new hat

Monday morning we got two bags of our stuff.

Quite exciting!!

Someone flew up from CA and brought them for us.

Everyone, save Maddy, was pretty excited.

Maddy only got some socks out of the deal.

And aside from a bunch of Christmas stuff that we no longer needed (at least until next year!), it was great to get some more of our things.

Cade and Lucy have been growing out of their clothes so Auntie Val kindly packed a bunch of the next size for them.

One of the items was this sweatshirt.

It is a hand-me-down from Mia.

She wore it a lot and I loved it on her.

Lucy had no love for it.

None.

Since I couldn't possibly make it my size, I thought I'd just do something else with it:

I made myself a new little hat.

And other than the lousy sewing job....

look closely at the picture below.....

I love my new little treasure.

It is quite comfy too.

(something is up with my sewing machine.... not happy.... might have to take it in for repairs.... even more not happy..... it stopped working all together yesterday.....really, really not happy)

I made the little flower thingy from some wonderful crocheted flowers that Julie sent to me and some little leaves I made from white felt (I free motion sewed the leave veins with blue and red thread).

At first I made this one.

But it was a little too large for the hat with two flowers.

It will make a lovely pin on something or other.

I still have about half of the sweatshirt left.

Might have to see what else I can come up with....

ps:

You may find this hard to believe,

but Eric doesn't like my hat.

What does he know?

Hmph.

I linked this to a little lovely and thirty handmade days

all day at home and nothing to do....

So what do you do if you have to stay home,

you don't have electricity,

you don't have running water,

and

you don't have internet?

That is a really good question.

And I don't have an answer.

That was yesterday.

Okay, well I did have electricity part of the day

and the internet worked part of the day

(yes the two are interrelated, however, even when the power came on, I didn't have internet)

and I even had water part of the day.

But there was a good almost hour when I had none of the above.

Fun times.

This is what happened in our house yesterday:

And it is still happening today.

And I am guessing it will also be happening tomorrow.

That was/is the source of the water issue.

The electricity and internet were unrelated.

It has been happening a lot lately - no clue why.

But in the meantime, I am enjoying (?) listening to the hum of power saws, drills, pickaxes, metal mallets and whatnot tearing apart our bathroom.

braided bracelet

I've been wanting to make this for a while.

Originally when I thought of the idea, I was going to make them for that craft fair.

Never happened.

But it did now.

I made head bands by braiding strips of fabric together and they turned out really cute.

So I thought, why not a bracelet?

I just braided one very long braid of fabric together.

Then I wrapped it loosely around my wrist four times.

I sewed it together in four places: two close together, where I cut it apart for attaching the hardware, and two to divide the bracelet in equal thirds.

I treated the cut ends with fray check and squished them (or clamped - sounds a little more professional) in the "jaws" of some findings I bought (way back in October) for this purpose.

I attached the rings and clasp and ta-da:

one bracelet ready for the wearing.

Oh, and one more.

I linked this up at kojodesigns, under the table and dreaming, i heart naptime and tatertots and jello

Chuitayo

This is my third attempt at this post.

I'm losing my sense of humor....

Arg.....

The great thing about road trips is that you get to see so much.

The bad thing about road trips is that you get to see so much

that you want to take pictures of, but can't....

it all goes by too fast and even if you could convince your husband to turn the car around, the scene could be gone.

There was so much to see this weekend!

Casa Gabriel, along with some people from two churches in Quito, headed out to Chuitayo this past weekend to put on a Christmas party for the people there.

Yes, we know it is past Christmas... couldn't do it earlier, all right?

Chuitayo is a jungle village, a village of Shuar people.

The gospel has been brought to this village but there is no church, no teaching and few believers.

Casa G. and one of these churches goes to this village two or three times a year to serve.

While the others were leaving on a chartered bus late on Friday night, we decided to leave earlier and visit our friends from language school, the Tachneys, in Shell.

We left around 1:00,

encountered traffic issues,

and got there around 6:30.

But it was a great drive.

This is a volcano - forget the name - that is currently active.

The area had a suggested evacuation in early December.

Fortunately nothing happened.

This is a valley heading into a popular area called Baños.

There is a lot of cool stuff to do there (white water rafting, rappelling, hiking and biking, gondolas, etc.). But it is called Baños because of all the natural hot springs.

