Friday, September 19, 2014

1 Year and 4 months!!

We have lived in the Philippines for a over a year. (One year and 4 months to be exact) I cannot believe it.

Celebrating our 1 year with a "1" cake!
We made it through the first year! Crazy! We celebrated the day with a #1 cake.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Some Philippine Life

We have been in the Philippines for 4 1/2 months now. Life is very different here than in America. There are many things I miss from home. Our family is learning that instead of being sad about missing so many things that we now get excited the next time we get to experience or have or see all the things we miss.

One thing that is different her than in America. (well you can do it in America, but I didn't) I make our Yogurt every week! Yup, fresh, homemade yogurt that we eat 2 mornings a week for breakfast. The yogurt here is very expensive, and we know it's so good for you. (especially our stomachs which need a little extra help living here) So, I decided to make it. It is so easy. I cannot believe how easy it is. Well, here is what I do...

First I have 2 liters of milk, that I heat on the stove to 185 degrees F.
Then, I take it off the stove and let it sit while the temperature drops to 115 F.

Once it is at 115 degrees F, I mix in powdered milk and my yogurt starter. The yogurt starter is some yogurt I made from the last batch. The first time I made this I had to buy a little thing of yogurt for the starter, but now I don't. :) The powdered milk makes the yogurt thick, so it's not all runny when its done.
Then I pour the milk mixture into my glass jars.
Once it is in my jars. ( I have to remember to make a little container for my starter the next time.) Then I put the jars in my ice chest, with another glass jar that has boiling water in it. I boil the water on the stove then pour it in a jar. So, now all my yogurt and jar of very hot water are in the ice chest.
Then I tuck a blanket on top and make it nice and snug in there. I leave it our over night. ( I usually make this around 9pm.) Then, in the morning it's Yogurt!
I put in the fridge for about 24 hours before we eat it for breakfast!! We cut up fresh mangos with some granola and honey!! Yum! (ok, we even put some brown sugar on it too!! ) Our girls love yogurt for breakfast days! This much yogurt makes enough for our family for two breakfast during the week.

I never thought I would be the mom who makes her own yogurt. But, I do and I love it!


Kaylie is in 3rd grade this year and I'm doing some preschool work with Abigael. Kaylie is a great student! She loves school and amazes us with how quick she learns things. Abigael is working on her alphabet and she loves to be the big girl sitting at the table doing school work.

Here are some pictures of our lives the last couple of months! 


Abigael playing on our street with her side walk chalk! One of her favorite things to do!

Driving to language school... you never know what you will see!

The two older girls had lice!! Eww, praying we don't have to do that again!!

Kaylie loving the Filipino food at a restaurant on my Birthday!

Kris enjoying our visit at the LRF!

Sweet Emelyn loved her little chair during church.

Yes, that's a dog riding on the back. He is driving a motorcycle. See you never know what you will see while driving. My camera is always in my purse for these awesome moments!

My victory Picture!!! Mostly you see a max of 4 on a motorcycle, but on this very special day we saw 7!!! This is just a normal size motorcycle.

  Here is the local "threeft" shop. Learning language has some fun parts! :)

So...this is located right next to our front door. Whenever we go outside for more than a few minutes we have to "lotion up"! This is our new "lotion" here in the Philippines!! LOL




Wednesday, July 31, 2013

A few pictures from the past 3 months!

Well, I sat down to write a little on my blog, with pictures and all kinds of stuff. And, now I hear a baby crying. So, instead I will post a few pictures of the past 3 months we have been in Cagayan de Oro. 



 Emelyn enjoying a mango!

Kayie & Abigael loving the glass bottom boat ride!




                                    Enjoying the nice ocean!
 We set up a pool for the girls and one for Emelyn in our drive way. :)







            
            Abigael turned 4!!!! June 29!

 Happy 4th of July!
This was on the way home from language school! Can you guess what lucky animal is on the back of the motorcycle?

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

We are in the Philippines!

