i love this guy

Cade loves to make stuff and love to watch it happen.  One of his latest creations was a, um....., I'll call it a lap desk/media board.

 He took some pieces of scrap wood and ply board type stuff and some fancy duct tape that he got from Grandpa and Grandma Rose for Christmas and made this treasure.

 He bought his sister's iPod (I has three or four songs on it including "We didn't start the fire" by Billy Joel) off of her with his birthday money from Oma and Opa and made a special holder for it.

He wrote "do not touch, only Cade" on it and "Cade Ackermann besk board" (meaning "desk board" - apparently he is still having some issues with "d" and "b").

Love that boy.

Love his creation.

sick of yourself?

Do you ever get sick of yourself?  I mean like sick of your sinfulness, humanness, dealing with your constant imperfections?

Last evening I said something - not a horrible something - that made me sick to my stomach about myself.  It was just my pride oozing out.  Pride about something stupid - a comment I made about something that basically said "my infirmity is worse than yours".  How utterly stupid and prideful - being prideful about something that is wrong with me.  Utter lunacy. 

So often I look back at myself and what I say, think or do and I just want to beg "God please take me now!"  I don't want to be a yucky friend, a prideful person - a braggart, a selfish spouse, an impatient parent..... and on and on it goes.

Oh Lord, thank you that you are so patient with me and that Your mercies are new every morning.

making it easter

This year due to trips to the jungle and weddings (okay - that would be one trip to the jungle and one wedding), I was not on top of my game Easter wise, so to speak.  Since it all was done on Saturday and Monday was still a vacation day, we tried to do a little make-up.

We were able to make "resurrection rolls" on the appropriate day - Sunday.  So after church and Casa G., we gathered up the necessities and off we went.  One of the guys from our church, Zach, goes to a bible college in Argentina and stayed with us a few extra days during his break..... so he had the highly desired privilege of joining in our Resurrection celebration.

Cade was delighted that one of his three "big brothers" from the jungle trip got to stay around.

I made the dough ahead of time so all we had to do was take out the marshmallows, butter, sugar, cinnamon.  Once again, you melt the butter, mix cinnamon and sugar together and start the process.  Back in the time when Jesus died, bodies would be preserved in oil and spices, then wrapped in cloths.  So that is what we are doing here:  Jesus' body is represented by the marshmallow, oil = butter, spices = cinnamon and sugar, cloths = dough.

The baking represents the time in the tomb and when, after the correct amount of time, you go back to the oven, the "cloth" is there, but the "body" has disappeared.

Even though the kids have done this now before, they thoroughly enjoy making them (and eating them!) and it somehow makes the story, truth and reality much more real.  I'm pretty sure this is one tradition that will continue to be part of our Easter for a long, long time.

Monday we had the Jensens over and dyed eggs.  Marlo found white eggs (brown are the dominant egg color here - white are only found occasionally), boiled them and brought them over.  I still had egg dyeing stuff left over from last year, so away we went.

Side Note:  Mia has been longing and longing and longing for her very large stuffed penguin from Uncle Michael ever since we moved back in 2009.  Baggage space is always at a premium so he has always been left behind whenever there was travel back and forth between California and Ecuador.  But finally - FINALLY - in Mia's mind, Auntie Rach and best friend Tatum made it a priority and got her beloved penguin here for her birthday present.  One might think that giving her something she already owns is not much of a birthday present, but then one would be very very wrong.  Getting it here represents much effort, struggle and sacrifice......

All that to say, now the penguin is everywhere:

Since we only had 30 white eggs, I decided to boil a few brown ones as well.  If you are patient, you can get some beautiful colors from them - they just take a long time and the colors are sort of fallish instead of springish.

It was hardly worth it however as many many of the eggs ended up like this:

We ended up cracking, dropping or smashing many an egg.

Mia ended up giving up on dyeing the brown eggs and took to smearing them with paint instead.  They actually were quite pretty when she was done.

After eggs, we made Easter Bunny Buns.  Again, I made the dough ahead of time, so the kids just helped form the bunnies (or turtles, as some thought.....)

The kids came up with some very, very interesting bunnies this year.

The eggs didn't stick around and get admired for very long.  They were all very soon cracked, peeled and made into deviled eggs and egg salad.  Surprisingly, we had egg salad sandwiches for dinner, after an appetizer hour of deviled eggs.

Marlo brought some yummy treats that she had made earlier.

She's a rather talented woman, that one.  Peanut butter eggs - my personal favorite with the pink squiggles, chocolate truffle eggs and cake balls in white chocolate.  Yum.

One might think that after this post that Easter is all about food for the Ackermanns.  

I have very little to say about that right now.

eleven

She's been eleven for a few weeks now.  Ridiculous.