We had a great evening with our friends.

The next morning, we got up and headed out for our hour and a half drive to Chuitayo.

We were greeted with this:

Many, many people had already gathered in anticipation of the event.

While there were so many people, this is really what we came for:

This is Lorena:

Eric met her in summer and told me a little bit about her story.

Her mother was killed a few years ago.

Murdered, to be more specific.

They found her mom dead - and her murders had shrunk her head.

Head shrinking isn't as common a practice with the native people any more, but obviously it still happens occasionally.

In spite of the tragedy in her life, Lorena has hope.

She has found it in Christ.

A lot of activities went on.

Many games were set up to play:

With a lot of candy handed out for participating.

Good old playing:

This is Miguel swinging kids around.

Poor guy.

Once he started, he had a line up of kids wanting a turn.

He got just a little dizzy!

We had a program for the kids with singing and a message.

And more and more games.

The kids lined up for "navidades" and the adults lined up for clothes.

Navidades....

I think I talked about them before:

treat bags with animal crackers and lots of candy!

We also had a "clinic".

A doctor from one of the churches came and the nurse was Douce's daughter, who came for Christmas break.

They saw around 100 people.

I played the part of the pharmacist.

Chelsea brought a bunch of medicine down from the US, and we had some others from in country as well.

The doctor prescribed various things (mostly for a variety of parasites, rashes and pain).

The people brought their "prescription" to Fernanda.

I filled it and she explained what it did and when to take it.

One of the more common parasite pills:

They say "Jesus lives" - which is cool.

Might be better if it were in Spanish, perhaps?

We quickly ran out of little plastic baggies to put the pills into.

So, we improvised:

Paper envelopes held together with little pieces of stickers.

Nice.

One of my really good/really bad experiences was with a sweet little boy.

He was waiting in line with his very young mother, to see the doctor.

He was fussing, so I asked if I could hold him.

(Please note: this picture was taken after he saw the doctor and the doctor cleaned him up.

He was absolutely and completely filthy.)

I started to smile and play with him.

He immediately grabbed for my mouth.

Several times he got his hand - which was covered with dirt and had pieces of hair stuck to it - in my mouth.

All I could do was pray that God would protect me from any potential contagious type things (including whatever sores the sweet thing had festering on his precious little face)!

And God is so good.

While I did have these thoughts while I was playing with him, it didn't really bother me.

I know God is bigger than any germ.

Eric was all over the place helping and hanging out with people.

The kids did great.

Before we left they were quite nervous.

There were some tears.

There were many fears.

(and maybe some "tears for fears"....okay, I am so not funny).

To help with the nervousness over lice (which is contracted in these environments with boring regularity), I braided all the girls' hair.

And we prayed and talked about it all.

I was impressed with them.... for being more timid, shy kids and for their first time - they were really in there. Mia, Cade and Lucy (Cade especially) took a while to warm up. But once they did, they were off and running.

Maddy had little girls attached to her right away.

Mia, in the background above, had a few girls clinging to her as well. You can see by the picture that she was a little nervous, but she did great, too.

Cade played a bit of soccer with the boys there.

And he even busted out a few of his moves when the Casa G. boys had their break-dancing performance.

Yes - as in busting out a few moves in front of all those people.

Entertaining?

Oh my yes!

The kids all helped the Casa G. boys run the games as well.

Lucy found some new friends.

They ran around, chasing each other, and playing hand-clapping games.

Oh my, it did my heart good!

I want to go back -

every weekend.

As the day was over, we just started driving back to our friends' in Shell.

Eric stopped the van to show me a family's hut that he had been to in the summer (this was one of the places they had come to).

While we were stopped, a boy knocked on our window.

He asked where we were going.

We told him.

Then a lady came up and also asked.

She asked if we would take this boy and his brother to another village about 15 kilometers away.... their home.

They had come all that way for the party (15 kms is a long way for them!).

Sure, why not!

So they hopped in and we drove them home.

Here are Yilsen and Carlos.

The first picture I took of them was without the sunglasses.

Carlos felt blinded by the flash.... I think it just surprised him.

He probably never had experienced it before.

So Eric handed him a pair of sunglasses, and soon Yilson wanted a pair too.

They thought it was all pretty funny!

We dropped the boys off by some sign on the road and they walked on down to their house.

