She's Back!!!

Yes, I've been AWOL for several months. No excuses; just keeping my priorities in order!

I've got several "catch-you-up" posts ready, so I'll get those up in the next couple of days. For now, know that I'm back home, construction on the house has stopped for the time being and the weather is warming up -- promising to be yet another sweltering summer in Sinaloa!!!

God is good and we are blessed!!!

Here is the view from the roof of our new second story. I stand on our upstairs porch and just shake my head at the mercy, grace and abundance that God has showered on me.
No lo merezco.
I'm just not worthy.

Where Is Las Glorias, Sinaloa, Mexico?

Las Glorias, Sinaloa, Mexico is located about 500 miles due south of Nogales, Arizona, on scenic Mexico Highway 15. Since we are within the tropical zones, our climate is very mild. We basically have 2 seasons: wet and warm, dry and warm. Temperatures during the winter (the dry and warm season) range from 50 degrees to 80 degrees Farenheit (10-25 degrees Celcius). Absolutely beautiful -- about 8 months of the year. During the summer, the daytime temperature can easily reach 100 F (38 Celcius), but since this is also the wet season, the humidity hovers at about 80-90%, which makes it feel like the temperature is closer to 120F. At night, it cools off to a balmy 90 degrees. Pretty hot and sticky. Generally, though, the climate is very agreeable, and abrupt temperature changes don't happen. Warm in the winter; hot in the summer.

The main industries in our part of Mexico are fishing and agriculture. There is a large shrimp farm less than a mile from our house, and usually seafood is abundant and cheap. Corn is the main crop inland, but also grown are pineapples, tomatoes, beans, peppers, citrus fruits, lichis, mangoes and potatoes. Guasave, our municipio (similar to a county), is an agricultural hub. Migrant workers come from all over Mexico during harvest season to work in the fields. Tourism is beginning to become more prominent, but our colonia (a small village with only a few residents) still has the "small town" feel, and the tourists are usually only passing through en route to Mazatlan or other, more "touristy" destinations south.

Holes

For those of you who've never read the book "Holes", it's about a youth facility which houses "troubled boys" and forces them to dig holes in the desert. The book has lots of twists and turns, but I ultimately see nothing wrong with the idea of forced labor!!!

Here are Seth and Jessee helping to flatten the hill behind our house. Andrew and Caleb are working, too. You'll see some sand flying on the left edge of the pic. I'm sure that this photo portrays how these guys were feeling as they threw sand down the hill...shovelful after shovelful after shovelful...

Tackle it Tuesday

I've gotta hand it to Janice over at "5 minutes for mom";
She's absolutely right about this being "raw vulnerability"!

To be totally honest, I was in denial about how bad I had let my youngest daughter's room become. My oldest daughter, who shares aforementioned room, has been gently urging me to do something about it. Actually, she's been becoming increasingly insistent to the point of nagging. Finally, I acted. Evie and I took before and after pics. What I didn't take pictures of was the huge mountain of junk we threw out. Suffice to say that what you saw in photo number one, but no longer see in photo four, no longer is in our house. Yeah!!!

Big sister is very happy, and little sister found all her baby-doll equipment and Polly Pocket paraphernalia. She knew it was there...somewhere!!!

My Ultimate Blog-Party Post

Internet around here has been "hit-and-miss" over the past few weeks, so I thought I should take this opportunity to put in my "Party-post" while I actually have internet up and running. Ya just never know what tomorrow may bring!

So, I've hemmed and hawed about what to write in this post. You're supposed to "showcase your style". Problem is, I have no style. My darling husband and I have been married a little more than 16 years, and we have six children between the ages of 15 and 9. We've been missionaries in Mexico for a little more than two years and have home-schooled forever.

All of my married life, I've decorated our house with children's art projects and home-school projects and maps and the wonderful creations that the kids've given me for various birthdays, mother's days and Christmases. My house has always looked a lot like a pre-school playroom...or maybe a laundrywoman's nightmare. I can appreciate one of my best friend's love of camels and all things Egyptian and how she manages to make her living room look like a showplace -- even with Lego boxes discreetly tucked under the setee. All the colors flow together and the whole room just begs you to curl up and enjoy a cup of coffee and a good book. I love her living room. She has style.

My style is more of the "cover-up-as-much-of-the-ugly-concrete-wall-as-possible-and-try-to-keep-the-walkway-cleared" stlye. The theme of my living room is "101 Uses for a Rubbermaid Tub". Tacky, but serviceable. Our furniture is definitely not the "inviting, cuddly" kind. We have a 15 passenger van and have pulled out one of the seats to make room for transporting "stuff" (like ice chests, bikes and the odd extra 10 people if needed). For lack of a better place to store it, the bench seat has become our "love seat". I do NOT love that seat. Also tacky and more than a little uncomfortable, however it, too, is serviceable. I suppose I do have some sense of style...at least enough to know that my house will never make it to "This Old House" or any other "reality" show for that matter. Well, maybe Fear Factor.

As far as "internet style" goes, I'm pretty "Plain Jane". When you're working with dial-up, and slow dial-up at that, you can pretty much forget about putting streaming video or audio on your site. I tried to upload a 30 second video clip of a hurricane that hit here last year. After 4 hours, it was a little more that 30% done. I decided to wait till I could connect via wireless to upload it. (If you're interested, you can check it out here. Nothing fancy. Just our crazy friend Esteban who decided to stand on a roof in the middle of a hurricane to video the beach being washed away.) So my blog is pretty basic: no videos, no music, no banner ads, no moving graphics. Just me and lots of pictures of my family, our friends, our ministry and our home. And lots of words.

