the beach for the moms

Look to the right:

Look to the left:

Now in front:

No one around but us.

Sigh.

Relaxation at its finest.

Last week Wednesday I headed off to the beach with some other women.

A little mother's day treat.

We all have amazing husbands who not only are totally okay with us going but actually encourage it.

While going to the beach is great, I was far more thrilled to have some time to be with these friends.  Life is not like college anymore (hasn't been for quite some time, come to think of it!) and friends aren't just around the corner, so there is a need to be purposeful.

Can I just tell you how blessed I am?

Husband who lets/encourages me to go.

Beach fairly close and quite cheap.

Amazing friends who are fun, godly and like-minded.

We all read, talked, rested, ate, prayed, walked, played bocci ball and scrabble and watched a few movies.  That's about it.

The most eventful thing that happened was finding this very large crab.

He like to play peek-a-boo.

Look at those beady little eyes!

Oh, and I stepped on a rusty nail.

Don't worry - didn't puncture the skin.  I just got a bruise at the bottom of my foot that I pretended wasn't there.

This was the view from our porch.

I had to make sure I included that picture because I wanted to show you how safe the place is.

That gate?  They locked it every night, without fail.

Made us feel very secure..... as long as we ignored the fact that there wasn't a fence around the place and you could just hop down two feet to the sand!

Renae, me and Marlo.

I'm pretty much living the dream....

I go back to the beach again tomorrow.

shameful

Tramp

Hussy

Tart

Harlot

There are several other nastier names I could use, but I will control myself.

Even if she does deserve it, she is one of our own.

Five days.

She ran away from home for five days.

We were worried sick.

Long, worry-filled days followed by eternal nights.

Then she has the gall to come back home, late Saturday night, and act as if nothing happened.

Even going so far as to try to gain more attention and sympathy for herself.

We are sure she is pregnant.

She hasn't come out and said it, but she has that look.

You know the one.

She's so young, and now her innocence is gone.

And the worst of it all?

She has fleas too!

That cat has caused us nothing but trouble and now we are sure we are going to have more of them.

What self-respecting feline would do what she did?

And knowing that we are leaving in a month.

We won't even be around to be there for the birth of these illegitimate children.

Okay, okay.

Our fault for not getting her fixed. 

(I blame Eric)

Our fault for not watching her more closely.

(I blame the kids)

Our fault for getting a cat in the first place.

(I blame..... Eric again.)

And we don't really know if she is "with child" (make that plural).

But her fleas are already becoming a real problem and I'm not real happy about it.

Research has shown that they are not that easy to get rid of either..... not sure where to begin.
As I am typing this, she is just sleeping on my lap, as if nothing is wrong.
Meanwhile I'm sure 50 fleas have hopped onto me.
Lovely.

The trials in life.
Not happy.

mother's day tea

Monday Lucy's class had a Tea for all the moms of the class.

As you can see from the invitation below, we were supposed to wear our "fanciest attire".

Yipee! (said sarcastically)

 Dressing up is not my thing, but I figured that since I was in Ecuador and people like to dress up here, I was going to be a good girl and honor the request.

I didn't want to be the odd man out again - as my normal attire is usually more casual than the average mom.

Since I had to walk to school, I wanted to draw as little attention to myself as possible (on a regular day, we usually stand out to some degree).  I put on a sweater (even though it was quite warm), flat shoes,  and didn't wear my earrings.  Even with all that, I still felt like a spectacle.  But I survived.

Well, if you look closely at the picture below (or check out one further down with all the moms), I was the odd mom out again.... but this time I was the one over dressed instead of under!  I'm not exactly sure what happened, but no one else wore their "fanciest attire".  Not that they came dressed as slobs by any means, but there wasn't anyone really gussied up.

 Lucy, however, was so thrilled with my outfit and "very fancy" earrings, that it was well worth it.

Each of the kids drew a picture of their mom doing something or something that they appreciated about their mom.  Then each child stood up and shared what they drew and wrote.  Most kids said something like "I like it when my mom reads to me." or "My mom takes me to the park."  or even "My mom makes good food for me."  But Lucy drew something really special:

 "My mom is washing the dishes."

She was the last to share and everyone laughed.  That's me - the glamor jobs.

That probably stood out in her mind since I am always whining about washing dishes.  Okay, that is not quite true, I don't really whine that much, only every once in a while.

Then all the kids sang a song.

 Complete with actions.

 Lucy did a great job and got pretty into it.

We ended the time with a massive photo shoot. 

The whole group of of moms and their kids..... Kindergarten C.

 The two of us with her precious teacher, Miss Ortiz.

We love her!!

 All the moms.... can you pick out the one gringa in the group?

 And please notice that we all have lovely tissue paper corsages that the kids made for us.

I neglected to tell you that when we arrived, the kids escorted us into the classroom and then tied our corsages on our wrists.  Then they served us tea and chocolate buns.

Me and my girl.

 She was so sweet and so excited.  I think part of that was because she was also wearing her fanciest attire - her Christmas dress.  And she, unlike her mother, loves to dress up!

By the way, for any of you who may have thought I might be embarrassing my daughter by posting her little booty on the blog yesterday, do not fear!

She loves that picture and laughs hysterically every time she sees it!

dia de las mamas

Just want to be clear here.

"Dia de las Mamas" - is Mother's Day.

"Mamas" also is the word for certain body parts that mamas (and all women) have, 

if you know what I'm saying......  

