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!

Happy Birthday Kelsey!

It was a little early, but we have learned that it's easier to celebrate Kelsey's birthday at the end of May instead of the end of June because of her schedule as well as her friend's busy summer plans! We had an "Asian sushi" night this year... it was SO fun!!!! I have a hard time believing she is almost 17!!!

Sleepover!!!

The little girls have been dying to have a sleepover for a while and I must admit that we have tried it a few times before and it's just not my favorite thing. They are getting older, though, so we tried it again this weekend and they did GREAT this time!! We had 3 friends over and all 5 of them enjoyed pizza, playing outside, ice cream sudaes, a movie and at about 12:15, they FINALLY went to sleep!! Allie's 2 friend's moms said that they had the risk of being homesick and wanting to go home, but both of them were fine and stayed all night! Here are some pics of the fun!

Memorial Day Camping Trip

We had a great time camping this weekend out by Mineral Wells. THANKS to Opa and Nan for letting us use their RV!! I think RV camping is sort of like "cheating" when it comes to camping, but it sure is fun! :)

Is this dog patient or what?

The girls can do WHATEVER they want to Maddox and he doesn't care. As long as he can be with them, he is happy! :)