Double Date on Blueberry hill

After a week of working non-stop when we arrived, Keith had the idea to go blueberry picking. I loved this idea! I really needed to replenish my berry supply since when our freezers went off during the flood my berries were the main thing that were ruined. Blueberries don't really freeze, thaw and freeze again with out turning to mush. Thankfully my cranberries made it through pretty well without becoming a bag of mush but not the blueberries. So we asked another couple (Josh & Teresa Kaufield) if they would like to join us in a hunt for blueberries. A double Date!! YAY!! It has been a while since Keith and I got to go on a date with no kids. So one of the volunteers babysat our children at our house. We borrowed a friends four-wheeler and Josh brought theirs and we went out, as we say in Zambia, bundu bashing. It felt great. It was a rough ride but well worth it. The weather, the view, the company was perfect. Plus there were tons of berries to be picked! It was such a nice relaxing day after a week of hard work and clean up.

 Teresa picking away

 Our loot

 Josh was pleased, he wanted to make a pie..... come to think of it, that is a GREAT idea!

 Bundu bashing

 This was a pretty trail

 Good Harvest

Preparing for Normal

Well the boys and I have been back in Galena for about 2 weeks now. I am finally getting a chance to sit down and blog about the events that have been happening in our lives. For the last 2 weeks, I feel like I have not had a chance to sit down at all much less post something. We got off the plane and didn't seem to slow down at all. Every night I fall into bed and sleep like I am in a coma. Then we wake up and do it all again the next day. I guess exhaustion is something that goes alone with a disaster zone. Along with mud, trash and an endless to do list. Sadly this to do list needs to be done soon since the temperature is already dipping into the 30's. Winter is fast approaching and I heard a statistic that only 20% of the houses in Galena are ready for winter. Residents seem to keep going with caffeine and adrenaline. There is a huge amount of volunteers that have come to help rebuild Galena and together things are getting done. We even had friends from our church in Lake Jackson come help. So far they have brought 3 teams and I will post more on that later. It is awesome to go to church on Sunday and it is FULL of residence and volunteers all together. Community really means something special here. Working together helping each other, relying on each other. I love that about Galena!

My list of To Dos before winter/school starting is getting done. Oh did I mention that I am homeschooling Kaden next year? I am excited to start and see what I can learn...I mean teach Kaden. The curriculum that I am using this year has a lot of my favorite books that I read as a child and the curriculum does a lot of world study. I am super excited. We got our school room set up, which was on the To Do list. Plus I have cooked and baked a lot of food to help with busy days or those days that I really don't want to cook come up. I have frozen casserole dishes, Banana breads and jarred lots and lots of Salmon. Jarring Salmon was on my list so that I could make room for our moose when we get one. Moose season is here and I am ready to fill my freezer since we are down to the last packages of moose meat. The leaves are already changing and the Fireweed flowers have gone to seed so Fall is officially coming. And with that, comes the knowledge that Snow is coming soon meaning we still have to find all the rest of our fire wood that floated away in the woods. Saturday Keith and I walked a bit and found lots of wood as well as our bags of soil. The soil is about 100 lbs heavier then it was before it got wet making it really hard to pick up and bring back to the house. Cleaning up the yard and getting trash out has been mostly done. We split and stacked wood, with the help form our Texas Teams. We have been dealing with mud and silt in everything that the water touched.  Camping gear, baby clothes, wood, the day is full of scrubbing that stuff. But after 2 weeks I am feeling better about our yard getting back to normal. Whatever Normal is!

But having a feeling of Normal is what I am going for. Getting back on schedule, back in the kitchen, back to the everyday kind of life. maybe i should decorate for Christmas to make me feel normal.....I am Kidding Keith! I will at least wait till October for that! =) hehehehe I will hopefully get back to the normal blogging I do and catch up with the happenings of our summer. And when Keith has time to down load pictures from our camera, I will even post some pictures.  But I wanted to blog saying we are home and trying to get back to the Normal side of life.

Accomplishments

( I wrote this in Puerto Rico but forgot to post it)
It is coming up on 3 months since we left our little town of Galena. When we left, my boys were in my mind still little boys. But now that I look back on the summer that we have had in Puerto Rico, I get a small tear in my eye because my little boys are growing up into BIG boys. They are soaking up the knowledge as fast as they are soaking up the Puerto Rican sun.

