasn't anything that I was looking for in particular but it was still fun.  

After getting settled in the hotel, Morgan reminded Chris about the doughnuts that we had had on the last trip.  He got so excited so we all got back in the car to try to find the grocery store with the yummy doughnuts.   I don't think anybody was disappointed!

Friday, October 22, 2010
We decided to go to the beach today so that it wouldn't be as crowded as the weekend.  We were not expecting to be the only people along the entire coast!  The only people that we saw the entire time were the people working in the little restaurants by the parking lot!
We only had a couple of minor spills in the water.  I had forgotten how incredibly salty the sea water is!  Cole was disgusted when he got a mouthful of it!
We spent the morning building sandcastles (which quickly got ruined by the incoming tide), searching for lots of shells, and playing in the  water.  It was great family time.  It amazes me every day to see how close the kids have become.  It really makes me feel blessed that we've been able to come on this "adventure".

Morgan being buried in the sand.

Getting some air!

So, after a fun filled morning in the sun, we headed back to the hotel to get the sand off of us when Chris  realized that he didn't put any sunblock on his back!  The poor guy is going to be hurting!  He even had a shirt on for most of the day but his back is as red as an apple!!

Once we were free sand clinging to us, we headed to the mall for lunch and a movie.  Usually when we go to a food court, we pick one restaurant so that Chris can order and pay once.  Today he was wild and crazy and said that everybody could pick whatever they wanted.  We walked circles in the food court trying to decide what to eat.  Everybody ended up very happy....and full!  After we finished, we went to see the Legend of the Guardians.  It was a decent movie.  I liked it especially since it was was in English and I could understand it all!  

Saturday, October 23, 2010
The morning was spent playing at the pool.  Chris went to Walmart and got the kids some water toys and kickboards to use.  I gave each one of the kids a new swimming challenge and was amazed to see how excited and determined Cole and Alysa both got.  By the end of the morning, Alysa was swimming across the pool with the help of a kickboard and trying to put her face in the water without plugging her nose!  Cole finally learned how to float on his back and was determined to do it for 20 seconds!

The afternoon included a shopping trip to Walmart.  I was most impressed by the Halloween selection.  In Xela, there is hardly anything to celebrate Halloween.  In Mexico, there were decorations everywhere!  I had self control and didn't buy anything for Halloween but we did splurge on Dr. Pepper, different chips, baking goods, etc.  I am getting to the point that I don't want to buy anything that won't be consumed before we finish the job and move.  It is crazy to think that we are getting that close to the end!
We had dinner at my favorite restaurant from our last trip.  We have been calling it the soup/Mexican/steak place.  They have the best soup with cilantro, avocado, tortilla strips, and some weird cheese.
Of course the kids wanted to swim more after dinner, so Chris and I joined them.


Sunday, October 24, 2010
I haven't mentioned the huge difference in the cars between Guatemala and Mexico.  In Guatemala, everybody drives an old Toyota pickup truck.  I have so much respect for what those little trucks are capable of!!  In Mexico, it is slug bugs that everybody drives.  We were only across the border into Mexico for about 1/2 an hour when Chris made a rule that we couldn't "slug" each other. He said we'd all be black and blue if we kept up the pace!  To show everyone a little of what I am talking about, we took pictures of the slug bugs that we saw on the way from our hotel to the edge of town.  It took us about 15 minutes to drive the distance.  These were only the slug bugs that I was able to get pictures of.  I'd estimate that this is only 1/2 of what we actually saw!

Our trip back to Xela was really good also.  Once again, no problems at the border, the kids did great,  and we only had one "scenic" trip.  I don't know how Chris does it, but he manages to get us where we need to be.  I get so turned around and loose all sense of direction! 

I am continually impressed by the vegetation in Guatemala.  It is so unbelievably gorgeous here.  (If you look past all the garbage that people throw everywhere!)  It is also incredible to me how quickly stuff grows.  We were driving along and vines had grown around all of the electrical wires.  It was also amazing to see how quickly the temperature dropped as we climbed back up into the mountains!  It dropped from 32 degrees celsius to 16!   Chris and I had talked about how lucky we were to come to Xela for this job rather than one of the hot, crowded places where the people aren't quite so friendly.  Xela has been a wonderful home for us.

I worked so hard all afternoon to get the blog updated.  I was all done and somehow got kicked off of blogspot and couldn't get back in.  UGH!  Every time I tried to logon, I got an error page.  It doesn't happen on Chris's computer.  I hope I didn't mess the computer up too bad!