On Sunday afternoon we left the Tachney's and headed for home.

Well, sort of.

We got about 10 minutes away and came to a stand still.

A long long line of cars.

All stopped.

The girls and I decided to get out and see what was going on.

I'm sure we walked close to a mile to the start of a line.

I asked a guard there what was going on.

Seems that there was a landslide going across the road.

One man had already been waiting 5 hours in his car.

The girls and I walked back

(man did we get a lot of stares.... I don't think that town has seen a lot of families with three blonde girls).

We turned around.

There was another way home - just a little longer.

While the other way was longer, and we had a much later start than we hoped, the drive was fantastic.

Such incredible scenery.

The reflection of the toilet paper roll on the dash board just adds to the beauty, don't you think?

(side note: toilet paper - DON'T leave home without it, unless "drip dry" has appeal)

Here was a little "roadside café" - closed, but there none-the-less.

Beautiful clouds over the mountains.

The valley of the jungle.

Absolutely incredible creation.

God is amazing!

The drive was pretty curvy and crazy - lots of rough road and hairpin turns...

But nothing like it was a few years ago, apparently.

We got home slightly after 9:00 p.m.

Not bad.

Especially when we heard the story from Casa G and the churches.

We had tried calling a few times to warn them about the landslide.

No one answered their cells.

Turns out they were there shortly after we left.

They waited until 1:00 a.m. (we left there around 3:15 p.m.).

At 1:00 they started moving, only to find out that a truck got stuck.

So they found a place to stay and slept - but only for a few hours.

At 5:00 they tried again.

A different truck got stuck.

Finally they turned around and went the other way as well.

They all got home yesterday at 2:30 p.m.....

completely and utterly exhausted.

I'm so glad we have our van.

guest blogger

Today you are in for a real nice surprise.

A special treat.

But first a little babbling from me.

We got a package today!!!

The unfortunate thing is that we were all so thrilled that I plum forgot to take pictures to capture the moment.

Grandpa and Grandma Rose sent a Christmas package!

There was stuff for each kid as well as

CHOCOLATE.

Not just any chocolate....

Laura Secord chocolate.

Yum.

We'll see how much the kids get of that.

Kidding, I already divided it up.

I do have to watch my girlish figure, you know.

Now on to the surprise.

I have my first guest blogger today.

It is going to be a real treat.

Now, this is his first time in blogland

- writing that is -

he is, of course, a dedicated follower.

Please be patient with him and laugh along just like you would be if I were writing. We want to build him up and make him feel like he might be good at this sort of thing (not so good that he would start his own blog, naturally). He thinks he is rather hilarious and we don't want to shatter his false self image - so laugh. Comment even. Give the guy some good feedback.

He is going to bless you with a introduction to a cultural experience he had today.

And if you are really good, he may even give us a tantalizing appetizer of what happened yesterday - a warm up to the delights of his today.

I am so pleased to introduce to you:

Mr. Eric Ackermann

Take it away, Eric.

Ok, so here goes. Now I am definitely not like Carla in that if I can use 6 words as opposed to 20 to say something I will.

Yesterday...

Carla and I went to the police station to start the process of her getting her license. We needed to get her police record in order to enroll her in driving school. We get there and have 10 or so people in front of us. We wait about a half hour and get to where there is only one person in front of us and only 2 behind us. The lady closes her window and says she is going to lunch and will be back in a half hour. Great. So we head home and come back about an hour later. Only one person in front of us, awesome. Carla hands her the paperwork and the lady checks the computer and then tells us that her passport number is wrong. What? Her passport number is on her censo (Ecuadorian ID) and it's the same as her actual passport. She tells us the number in her system and it's so completely different we have no idea where it came from. I then said "Well obviously someone made a mistake when it was entered" Her response "I don't know". It would be completely impossible for her to use Carla's actual passport and change the incorrect number in the system, so now we have to go to a different police station, one I have visited before and experienced complete chaos with mobs of people, in order to change the number in the system.

Today...

We got the aforementioned package. I believe Carla shared about the other package we got in an earlier blog. This time was pretty much the same except that instead of an hour and a half, I was there for 2 and a half hours. Good times.