My five year old Kaden has grown taller to the point the clothes that we evacuated in are in the donation I am sending to a church, and the clothes that we got in donations are fitting. He gives you a great big smile when he tells you he has mastered the Monkey bars at the play ground. He just can seem to get enough of swinging like a monkey.... he MUST get that from his Dad! (hahaha yeah right!) Not only does he climb the monkey bars with ease, He has developed a LOVE of climbing trees or anything else that gets him higher. He has not had much experience before this because the trees in Galena are all spruce trees and not fun to climb at all. He constantly asks if we can return to the park that we went to last week that had Almond trees that were awesome to climb.

 Another thing he has accomplished has been to swim without any help from a floatation device. He is super excited and can't wait for Uncle Jason Harris to have another group of swim lessons to show him how well he is doing. He is still working on it and I think it scares his mommy a little more then it does him, when he dives into the pool. I seem to hold my breath for him till his little head pops up out of the water. 

He is learning Spanish and I am very proud of how well he communicates with his cousins and his neighbor friend. When we first got here the language barrier seemed to intimidate him, but he as found out the way to learn is to keep trying. He even greets strangers in Spanish.  I am very proud of him.

 Not to be out done by his big brother, Isaiah my very independent 2 year old, has his own list of accomplishments. His little gallop has turned into a full run and can almost keep up with his brother. He is getting taller and taller, I think he is in a growth spurt because this child NEVER stops eating! But he seems to run his engine till exhausted. His speech has developed and he can very clearly tell you what he wants, or DOESN'T!  He has a comedian side coming out in him, which has us all laughing at times.

 One of the first things we accomplished was out growing his pacifier. It "mysteriously" disappeared one night and with just a few tears and mommy telling him we would have to buy a new one at Walmart, he went to sleep and hasn't asked for one since. I did see him eyeing his cousins paci when she was over but he seemed to get over that one pretty easy.

He has also developed his climbing skills, although unlike his brother this boy was born with Spider-man abilities. He has always been my climber but he is quickly developing those skills. He will follow his brother up a tree, but due to his shorter legs he is not quite able to reach the higher heights, much to his Abuela's relief. We went to the play ground last night and he firmly told me that he was a BIG BOY and could climb the dinosaur neck ladder. I stood close till he reached the top to make sure he could do it and was surprised. He got to the top and turned with a smile and said "I do it! I a BIG boy!" Yes he is! With a small sigh and tear I have to let him grow up too!

We have been working on potty training and doing pretty well with it, but Isaiah seems to have inherited my stubbornness and is taking his own sweet time. But Lollipops and gummy worms are amazing motivators! Of course like every other little kid that is potty training, he always has to go when there is no bathroom anywhere close to you.

I have a few small accomplishments of my own. I have not bitten my nails in the 3 months that I have been here! After 25+ years of biting them, It feels good to actually want to paint my nails. As long as I don't watch any scary movies I should be OK. I have been able to go to the gym a few times a week when my kids and our schedule permits. It feels great to work out and I hope to continue running when we return to Galena. I am NOT a runner. Never have liked running and honestly I probably never will but I do enjoy exercising and running is what we have in Galena.

It amazes me how much two little boys can grow in 3 months. I don't like that my babies are getting big but I guess they have to grow and learn and I just have to keep up with them. Kaden talks about "when he goes to college" I hope that time doesn't fly that fast. It has been a wonderful time in Puerto Rico and my boys have grown up a lot! 