Mia's birthday celebration has been like a lot of our kids' birthdays..... on going.  We started a day early at Casa G. with the usual say nice things, give gifts and pray.  The guys were so sweet telling Mia how much they appreciate her and her helpful heart.  They also commented how she was willing (one of the only ones in the family besides Eric) to speak a decent amount of Spanish to them.

Then we sang and ate cake.  I don't quite remember what made Mia afraid of her cake.....

but she did manage to conquer her cake and candles.

Her actual birthday was on Monday - that is our "pico y placa" day (the day when we can't drive during rush hours).  Thankfully it was a half day, so we could go out for lunch instead - as we wouldn't have been able to go out for dinner.

And Mia picked something new!  No TGIF for this birthday girl.  We tried "Rusty's".  We had heard about Rusty's and she thought we should give it a try.  It is an American man who married an Ecuadorian woman and started the restaurant (now he has three.... and is probably in his 70s).  It is hamburgers, corn dogs, curly fries and ROOT BEER!  No other place we know of where you can get that (the root beer that is)

The three blond girls posed.

This was the closest I could get to to having Cade be part of the picture:

We did even give Mia a gift - yes, it was a real birthday.

She received part of it early - a case and light for her Kindle.  Now we gave her a certificate for buying some kindle books.

Then it was chow time.

The hamburgers were okay, the root beer and root beer floats were great, but the curly fries were to die for.  If this place was just down the street I'd be having them daily - and I'm not even a salt-snack kind of girl.

Since we were having dinner at home, Mia wanted a wiener roast.  We didn't quite get the fire pit going in enough time, so we did BBQ instead and save the roasting for the marshmallows.

(Yes, we didn't score well on the healthy meals report that day...)

As dusk slowly settled over the city (ah, don't I sound like I could write a novel.....), we busted out the marshmallows (maybe I don't sound at all like I could write a novel) and got nice and gooey.  We were out of regular sized mallows, so I ever-so-kindly allowed us to open up my precious bag of monster-sized ones that I bought and brought back this summer.  I still have had grandiose plans for them - making a fancy dessert served in the roasted outside part of them, but I don't know if I'll ever do it.... so they may as well get used!

 We all decided that the large one are significantly more sticky than regular marshmallows.

That was the real birthday.  The party, however, the part that really matters - was this past weekend.  Five very lively 10/11 year olds for a sleepover.  I always seem to go into these things with enthusiasm and optimism.  I always seem to come out of these things feeling like a need a strong drink.

But they are great girls.... don't get me wrong.

School was another minimum day (there are an awful lot of those.....) so the girls were here extra long.  First it was time for gifts.  Two of them had already given Mia her gifts on her actual birthday.

Stuffed animals.  Lots of stuffed animals.

Mia wanted a penguin cake.  To be specific, Mia wanted a re-run birthday cake.  She wanted me to make the cake that I made for her 7th (?) birthday..... lots of little penguins doing all sorts of things - like fishing for "swedish fish", an igloo and a pond.  Thankfully she told me a while ago that this is what she wanted, so I imported blue jello and Swedish Fish when I was last in the states.

I didn't have the pictures of the first cake but I mostly remembered what it was and what I did.  And what I didn't remember - Mia did.  Like the igloo.  Completely forgot about the igloo.  Mia remembered (and thankfully didn't notice or complain that it was quickly and poorly made from cut up marshmallows instead of mini ones..... can't usually get those here).

Cade, who I usually can't get photos of, posed beside the cake as he loved it so much.  I could not miss this opportunity!

These penguins got quite a haul of fish.... they know what they are doing.

The penguins are marshmallows, cut into thirds and dipped into chocolate.  I made the eyes by dipping a toothpick into melted chocolate and then cut triangular pieces from gummy worms for the noses/beaks (you can just poke a little hole in the marshmallow with a tooth pick, shove the gummy piece in there with the toothpick and the stickiness of the marshmallow holds in the gummy).

My favorite part - even more than sheer cuteness - was what I consider one of the most brilliant ideas I've ever had (this is my stomach speaking....).  Instead of icing in the middle to hold the layers together, I used chocolate chip cookie dough.  It is cookie dough I've been making without eggs, where you can safely just eat the dough.  

So yummy.  Really, really yummy.

We had to add candles, of course (no penguins were hurt in the celebrating of the birthday girl).

And cake was had by all.

Before that was pizza, lots of loud playing and goofing around.  After that was lots of loud playing and goofing around.  And a movie.  And possibly some sleep.  At least we think there was some sleep.

The morning brought pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream and lots of loud playing and goofing around.  Oh, and playing Sardines.

A good time was had by all.

And a nap was taken by yours truly.