We have arrived. We landed in the Philippines on May 1st! I think it took 27 hours of travel to get here. We had 10 bags ( 5 of those were huge chests), and 5 carry on bags, plus all of our personal items. Oh, and the Dog!! When we got to the airport we realized we had not planned on how do we carry all this stuff! Emelyn was in her stroller too. So, someone had to push her. I don't know how we did it, but we did! Next time we travel with that many bags, our kids will probably be much older and can help a lot more!!
We have found a home to live in while we study the language here. It is a nice home and we are thankful to be here. The first thing we did was install our air conditioners in the bed rooms. We are sooo glad we did. We only turn them on when we are sleeping. We would not get a good night of sleep if we did not have these. Very thankful for these. We recently got a lot of our furniture and water heater for the shower. It feels good to have some furniture in our home. There is still a long way to go, to get our home completely set up, but I can see progress. The girls have made a new friend who lives just a few houses up the street. She comes over every day to play. The first day we met her, when it was time for us to eat dinner, it was hard to tell her she had to come back tomorrow. After she finally left, she came over about 4 times that evening. Even once the girls were in bed. LOL. She is very extroverted. Kaylie and Abigael love playing with. We are happy that they have found a friend.
Kris and I started language school this week. It has been fine, but it will be very difficult to learn a language. I feel very lost sometimes, and even when I am following, I forget it all as soon as we go home. We need to get in a good routine for studying once we are home.
I want to be more active in my blogging now that I am here and far from many people that I love so very much. I'm hoping this will help you get a little piece of what our new home is like. Maybe even making you all want to visit!! More post to come....and more pictures!

 "Home is where the Lord sends you"


Monday, January 21, 2013

2012

Wow...my blog! I have not blogged or even looked at this in a couple of years. Life got very busy and  blogging just did not fit in, nor did I really feel very interested in it. My life has changed so much since the last blog. All in a good way. :) One of the greatest news, is we have a new baby girl! She was born on April 24th, 2012. (same day as many of my family members) A day that someone has a baby on, every 7 plus years or so. I wonder who will be next?? Not me, I did my turn. :)
My family in Hawaii

She is a wonderful, cuddling, precious baby. I had many complications giving birth to her. First I got HELLP Syndrome. (very, very bad! You can google it) Then my uterus ruptured. So, she was an emergency c-section, I had to go under general, got a platelet transfusion, and thanked The Lord for saving my life and my sweet Emelyn's. I am so grateful and blessed to be the mother to 3 beautiful girls, and the wife to a Husband who amazes me everyday! I fall in love with him every single morning! :) We are still moving to the Philippines. Yay! We are hoping to leave in a couple of months, and follow what The Lord has placed on our hearts. We are normal people, who love The Lord, want to serve The Lord, and want to share His love to the Lost. I'm terrified to leave everything I have ever known. I trust Christ to give me the strength and peace to find Him wherever I am. He has brought us so far in our journey to get to the Philippines. He truly has given me peace that can only come from Him. This post is so random and there is so much to say, I need to be more organized. Since I have so many followers and readers I need to keep you all happy. LOL, to funny. Maybe someday. :) After many training and moving and babies, our family was able to take an absolutely amazing vacation to Hawaii!

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Fish, Missions, My Girls, Bread Making & Landon!! (Blog in a nutshell)


My Husbands beautiful fish tank. Notice the stand it is on?? My wonderful Kristopher made that. He is extremely talented. If we ever get rid of the tank (we will someday) I wish there was a way to keep the stand and use it for something. Hey...why not?! (idea....) Ok, Kris if you read this we are keeping the stand forever!

Today I went to GUM at my church. I loved, loved, loved it. It stands for "growing up mom". I am very excited about starting to attend regularly.
I'm home now and have been working on lots and lots of paperwork that I need to send to Christar. (the mission organization I am joining). Oddly, I really enjoy filling out paperwork. Its funny, but I get all excited to put the girls down for their nap and work on paperwork. Well, I guess it depends on what paperwork. Some stuff can be annoying.
My family and I are attending the New Personal Orientation at Christar in a couple of weeks! I am really looking forward to it. I find so much joy and excitement in moving forward to heading out on the mission field. What a blessing for me to be able to reach God's people who need His love and guidance. I learned this week in a devotional I have been doing is that God's number 1 priority is the Lost. That really hit me hard. I want to contribute however God wants me to to reach the "Lost". We are hear on this earth to worship God and do everything for His glory. So..."Lost" people hear I come! :) I want others to know what God has done and is doing in my life. So that, they will to want to have Jesus Christ as their Savior also. Wow, I am really feeling preaching! haha. I have just been really putting so much time into heading towards missions that God has just given me more clearer guidance that this is what He wants for me. And so...I'm EXCITED!! Isn't everyone excited when God shows us exactly what He wants for us?! I know I am. Yay for Jesus. :)

Ok...well the funny thing is I will probably be the only one who sees this, but that's ok. I'll tell Kris to read it too. :)

Now on to my children!! Another blessing:) We all got very excited Yesterday at dinner when we discovered Abigael got her 3rd tooth! She now has 2 teeth on the bottom and one on her top left. Not the front tooth, the one next to that. We made a big deal, Kaylie was very happy for her little sister. I enjoy watching their relationship develop. Abigael will drop whatever toy she has to follow her big sister. Which Kaylie loves to have her follow her. It's nice because when I am making dinner, Kaylie will kind of "watch" Abigael for me. She will just walk in circle in the living room (where I can see them) and Abigael will just follow and laugh with Kaylie the whole way. They are both great kids. I look forward to watching and being a big part of how they grow up.

