Happy 2012!!

We rang in 2012 with our friends the Ponce family. Last year we celebrated with part of them and this year with ALL of them. Zane loved playing with the boys! And we loved hanging out with this precious family.
Left to right: Asusana Ponce, Gabrielle & Mario, Manuel, Ruth, and Sergio
David meets with Manuel every Tues to talk about ministry and to gather his wealth of wisdom. Manuel has start over 10 churches in the NW part of Argentina. He is an amazing man of God. We are blessed to know him and his family.

David and I with our dear friends Debora & Elias

At midnight the firework madness began all over again. This time the kiddos were chasing after the fireworks in the street!

Favorite Aunt Debora, the PYRO, was setting off all of the fireworks and giving the kiddos sparklers and snaps!

I just love her. Thank you God for my dear friend Debora!!!!

Father, we thank you for carrying us through 2011.

Continue to guide and direct us through 2012.

May you receive ALL OF THE GLORY AND ALL THE PRAISE!!

Christmas 2011

Our 2011 Christmas tree! It is has all homemade ornaments on it. This year Zane added a few that he made.
Zane is totally into 'Baby Jesus'. He shouts it out whenever we see one. "BABY JESUS!!!!!". This is pretty common since we live close to a Virgin Mary statue that is holding the baby Jesus.
He was really excited when I put up my Willow Tree Nativity set. However, within 2 hours a sheep's leg was broken. So I decided we should make one Zane could play with. I found this toilet paper roll nativity set on Pinterest! Easy and Fun. It is missing the 3 kings because we put those out on Jan. 6 for 3 kings day. We used this set at Children's church too!

Christmas Eve started early for us. We went to our friend's home to deliver some presents around 8pm. See the whole story on our blog Being Part of a Christmas blessing.

Then around 10:30pm we arrived at the PARTY! Our neighbors from our old neighborhood, Gabby, Sergio, and Agustin, invited us to their family Christmas. It was such a blessing to be with a whole family: Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles, cousins, brothers, and sisters. We totaled about 40 people. Here Zane & Balti are going crazy with excitement, because in EVERY direction there are fireworks going off. Almost every family sets off their own personal fireworks for 20-30 minutes around midnight. Some families or should I say teenagers set off fireworks ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT & EARLY MORNING!!!!

At midnight, families always toast in Christmas and give greetings and blessings to everyone.

Now the kiddos get their own Snaps to throw and make noise;)

After the toasting and fireworks, the children run to the Christmas tree where 'Papa Noel' AKA Santa has left presents for each child. Here Zane opened up a Ben 10 action figure. He has never watched the show but he sure knows who he is. Every kids raves about Ben 10.

Zane and Agustin are showing Agustin's dad their Ben 10 action figures. Such excitement!!!!
We had a great time celebrating Christmas with the Rengel family. They are such a blessing in our lives. We always feel welcomed and loved.

We arrived home around 4am and slept til noon. Not the average North American Christmas where the parents are woken up at 5 or 6am to open gifts with overly excited kiddos.

However, we did open a few gifts on Christmas afternoon. Here Zane is opening up a Mickey Mouse Sorry Game. He said, "THIS IS MY FAVORITE. I LOVE IT!"

He also opened up a few gifts via skype with our family.

And then more gifts as the later packages arrived. He really had about 3 Christmases all spread out over 3 weeks! :)
These are some pictures from Christmas eve day.... As you can see NO SNOW! Quite the opposite in fact. Just doesn't really FEEL like Christmas in the heat.
Hot or Cold, we had a great 2011 Christmas.

Thank you Heavenly Father for sending your son to live among us and giving us the grace we so desperately need to save us.

Our first English (well mostly Spanish) Preschool

Zane had a fantastic experience in Preschool (Age 3). I was NEVER going to send him to preschool but Zane's best friend & neighbor was going and REALLY wanted Zane to go to school with him. David and I prayed and said that if God wanted Zane to go to this school ONLY HE could open the doors and allow it to happen. You see it was late into registration and there was a waiting list of 15 other students just for Preschool Age 3. 24 hours after inquiring about a spot in the preschool class, HE HAD A SPOT. Not because of his dashing good looks;) or his smashing personality, NOPE because of a connection. Isn't that how it always works down here! So Zane started preschool and ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! And you know what? SO DID I! I had 3 hours to myself every morning. I could work out, go shopping, cook, clean, go out for coffee with a friend, and go to my spanish class. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT AND I GOT A LITTLE SPOILED! Well now that it is summer vacation for us, I was really wondering what Zane I would do everyday together.
Then it hit me. As a 3 1/2 yr old, Zane could use a little bit of a boost in his English vocabulary. He mixes his English and spansih when he talks about shapes, numbers, and colors. He can only identify a few letters and NO numbers. So I made it my personal goal to do 1 hour a day of English preschool with Zane. I started looking up activities on line and found a whole mini world of homeschooler/tot school/preschool/activities/blogs/websites that I could explore FOREVER! The old teacher in me was in heaven.

When people started asking me about what we were doing for summer break, I started to tell people about my idea for English preschool. All of my 'mommy' friends thought it was a superb idea and joked about having their child come and learn English along with Zane. Well that joke turned into a great missionary/mommy idea. We are now inviting 2 or 3 of Zane's friends & their mothers over to our house every Friday at 6pm to have English Preschool and Tea time. Zane and I are really excited about our idea. All week Zane and I do activites based on a book that help learn and reinforce ABCs, numbers, shapes and colors and then Zane choose which ones to share with his friends on Friday. Here are the pictures from our 1st English preschool... Trinidad and Agustin were invited this week. I think Agustine will be invited every week because he is Zane's best buddy! Here the kids are filling in the first letter of their name with playdough & craft sticks. It is interesting because I'm learning where each student is at. Agustine already knows all of his ABCs and Trini knows less letters than Zane. All different levels. Just like the classroom, right?

Agustine is filling his letter A with M&Ms. Yummy!

Next we read the book 'Brown Bear Brown Bear' and did 3 different activites. Here Agu is using his M&Ms to do a color graphing activity. Look at that concentration!!

Zane is finding the colored animals in his I Spy bottle then coloring the correct animal the correct color.

Trinidad is throwing the dice then graphing her results. Which animal will make it to 5 first?

No fair. No warning. Sorry ladies! They look bored here, but really they loved it! This is Valeria and Gabby. They are the mothers of Trinidad and Agustine. They enjoyed watching their kiddos learning and having fun. They are eager to come back next week. I am excited to have these ladies and other ladies into my home. I am excited to develop deeper relationships with them and share God's love. Pray that I have opportunitites to share the gospel with them.

Agustine's new little precious brother, Nicolas.

Zane & Agu are assembling a Brown Bear Puzzle.

Trini is finding the head & tail matches.

Busy little learners..... until next week....

Pray for us as we meet, learn, and share God's love with others.

Most of the activites this week I found @ http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com