here I am again.

Well it’s been quite a long time since my lost blog. Lots of things have happened and most of them I have forgotten lol.

To start I have to say we are all doing great, the kids started school and they are loving it. We looked at different private schools but at the end we decided to enter them into the public school from town. Its 5 minutes away and so we thought if the kids needed something it would be easier to get to them. They were super excited to start, Xavion was a little nervous because it would be 100% Spanish school but he knows now he is doing great, his Spanish is getting better and better and can understand everything the teacher says. Layla loves it and so far we have only gotten one complaint… she escaped from class and went off to find a friend haha. I am loving them to be in school because I get 3 hours to just get done whatever I need to get done. It’s been a little hard though because Mike already started school and is most of the time doing homework but we are doing well!

Colton is getting so big, in the last couple of weeks I have really seen him grow. He is trying to talk more and man is he running. He loves to run and run and run and run some more haha. He is always screaming “papa” haha he loves his papa. Whenever I ask him to say Mommy he just laughs so hard and will refuse haha he is for sure a stinker.

I finally got a calling and I am a primary teacher for the CTR class (4-7). It’s funny because when I got the calling the bishop told me I was getting the calling because my kids were in that class and they didn’t understand much…. I thought to myself does that mean I get to teach in English? Haha but they do understand a lot. I have to say I wasn’t very excited about my calling because I always looked forward my Sunday break from kids haha. I LOVE MY KIDS I just need a break once in a while but now I get to have them all 3 hours at church too!

I keep busy being a mom of a baby who is loving to throw all of his clothes across the room and is starting to scream so loud I feel my ears are going to pop. He is learning more and more, he can now say thank you, please, more, sorry, excuse me, water in sign language. He can say agua, papa, hola, ball, ma, gracias pretty good.

We get to see our ward elders every day now. One day they came to the house around 8 and I offered them some food and they happily said yes. On a different time they came late as well and I asked them if they had plans for dinner and said no so we made dinner. Another time they came with some young man who wanted to come make some food from Honduras and so we let them. The elders were eating and eating so I thought man elders do like to eat. I kept offering them food and very humbly they always said yes thank you haha. Well so I asked them at what time they had dinner because they were very hungry, they laughed and looked at each other before they said…. Oh we don’t eat dinner. I asked them why? Don’t you get hungry after walking so much? They looked at each other again and then one of them said… we don’t have enough money so we skip dinner. I almost cried but I didn’t. (not in front of them). The other one followed him by saying… and this month I don’t know what we are going to do because the bank lost 800 quetzales from my account… Well to make the story short Mike took them home and I stayed here thinking there is no way I’ll be able to sit down for dinner without thinking about these kids who were not having dinner. When Mike got home from dropping them off I talked to him about having them for dinner every day even if we had to eat beans every day. He agreed. I texted the elders right away to let them know and they were very grateful. So, for the last couple of months we have had the blessing to have the elders come to our home every day!. We love having them here, the kids look forward seeing them. I can now testify that helping out those who are serving the Lord brings great blessing to us. A couple of weeks after we started feeding them I had to go to the market to buy more food. I got some money out and started buying some stuff. I kept buying stuff and every time I put my hand in my pocket I felt I had more money than what I had taken out. I thought to myself that probably I had taken more than what I thought I did. I kept buying a little bit worried that I was spending more than I wanted. When I had a chance I checked my wallet to see how much I had taken out and I realized I had only taken what I thought and heavenly father was just making my money last longer. I bought more than I wanted for half the money I had planned to spend. Heavenly father sure blessed us more than we ask for. I made sure the elders knew they were being a blessing to our home more than extra work J. So…. For those of you who are members of the church FEED the missionaries, you will be very blessed.

Anyways here are some pics for you who wonder what we are up to. 

He can't ride it then he is gonna carry it haha

Baking cookies

Happy thanksgiving

Well its been a while since my last post but its super hard to get access to the internet here. So i wont write much because i already forgot everything that has happen since my last post. We are all doing good, Mike and Colton are in AZ for the next couple of weeks, we miss them terribly but we are happy they are having fun and visiting with family we love so much over there. So lets let the pictures speak for themselves.... oh before i forget HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all! We are sorry we will miss this holiday, even if we do it here its not the same (because i would have to cook haha). The kids are very excited for turkey day so we will probably do a little something but nothing big like in the states.