Well, Kaylie just feel back asleep on the couch. :)

Oh I have to mention my new thing I started. (Thanks to a sweet friend) I have started Bread Making. I have only made one loaf. It was French Bread and it came out great. At least I think so. I just wish that dang bread machine would slice the bread for you too. :) How come someone hasn't thought of that yet? I thought the thing was broken when I opened up my finished bread and it wasn't sliced. How inconvenient. I'm kidding, but that would be nice.

Tonight is my family dinner night with my parents, my youngest brother, my younger brother & his wife. They are great!! :) My younger brother and his wife are expecting their first baby in a couple of weeks! Its a boy& they are naming him Landon. I am sooo thrilled to be an Aunt. More than I thought I was. I will be the coolest aunt. I think we decided I would be Auntie Heather. I like it. Brad and Annie (my brother & his wife) will always be hearing "I want to go see Auntie Heather, she's cool" :) Laughs aside, I will love their little boy soooo much. I already do. I know I will cry when I get to hold him. I cannot wait to meet him and give him sweet kisses.

I have to get my girls ready and head out for some wii playing, laughing, family dinner time.

Monday, May 10, 2010

The Day after Mothers Day



My first day after a wonderful mothers day! I was woken up by my Abigael around 7AM. Which is her normal time to get up. I fed her and then played with her for awhile. Kaylie then woke up around 7:30. I put on some cartoons for her while I handed Abigael to Kris and got myself ready to head to my optometry appointment at 8:30am. Everything seems to be going normal.

I headed to the appointment and received a phone call from the doctors office that my appointment has been canceled! They called me at 8:25!!! I was just exiting the freeway when they called. Nice! I really wanted to spend 45 minutes in traffic and then turn around and drive home. So, I stopped at got a soda. Had to make the 45 minute drive out and 30 minute drive home for something. Ha...that's funny. I drove an hour and 15 minutes to get a diet coke from the donut club in San Dimas!! They have amazing sodas. ;)

Well, I got home to my wonderful family. Kissed my husband goodbye as he was off to work, made a bottle for Abigael and put her down for a nap. It is now 11:27AM and I have spent over an hour trying to find ways to make a little extra cash by doing some work from home. Well, I have filled out way to many surveys, I am going to get a million junk emails, I'm not playing with my 5 year old, and am regretting this time I have spent on useless stuff. Ohh wait, I did change our chase account to go paperless!! Hey, saving the planet should count for something. :)
Oh, and I also tried to print off coupons for some groceries we need, and all I managed to do was download stuff on my husbands computer and nothing was printed. (Sorry Honey! I was trying to save money. hehe)

Well, my Monday after mothers day is kind of boring and somewhat regrettable. I enjoyed the time, love and laughter I had with my family yesterday. What a fun day it was. Abigael was dedicated yesterday also. My family came to church to be there for that. Well, Mothers day was a great day.

Its time for me to change my attitude. I need to get off my butt, kiss my Kaylie (Abigael is still napping or I would kiss her too), do some devotions & figure out a meal plan for this week. (this will be a tough week) Kris and I don't get paid till Friday and we are really tight right now. So, looks like dinner for the week is going to be cheap food and whatever we can find in the kitchen. Thankfully my family doesn't mind that at all. I have a great husband. I need to check my fly lady email and have a better rest of the day then how it started.
Well, here I go. I guess we shall see how the rest of my day goes or week goes based on my next blog. I know I have so many readers and fans!! Yay for my mom, my husband, my sister-in-law, and Steffani!

The photos above ( I like to add photos to every post) are some of my family and fun times. The first photo is when my dad took my family & Brad and Annie to dream works studios! It was awesome! We got to go behind the scenes on how the movies are made, had an amazing, Delicious lunch, and saw some of the new shrek movie that no one has seen yet. It was a really fun day. Thanks Dad!! (well...Mom, you can tell Dad thanks!)
The other photo is of Kaylie & Abigael in their Big & Little Sister Shirts. Their names are on the bottom of the shirts. The day after Abigael was born my Mom and Kaylie came to the hospital and Kaylie was wearing her shirt and she gave me a gift bag and Abigael's lil. sister shirt was in it. Super cute! Love my girls!