It isn't a day for those things.

Being Sunday, we all went to church.

They had roses for all mothers and all those who "mother" others.

They had buckets and buckets of roses.... but being that we are in Ecuador, it really wasn't that extravagant.... considering you can get 2 dozen roses for about $3!

 After church we headed home and picked up some cupcakes that I made on Saturday.

 Fifty, to be exact.

Yum!

And we headed out to Casa G.

While we were hoping for more, we were pleased that two of the guys' mothers came to our Mother's Day celebration.  There were also a few siblings and other family members that came.

After a great lunch, we headed outside for a little "presentation".

They guys gave their mom's little gifts and flowers.

And our kids gave us little gifts and flowers too.

Well, actually, one of my big "kids" gave me my gift!

And then we had cupcakes.

The night before, my friend Karen, whom I haven't seen since our Canadian wedding reception back in 1994, arrive for a two and a half week visit.  She is beside me in the brown shirt.

Even though it has been almost 17 years, it feels like we have just picked up where we left off.... so good to see her!  And she wasn't even insulted that I didn't stay up to greet her on Saturday night.  I was completely exhausted from the last two very busy weeks and just couldn't last, bad friend that I am!

It seemed like everyone had a nice time.

At least I think everyone had a good time....

Not so sure with those faces!

Happy munching.

We had one other very special mother at Casa G. as well.

Phil's parents arrived a few days earlier to do yet another medical missions trip.

These people are amazing.

They were missionaries in Ecuador for years and while they retired a long time ago, they still come back often to do medical trips.

He is a doctor, and is 89 years old.  This past summer, soon after we arrived, they came to do one such trip.  Even with their age, they took a 8 hour bus ride, followed by a 3 hour canoe ride into the jungle to get to their location (it was a trip that Casa G. also did).  Then they stayed in quite primitive conditions for a week or so.

Let me just remind you - he is 89 and I believe she is 87.

I don't know if I have ever met a better example of serving the Lord without excuse.

Extremely impressive people; extremely impressive passion.

We ended our time at Casa G a little earlier than usual as we wanted to play tour guide with Karen.  So finally, even though we have lived here for 10 months, we went to Mitad del Mundo - the middle of the world.

Yes, we stood on the equator.

(its about a half hour drive from our house)

And Karen and I.

While we had not actually stopped at Mitad del Mundo, we have driven past it several times and Cade has been quite fascinated with this monument for the last little while.

So he just had to do the I'm-so-strong,-I'm-holding-up-the-globe-on-the-equator picture.

And then of course Lucy needed to do it.

And Mia

And Maddy.

I kept telling Lucy... "Okay, move your hands a little closer together.  No, no, not so close.   Okay that's too far.  That's better, but you have to straighten out your hands......."  Finally I just gave up, so it really doesn't look like she is holding anything.

And then poor Maddy, by the time I got to her, I had pretty much given up, so she's not quite getting it either!

They were having a big mother's day celebration there as well, so the place was pretty packed.

They had some live music going on with hundreds of people around enjoying it.  Enjoying it here means most people are moving and dancing to it - which I love.  So there is this huge crowd of people all moving and dancing.  Very fun.

Cade and Lucy decided to get in on the action too.

Cade was breakdancing, of course - on the grass (doesn't work so well, he discovered!).

They drew their own crowd.  Two little gringos with not to much rhythm, and one of them thrashing around on the grass.  Definitely something to watch!

We went to a few of the museum type things there and then let the kids play in the park for a while.

Since we started off this little blog entry talking about body parts, I figured I may as well stick this picture in as well.

Take a good look at Lucy on the zip line.

Cutest little buns in the middle of the world!

Right now she thinks the picture is hilarious.  In a few years it may not be so, so I'll take it off then!

Too much cuteness.

The fog started rolling in and the long day needed to come to a close.

Pizza at home with good conversation ended another great mother's day.

six-year-old party

So we did have a party for the kid.

I wasn't going to do it, but I realized I really wasn't being a fair mommy... just a little selfish in my laziness.  So two days ahead of time, I asked some families to join us.

Saturday morning, Lucy helped me make her cake.

 She did some of the icing/decorating all by herself.

 She also squeezed out half of the bag of icing (from the back end) onto the floor.

Should have taken a picture of that!  Apparently I didn't supervise well enough....

The cake gave us plenty of problems but finally we had it in a satisfactory state.

 Satisfactory, that is, until I put it in the fridge, something slipped and as I reacted, I squashed the whole cake up against the top of a shelf.

 These pictures are both after the squish.... we managed to fix it to a slightly less than satisfactory state.

Less than satisfactory, but it'll have to do.

There were quite a few behavior issues throughout the day, and we were very close, twice, to canceling the party (yes, we would have done it - we had to do it two years in a row for Cade: ages 5 and 6.... fun times).  She did manage to work her way out of her funk, so the party was on.

 Just like at TGIFridays, she was completely delighted with everything.

 She expressed great delight with everything she opened - even cards.

 It was so fun to watch her.

Now she has some Littlest Pet Shops and doesn't have to try to convince her sister to let her play with hers.  Although I'm sure that will still happen - more is always better - at least in their minds.

Besides the fact that we conquered the last birthday party for a nice long while, we all had a good time hanging out with friends.

Birthdays end up being a great excuse for having friends over, giving a lot of opportunity for fun for everyone.

And now we can relax for a few months.  Phew.