Xavion climbing a fruit tree of "misperos" the tree is just in my parents patio and he loves to climb it and pick some and eat it while he is still on the tree.

  

Colton working harder than anybody else :D

Whenever we cant find Colton in the house we know he is behing my sister's house playing with sand and rocks. 

Just love... pure love. 

Mike working hard on Layla's playhouse we gave her for her birthday.

My parents have coffee plants everywhere and Colton loves to go cut off the coffee and trow it everywhere... this is his face when he gets cut. 

Miss Layla just being cute. 

I never thought i would see Mike work so hard on doing all the things he is been doing around here.  Im grateful for him and his hard work.

Hard worker just like his daddy. 

Yes, this is how we BBQ in our house, so delicious! We had all the family sitting around our grill and just eat straight from it. It was so good, we had 5 different kind of meats.

We hiked this hill the other day at my sisters house. It is a very nice view and there is a cemetery right on the top of the hill.

This is what he does when my nephew says picture... it does not work with me haha

Mike teaching Colton how to be a monkey haha

Mike really want Colton not to be afraid of lizards but so far he is terrified of them.
 

When they take over my bed haha

 Family time visiting my grandmother's grave.

 The kids had their first primary program this last Sunday they both did great!

 Just chilling

This girl just cant help herself when she hears the music. She has some awesome moves.

This video is so funny, When Xavion knew that Mike was recording him he got super nervous and couldn't think of anything good to say to the camara haha.
 

September already?

We are very excited because our house is almost done! It will probably be completely done in a couple of weeks. We can’t wait to move in, the house where we are in now is very small and now that it’s the raining season water gets in our room from the roof and it’s no fun. So we are super ready for our home to be done. We are just waiting for the front door to be installed and we can move in.

Mike has been really busy with the young men, there was a week where he went to church almost every day and I really missed him being out so much. It got me thinking how much I’m going to hate it when the time comes when he gets so busy with school. 

I have been busy being a mom and a wife. My kids keep me young that’s for sure. I sometimes get sick of my routine of having to clean the house every single day and having to spend much time washing clothes but when I don’t have to I sure enjoy it. I have been walking in the mornings and I have really been enjoying it, we also do Zumba with my sister in law. It gets really fun sometimes. Mike and I were able to have our first date since we got here and I was so grateful for it. I sure needed some time away from home. We went to a stake dance and we got to dance for a little while. Mike thought it was hilarious when we were dancing to the song “gangan style” and I said “ there are really sometimes when I listen to music and I can’t understand anything from it… like this one, I have never been able to understand it” Mike answered “maybe because you don’t speak Korean” haha

We have water now!!! Oh my goodness you would probably never know how happy I am that I don’t have to carry water all the way from down a hill to be able to wash clothes, it’s amazing. I’m so grateful for water!!!

Our kids are citizens of Guatemala now. They already have their Guatemalan passports. It was such a hard thing to get done though. We got to the passport place and after turning all the paper work in they were calling everybody’s name except ours. Finally someone came out and called my name. They took me in a room to ask me questions about Xavion and Layla and why they were so different. I explained to them they were adopted but everything was legal and that’s why they already have their Guatemalan birth certificate because we presented all the papers that were required. He said everything was good and they would give me the passports in just a bit. Well 10 minutes later someone else called out my name to ask the same questions. They asked for the adoption paper work to make sure we were the parents. We explained that if we hadn’t already presented all the paper work required we wouldn’t have their Guatemalan birth certificates already. They didn’t seem to understand that. So they said all we need is to see the adoption paper work. Thank goodness Mike had broght them along so we showed them to them…. Well after this they said we need their US birth certificates too…. Grrrrrrr. Mike and I were so irritated at this point we just laughed about it. The guy didn’t seem to appreciate the laugh and said “it’s not funny, this is to help you guys because we have to make a note on their passports” we explained him how irritated we were because it was just dumb that after we already gave them their Guatemalan birth certificates which was a requirement they were still asking all of these papers that we had to present at the time of getting their Guatemalan passport. Anyways we gave them all the papers they were asking for. The guy tried to read them but guess what? He didn’t speak English…. Well we got the passports and guess what?? There was absolutely nothing different between their passport and Colton’s passport. Guatemala is seriously the worse place to get any Government Issue done. I’m just glad it’s all done now!