On my way back to Casa G I called Carla to share my good fortune of being able to spend 2 1/2 hours getting the package. While I was on the phone with her I came to a round about that was manned by police officers checking license plates. Pico y placa is an enforcement that reduces traffic during peak times. Every vehicle is restricted from driving at certain times Mon-Fri based on the ending of their plate. Our day will be Monday.

Anyway, I'm on the phone, the light is green, but I stop and wait because I don't want to block the intersection if the lights turns red. That was my first mistake. No one does that here. If the light is green, you go period. .....One Friday, I was the third car from the light, but the light went through 6 cycles before I could cross, because the cross traffic kept blocking the intersection. ....My not going drew the attention of the nearest police officer who came over and told me I couldn't be on the phone. ...I didn't know that. I was a bit surprised he would even care, seeing how running red lights and stop signs and driving on the wrong side of the road seems to be tolerated, I didn't think they would ever enforce the phone thing. Today that would have been wrong. The officer asks for my license and registration, which I hand over. I never expected him to do anything other than look at them and send me on my way, which is what I would have done when I was an officer. He tells me to wait on the other side of the intersection because he is going to give me a citation. It took a second for the spanish to sink in and he was already 10 feet away. I started to semi panic and called out to him. "Can you give me a break? I didn't know" He shakes his head. "I'm a retired police officer, a little professional courtesy?" ..." No you are not allowed to talk on the phone"....."If you came to the U.S. and were stopped, a police officer wouldn't give you a ticket."......."That's not the way it is here" he said "If you are breaking the law, you get a ticket". Now I knew that was probably not completely accurate. So I smiled at him and gave him my best sarcasm "You would give one of your own a ticket?" ..."Yes"..... And followed it up with complete disbelieving sarcasm "Really?" He kind of paused, then smiled/chuckled and handed my stuff back. No ticket.

Turned out to be a pretty good day after all.

yipee! the beach

Ah, the beach!

We got to go to the beach from the 27th to the 1st.

Good times were had by all.

At first when we walked into our "hotel" (that term is used very very lightly), I thought "get me outta here".

I'm all for roughing it - but I was not prepared for it, and I was too tired to deal with it.

Plus Eric wasn't there - he couldn't come until the 29th in the late afternoon because he needed to work.

The teeniest, tiniest room for 5/6 people ever.

I still don't quite know how we lasted for that whole time.

Not to mention all the sand,

the mere two towels we got from the "hotel",

the "hot" shower spout,

the foam "beds" and,

no cleaning service the entire time.

Okay, okay, enough whining.

It wasn't the Hilton (don't think I have ever stayed at a Hilton), but it was fine.

I always say that I can be almost anywhere in almost any situation, as long as I am with good people.

And I was with very good people.

We brought our own food for breakfast, lunch and we (three families) each did a dinner.

The place had a dinning room with a kitchen where we could prepare food.

The kitchen was so clean that the smell of bleach was overwhelming.

(reread that sentence with as much sarcasm as you can possibly muster - 'cause that is how it was written....)

Lunches were sometime consumed in front of our rooms, like the picture above.

The water was great.

The waves were fantastic.

The sand was plentiful (in our beds, the floors, the shower, our clothes and bags.... okay, I said I would stop whining..... it was plentiful on the beach too!).

And other than many many plastic lids strewn throughout the miles of beach (who knows why plastic lids were the thing), was relatively clean.

Lucy boogie boarded.

Maddy boogie boarded.

Cade did too.

And so did Mia.

Eric did as well - once he got there.

And even I did, but only once.

I spent most of my time taking pictures,

collecting shells with the kids,

jumping waves with the kids,

watching/helping with boogie boarding and,

most definitely relaxing.

The match up of kids was great.

Lucy had a pal....

They were so cute together - and looked like twins half the time.

They had so much fun.

And I took approximately three thousand pictures of the two of them because they were so darn adorable.

Maddy and Mikayla were pretty darn cute too, but in a much more mature and beautifully cute way, of course.

Cade had three boys to hang out with, although, of course, he also enjoys his time alone.

Mia didn't have a "match-up" but she is so great.

She just gets along with everyone and had a good time with the boys close to her age, and with all the girls.

So thankful that she is good natured and flexible that way!

We had beautiful sunsets every night.

Every night.

But the week was not without incident.

Our family was spared the most, although Maddy did get stung by a jellyfish.

Maddy - takin' on the jellies....

