Happy Labor Day!!

Adysen, Allie and I were sitting around watching TV Sunday morning and saw a commerical for the Gaylord Texan. I pulled up their website and saw a "teacher special" that they were running for the summer and Sunday was the last day for it. So.. we woke up Jason and Kelsey, packed up and went!! We had a great time and made some special memories.

First Day of School

I have gotten SO behind in posting... things got crazy! I'll try to go back and catch up with our end of summer stuff later. But, for now, here are our beautiful girls on the first day of school today.
Allie is starting 3rd grade and still loves to have her picture made....


































































Adysen is in 4th. She is embarassed to have her picture made at school now! :( I tortured her just a little, but didn't insist on going into the classroom like I really wanted to. We settled for this picture at the front door.























































And, I REALLY can't believe it, but Kelsey is a Senior!! Oh MY!

Allie's Birthday....

8 years ago today, we recieved a phone call that changed our lives forever and our sweet Allie became such a special part of our family!! We always say that God dropped her straight in our laps because that is how it really happened. This year, we celebrated a few days early with waffles for breakfast and a dinner at Medieval Times - SO fun!!

Happy Birthday Adysen!!

I just can't believe it was 9 years ago today that we got the surprising call (she came a few weeks earlier than expected) that our sweet Adysen was being born. We love to talk about and remember the excitement of that special day! We will always be grateful to her birthfamily, specificialy her birthmom, Brooke, for blessing us with her!! God's hand was definitely responsible for the way it all worked out and we will always be thankful!
We are having a party in a couple of weeks for both girls, but we had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and went to Chuck E Cheeses for lunch.... Adysen's choice and idea of the perfect place to go! :)

Who needs a pool?

We have been discussing putting a pool, but have found a much cheaper option!!

Ecuador

Kelsey and I were blessed to have the opportunity to travel to Ecuador with a group of 50 from our church. It is such a GORGEOUS place and we had a wonderful trip!!

Here we are at the airport in our orange shirts... having a whole group of 50 people wearing these in an airport was quite a sight!! It was handy to be able to spot everyone, but we got quite a few stares along the way!! :)
























































This is one of the "casa's" where the children live. There are 3 of them built now with hopes of many more to come. They are beautiful homes and it's so neat to see the children who get to live there and to hear their stories.


















We were getting ready to go work on the first day. We spent 4 days working doing lots of different project. Kelsey was on the paver crew who loaded 16 TONS of brick pavers into a trailor on a tractor and the tractor pulled them up the hill. My crew, then unloaded them and stacked them and evetually we began helping to actually build a road!!


















































































Kelsey and her friends - cute huh? :)











These are some of the people that Kelsey met while she was out door knoocking in the community.








Kelsey and I













I got a chance to go on a field trip with some school kids and we hiked up to this gorgeous waterfall!





































The market where we shopped.

















GORGEOUS mountains! This one could only be seen at certian times becuase the clouds coverd it most of the day.


















Most of our mission team.















The very large city of Quito:

















This was one of the highlights of our trip... we drove/walked to the top of this HUGE mountain - the elevation was 15,000 feet - higher than any mt. in the US (other than one in Alaska) and had a church service Sunday morning. The lake is actually the crater of the volcano! It was cold, but awesome!!







































Here is a funny picture that Kelsey and I had taken:





















And, of course, the Guinea Pig or Cui as they call them in Ecudador. In the US, they are pets... in Ecuador, they are FOOD!