Flat Tires, Almond Trees and Rainbows Adventures

Well today we started out on an adventure to the other side of the Island. With the island only being 35 miles by 100 miles "the other side" is relatively not that far away. Except with mountains in the way, getting there is not a direct route. I was very excited because we were going to one of my favorite parks on the island. Guajataca. The view from there is amazing. The ocean is so blue and the cliffs so pretty. Plus the park has some awesome almond trees that are so much fun to climb. So we set out and I told the boys we were going on an adventure. Well it definitely turned out to be one. About half way there we heard the dreaded.... thump thump thump. While a car next to us started to point to our back tire. YEP a flat tire. Most "normal" people probably dread changing a flat tire. I not being a "normal" person gets an adrenaline rush while changing a tire. Maybe it is because all those years in Zambia, with all those many many many many flat tires we had, my dad always made sure I knew how to change a flat. Mom would always make the comment "Well here's one more adventure!" and my dad would usually comment back "these ARE NOT the adventures I want to have" or something to that effect. But with each tire change I learned the importance of knowing where your jack is? Where to place it? Where is your spare? How do you get it down?  Most of the time in Zambia, changing tires was not as easy as today. One time I remember dad returning from a trip out to one of his churches that was a few hours away. When he didn't return by time we were expecting him to be home, we began to get worried. After darkness settled in he drove in with a few of our other pastors that went with him. Come to find out he had about 7 flats that day! (this was before tubeless tires were in Zambia) Do you know what that means? With one spare tire, that means he had to take the flat tire off the truck, take the tire off the rim, take the tube out of the tire, get out the rubber patches and glue to repair the tube, put it back inside the tire, put it back on the rim, put the rim back on the truck and air it up and pray that the patch holds! And he did that seven times! In one day! No wonder he looked like he was worn out when he got back! But thanks to my dad, I know how to change flats on tube tires and tubeless tires! I don't know why I get excited about changing tires but you can blame it on my dad, or you can just take me on road trips in case you have a flat tire! Though I will say I prefer to change tires on BIG trucks as opposed to little cars, which I have done before too! Today, however, we had it easy. After the man in the car pointed at our tires, who he turned out to be a policeman just getting off duty. He called the highway maintenance man. In Puerto Rico, all the highways are toll roads and with those tolls comes the free help. These guys are called to help change tires, fix engines or call tow trucks if needed. How nice! We had barely parked on the side of the road when he showed up.  While Polo and I got the tire out from under the truck, this guy had got his giant hydraulic floor jack(if you don't know what this is, it is a giant jack that can lift your car really easy!) and his electric lug nut remover(if you don't know what this is, it is a awesome machine that unscrews the nuts that are holding your tire on the car. Electric ones cut the time to just a few seconds instead of minutes that it could take) We got the spare tire down, he got the flat tire off, we switched, he put the spare tire on while we put the flat tire back under the car. This seriously was the FASTEST tire change I have ever done. 10 minutes MAX!  Now that is what I call changing a tire! Keith I think I am going to invest in a electric lug nut remover for our truck. =) And I am going to start carrying our floor jack in the truck! =) Never know when we might need it!  hehee. It was a grand adventure. The boys thought it fun going up and down with the jack. Come to think of it, I always enjoyed riding the truck up and down when I was little too!
Isaiah kept saying "Oh No we have flat tire" but I kept telling them, "this is just another adventure!"Guess my mom has rubbed off on me a little!

My tire hands! Are we having fun yet?

 

 After our Tire Adventure, we headed to Guajataca for our next adventure.Where the views are so pretty! We hiked around the park trails and had fun. The boys enjoyed climbing all the cool almond trees. Check out these pictures!

 I could stand here all day

Kaden and Keniel

Me and my boys

 

 On our hike, all these rocks in front of us had all kinds of fossils in them, which Kaden had fun finding.

  Abuelo and his boys

Giving the boys a climbing lesson

 

 My big monkey in the tree

 He is getting so big!

 My little monkey climbing a tree

 Having a snack

 I wonder where my kids get their climbing ability from?

 2 little monkeys climbing in the tree

Monkey Cousins

What brother does, little brother has to do too, with a little help from Abu

 

After time in the park, we decided not to continue to travel around the island which was our original plan, due to the fact that we had no spare tire. So we headed back home.  Traffic was heavy because it was 5 pm and everyone was getting out of work. Plus there was heavy rain going on in town which causes issues. But even with the slower drive we had an adventure chasing rainbows. We followed one for a LONG time. I told the boys that if we caught it, we would have to dig up the treasure at the end of it. So we chased it and chased it, but we never caught it but it did give us a lot of entertainment!  It was such a pretty one too!

 You could see the whole thing, it was BIG, but my Ipod couldn't catch the whole thing

 "Well here's to one more adventure." Glad life can be an adventure! Even the not so fun ones.