I must say here, since it sounds like I'm complaining, that God has been gracious to our family this past year! I just smile and shake my head at how much my faith has grown. One year ago this month, we were so thrilled that we were getting our indoor plumbing hooked up. How could I possibly complain that the walls aren't finished? A year ago, all the window and door holes were covered with blankets to keep out the cold air. Well, we don't have all the windows in yet, but at least the holes are boarded up! It's an improvement. As it is, our home is in about the same state of "incomplete" as most in our village. It's all part of "living at the level of the people". We are just like the majority of the plebes (pronounced: PLEH-behs not "pleebs" even though it looks like "pleebs") : working on our house...poco a poco. Maybe it's different from what we were accustomed to in the States, but maybe not so much. We've lived in a state of "house remodeling" for over 10 years. I don't really know if I could even survive in a "finished" home! I'd be too worried about something getting broken or scuffed!

So here it is, for what it's worth: my "Showcase of Style-lessness". I hope that some of you will have read it to the end and that you might check back from time to time to see what we're up to. I'm looking forward to hearing from you, so leave me a note, and I'll come visit your blog, too!

Until then, bendiciones!!!
This is a photo of our property in June of 2006 when a team of missionaries (3 great guys who, once upon a time, were kids in our youth group in Oregon) came to help us pour a foundation. Foundations were definitely laid! One of these young men is now a missionary in Asia.








Here's our home in October of 2007. (This is the back of the house.) You can see Honey welding the roof supports. One of the kids' favorite pasttimes is jumping off the back of the house onto the sand dune behind the house. Everyone's done it but me. And I'm not planning to. Sorry. I'm old and I don't heal quickly. I'll live vicariously through my kids on this one!



And finally, here is the house as it is now.
Our home!!!

My Late Birthday Present

I want to share a picture of my birthday present. Yeah, I know; my birthday was over a month ago. That's OK, though. I'll keep celebrating!

Seriously, I've wanted a brick oven for over a year. When I mentioned it to Esteban, he said that his wife and her mom wanted to make one for me for my birthday, but they didn't know if I would like one or not. I was totally surprised! Esteban said that they had an ulterior motive: they want pizza!

Esteban, Vasilia, Doug and I went out for tacos about two weeks ago and while we were in town, they bought 200 ladrillos for the oven. Then last Tuesday, Lupita and her husband came over to start working on it. I haven't gotten a chance to use it yet -- been a little busy with Sarah's party -- but I'm really excited and looking forward to trying it out!

I've been wanting to bake breads and such to sell on the weekends, but my indoor oven is small and gas is expensive. I thought that a brick oven, which is much bigger and uses wood for fuel, would be a good investment. In this oven, I can bake 6 pizzas at once. Too bad we don't have a Papa Murphy's Take-n-Bake nearby!!!

I originally planned to put it in the front yard next to the water spigot. It seemed like a good place at first, but after I sat in my "thinking spot" (a log in the front yard) drinking my coffee and contemplating the future of the world (deep subjects for early morning, I know) I decided that it wasn't such a good place. Our front yard isn't all that big, and I wanted the oven to be good sized and to be able to build a work station and maybe an attached BBQ. It would end up taking up all of my available garden space. Plus, when cars drive by, we get a lot of dust thrown up, and I wouldn't want to be baking bread in a dust cloud AND if the dust blows that way, so would the smoke. I was pretty sure that Doug wouldn't be very happy having smoke pouring in the front windows while the oven heated up. Therefore, we built it in the back yard. I have visions of a large outdoor baking area, BBQ, palapa (like a big gazebo with a grass roof) and seating area with picnic tables. Possibly I'll fulfill my dream of owning my own restaurant afterall! Hey, it could happen!

Still Building

Well, two weeks ago we began construction on the second level of our house. We're making progress! We made the floorplan so that we could build small portions at a time, as funds were available. It's the way people build in this part of Mexico. You get a little money, buy what supplies you can, build until you run out of supplies and then wait for more money. It's a pretty good system, if you think about it. We've lived in partially finished houses for the past 10 years. It's just one more way that God was preparing us for the mission field!

Eventually, this upstairs will be our living room, but for now, we're thinking about putting the 4 boys up there. I envy them the view, but the room would suit them better than Doug and I...and I wouldn't have to move all the books upstairs!!!

Our House on the Beach

Depending on your basis for comparison, our house is really big or really small. We've begun construction on the second story, so soon Doug will have his workshop. I'm looking forward to that; today he is welding in the living room.

How much space do we need anyway? I would say that I need a little more room for my books, but other than that, our little home is sufficient. Of course, as the kids get bigger, we seem to bump into each other more often; I have been feeling lately like my "personal bubble" gets invaded frequently, but I think maybe my bubble was a little too big to begin with. Personal space is smaller in Mexico than it is in the States. People tend to stand a little closer while talking to each other. I think that the kids have adapted to that change, but I still struggle sometimes. The size of people's homes affects the size of their "bubble", I think. In our area, the average home is only a couple of hundred square feet. By that standard, our home is certainly "muy grande". It certainly doesn't feel "really big", but it is cozy and "homey".