Colton is running everywhere, everybody gets surprised to see that little thing walking so well. He does not let me feed him anymoreL. This was sad to me because he is growing up too fast.  He also knows how to throw fits now and he does a pretty good job. I taught him how to say please in sign language and for a few days he would do it every time we asked him to say please then he started to throw fits when he didn’t want to say it and he won’t even make eye contact with us when we are asking him to say please and he doesn’t want to do it grrrrrrr. Lately he has been so attached to Mike, he cries every time Mike walks away and won’t go to sleep unless Mike is right next to him. He got 2 new teeth and is crazy about food. There is absolutely nothing we can’t hide from him haha. Mike has been teaching him how to play hide and seek and he loves it. His personality has changed so much. He loves to help us out in everything we do. He likes to put clothes away and knows where everybody’s clothes goes. He impresses me so much! He knows how to wave bye now. One funny thing he is doing is whenever something funny happens he points at the person who is making him laugh and laughs so hard. He got also really sick again, he had lung infection, ear infection and throat infection. It was no fun, he had a bunch of medicine and we had to nebulize him very often and he is all better now.

Layla keeps getting more and more popular and I’m not sure how good that is. She gets so much attention and she loves it haha. She dances everywhere even in the street when she hears a song she likes. Everybody tell us how do we keep up with her and my answer is I don’t know we just do haha. The other day we went to drop off my sister at her house and on our way back there were 2 missionaries walking by. We stopped to say hi and the first thing Layla said was “hey you are black like me” haha he was from the Dominican Republic and he just laughed and said “yes and look at my hair it’s just like yours too. One day she was talking about her taste butts on her tongue haha. We told her it was taste “buds” One day we went to the center and we had to stop by the library to make some copies. There was a teenage couple there making out. It was bugging everybody you could tell but nobody was saying anything. I hadn’t pay much attention since Layla was looking away. When Layla realized what these guys were doing she looked at me and said “mom look at those guys yuck” so I walked up to them and polity said “can you guys please find a more private place to make out where no kids are around?” they laughed but guess what?? They stopped doing it haha.

Xavion lost another tooth, I think he got so excited about the tooth fairy the first time that he started getting his tooth loose on purpose so he could get more money. This time the tooth fairy did not bring him a lot of money and left a note that if he is getting his teeth loose on purpose she will not come back haha.  These are a few funny things that have happened with Xavion.

While playing the I spy game:

Mike: I spy something black

Xavion: Me??? Very confused

Me: I spy  a crazy lady

Xavion: It’s Layla right? While lifting up an eye brow letting me know there was no point in asking that question

Guess that song game: a Michael Jackson song was playing

Me: This guy used to be black but he did a lot of things and turned white

Xavion: Daddy!!!!

Colton dressing up as a clown :) 

This is why I don't like my kids eat candy haha

He can climb out of the car window now.

He can spend a lot of time playing here. He talks a lot while playing i wish i could understand what he is saying.

He really likes animals, chasing chickens is his favorite thing to do haha

He loves to help out. Mike was filling this thing with dirt so he started doing it too.

By this pic you can tell he loves eating beans. He is even using his spoon all by himself. 

Why can't they get a long all the time?? wouldn't that save mommy lots of head aches? haha

This is the group Xavion and Layla danced in the parade with. Afterwards everybody wanted to take pics of them, their smiles were very faked at the end haha.

Our house almost done. This little way is from our house to my moms and now is all done, it has tile on it now i just dont have a pic of right now.

  Our kitchen.

We started putting flowers up all around our house.

Our stairs up to our roof all done.

  We planted lots of goodies here now, i just dont have the pic. We planted parsley, cilantro, tomato, jalapeños, onions and few other things.

 Well i have to go now, my baby is screaming and i wanted to post this before my internet runs out. Until next time :).