July 2010...

Apparently October must be a rough month for me, because I believe it was a year ago that the blog got stuck on "October 2009" for... well, a long while!

Hence, this is my "break the chain" post that is letting all five of you readers know... I'm not giving in to the just-stop-blogging-already syndrome yet! ;)

This is maybe the cutest CVE "couple" I've ever seen -- sorry all you married folks down here -- because Candi and Angel (Zulema's 4-yr. old) get along so very, very well! By that I mean that Candi gets to be really bossy, and Angel (who has an abnormally laid-back and patient nature... most days anyway!) usually goes along with her... ;)

Jenna was watching him the other morning, and after two hours or so of Candi telling him things like, "Angel, do this... Angel, don't play there... Angel, do it this way... Angel, you can't read that book right now, etc." the poor little guy was ready to go home! He came up to me and said exactly that, "I'm ready to go home now."

However, today in church they were holding hands, and jabbering on about who-knows-what... so I think they're back to normal... :)

These were two [dead] trees in our front yard that our amazing neighbor [Farmer Limon] cut down and made into a nice little bench! The kids now use this (most of the time) as a small goal for yard soccer... :)

For a little bit, the bench also became Rito's favorite place to jump up on... however, he was perilously close to hanging himself several times (considering he is slightly vertically challenged :) so his line was moved to a different part of the yard.

Before that happened, though, I caught he and Aaron playing tug-of-war on camera... ;)

July brought rain... thank You, Lord! Rain meant... lots of people (adults and kids) running around acting idiotic in the downpour... yes, if you were here, you would be doing it, too, so don't even ponder that question.

And... inevitably... there was an accident. Apparently Diego was pushing a little toy dump truck around the cement basketball court, slipped in the rain, and gashed his chin open. And it was... a big gash. Four stitches, an hour and a half, a few childhood stories from the Bahr girls, and a bag of chips later... he was good to go! We even made it back to CVE in time for supper and now he has a sweet scar on his chin... I wonder if his beard will ever grow in there?!? I wonder if he'll ever even have a beard?!?

We have a corner-full of dress-up clothes in our living room, and I love seeing what the kids randomly show up wearing outside my bedroom door! Here we have Jose as an "urban cowboy"...

... and Marcos as a smurf-gone-wrong. :)

As the time was nearing for Nereida and Jose to leave to live with Dan & Tami, I tried to incorporate some "fun events" with the girls since Candi was really going to miss her "big sis." We had a night where we visited an older lady in town, went to dinner, had ice cream, came back to paint nails (of course!), had popcorn (why not?), and then watch a movie (technicality: Steph was ready to "sleep-through" a movie at this point).


It was a fun night, and though it took me a while the next day to remove the five or six coatings of paint Candi found necessary to do my nails with... it was still fun!


p.s. (Candi's smile above is the result of a lot of sugar, a really late night, and the fumes from open fingernail polish bottles... ;)


Looking at this picture just makes me miss this little lady! She was an excellent "older sis" for Candi and a wonderful helper most times... it's great to see her bonding with Dan & Tami and enjoying being with her other siblings, but we still miss having her around! Please pray that she would continue to open up with the new parents God has blessed her with...


That's all for the moment... please continue praying for wisdom and guidance as CVE seems to be (once again) in a period of transition... maybe we don't ever really leave this stage!!! :)


It's wonderful to know that even when we have no clue what God is going to bring or where He is going to lead... He is still good, He is still in control, and we can trust Him fully with our future!