The picture doesn't show much - looked worse in real.

She got a few raised welts that hurt her pretty bad.

She took an hour rest and then was back at it.

Every afternoon - from lunchtime until about 3:00 we took a break out of the sun.

The sun is pretty intense and there were a good deal of sunburns.

Although once again, our family was spared of anything too bad.

I must be a very good mother.....

There were lots of great critters to discover as well.

Lots of the jellyfish washed up on the beach.

They are fun to poke and squish.... just stay away from the blue tentacle thingies.

Lots of crabs.

Cade caught this one.

And even a stingray.

I found that guy during my morning walk on the beach.

I was a definite hero with Cade.

I was a definite villain with Eric...

Cade wanted to drag the stingray around with him every where he went.

Eric was non too pleased.

Cade had an uncanny habit of sitting and playing in the sand when most everyone was out in the water.

Then he would go out in the water when everyone else was playing in the sand.

He is his own person, without a doubt.

But he did have his times with the boys.

And the girls had their time together too.

And then everyone had time together.

We all pitched in building a big old sand city.

I made several attempts to make a crab and lobster army who were going to secretly invade the city.

My army never remained a secret and where snuffed out before I could make more than four at a time.

Sigh.

One of the boys that was along share the same birthday as me.

So we partied like it was 1999.

Or like it was our 9th and 41st birthdays.

The Surf Shak was the venue.

And pizza was on the menu.

(that even rhymes! sometimes I amaze myself!)

(and sometimes I amaze myself that I get amazed by such pathetic things.....)

Mikayla even gave me a birthday "card".

After a two days or so, the men decided to rent surf boards.

Eric took a whack at it.

Even Mia did.

And did pretty well.

My little California surfin' girl.

She did fine when she was on the board, but the board was a little much for her out of the water.

The last night we were there was New Years Eve.

New Years Eve is a pretty big deal here.

They like to burn things and blow things up.

One of the most treasured, if I may use that term, traditions is "burning the old man".

It represents getting rid of the old year.

And they really do burn the old men....

men made out of paper mache or saw dust.

Here is our man.

I named him Zacchaeus, because he was a wee little man and a wee little man was he.

But the hotel owners also bought a man to burn.

The man was President Correa.

They even put a sign on him that read

"¡Mátenme, Si Quieren!"

Which means "Kill me if you want!"

.... a quote from him when that whole coup attempt (or what they said was a coup attempt) happened.

They aren't exactly fond of their President.....

But all the kids where fond of him.... at least the paper maché version!

Fire works are a big thing too.

(From what we saw - they aren't as big as in Costa Rica, but apparently if we had been in the city it would have been different).

The fathers went to buy some of our own fireworks so we could have our celebration before midnight.

The pickin's were few, but we did set off some roman candles...

as well as a few other treasures.

It wasn't a big show - but hey, we had fun.

And I busted out the glow sticks.

I love glow sticks.

And then we burned our man.

We acupunctured him with sparklers first.

And the hotel people burned their President.

His hand remained raised in defiance until almost his whole body was burned.

Hmmmm.

Symbolic?

Oh, I forgot to mention that Correa was also filled with fire crackers, so he was rather loud as he burned.

Hmmmm.

Perhaps that is symbolic as well....

The girls were not so fond of the noise.

(Notice the glow sticks on the kids?)

I love glow sticks.

Side note: On the drive home - through all the towns, big or small, and into Quito, you could see smoldering ashes all over the place..... the remains of the burning of the old man.

And we were fortunate (from all I hear) to only experience one "widow" of the old man on New Years Eve.... Apparently men will dress up as women (in a rather risque fashion most often) and then will hold ropes across the roads and intersections stopping cars. They will stop the cars that are driving with the ropes and then will dance (or what they might consider dancing....) for the cars and then ask for money. Once you give them money, they will let you drive on. Needless to say, if you are trying to get anywhere on New Years Eve, it could take you a while and could get rather expensive.

New Years morning we headed out, definitely pooped out from late nights, bad sleeps on bad beds (no, I'm not whining...... it's the truth!!), and lots of good times.

Just thought I'd leave you with a picture from the beautiful, lush drive home.

Lots of little (and big) waterfalls throughout the drive.

It was so great to get away.

But it was so great to get home!

Happy New Year.