Off to School

Well lets see, it is January 26th at 5 AM. We are trying to wake all the kids. Today is the first day of school for them after coming to the ranch. They accually get up pretty well after going to bed at 8 PM the night before. They make themselves cereal, get themselves dressed and ready to go by 7 AM. At 7:15 Kata takes off with them to walk them to school, there is a strange silence in the air that has not been heard for a couple of months around here, it is kind of a nice sound (or lack there of) but at the same time it all of a sudden seems empty, like something is missing. It was quiet around here, it seemed wrong, then as I was praying for there day it came to me, I really already missed them being here. I thought when they started school it would be good to have the quite but it just is not right now. Thats Ok because a few hours later it was back to normal with all of them talking at once about there day, teachers and new friends, and of course what is for lunch. After lunch they did there homework without much problem and off to play.

Today is the second day and it was not quite as easy this morning but all is good, it is good to know they are regular kids, the first day wore off and it was not quite as easy this morning but all in all everything went OK. Today they wore work type clothes because there project today is cleaning the school. O this explains the little slower progress getting ready today.

Here is a picture of them as they were leaving yesterday.


School started for Michael and Danny also. Karen and Kata are working with them while the others are at school. I think Danny may be quite a challenge but they seem up for the task.

Be blessed we sure are.

Trip to Tikal

As Karen and I were talking last Monday we decided we should take the kids on a field trip before school starts. Karen thought Tikal would be nice so Tikal it was. We decided to leave at 6 AM so we could spend enough time there to wear the kids out and more than that to let them see all they could. Everything was going well this Tuesday morning; we loaded all 18 of us into the van and were on the road by 6:15, record time. When we reached the halfway point it started raining, we decided to push on as maybe it would clear up. It did stop raining for a while then started up again and rained the rest of the day. When we got there they decided they wanted to go ahead in the rain, Karen and I stayed behind with the young boys and Leti and Oscar took the rest to see the ruins. This lasted about an hour then they were back and ready to go. Poor kids looked like a batch of drowned rats and were a bit cold. We had packed lunch so on our way back we looked for a roof to eat under. Everyone was really hungry so the first place we found was it, it was a bus stop, a really dirty smelly and muddy one at that, so we all wolfed down a sandwich and hit the road for home.
They did not get to see much so we will plan another trip when they get a break from school. We had a great day and everyone slept well soon after we got home.

It was a lot of driving for an hour at the park but worth every minute, The kids just enjoyed getting out, there was no winning or anything. It was just a great day.

Miscalculations

Miscalculations, don’t you hate it when that happens. We put the freezer in the room that I had planed for it and the refrigerator, once it was in it became perfectly clear that I had made a mistake. Sure they would both go in but there was no room to open the doors. Bummer, we decided to put the refrigerator in the room that was designated for the dry storage products. We then went on to move the stove in, incredibly heavy. Once the stove was in I started looking around and got this bright idea, we would knock down a wall and remove one column. Seems pretty weird to do a remodel on a brand new building, but when someone makes an error like this you just need to do what you need to do. I think our Lord was having a bit of a laugh over my foolishness. We started after lunch yesterday the 8th and got done today the 9th. All that is left is the finish repair and we are good to go. It is not exactly as planed but will work out very well. Everything should be done by the end of the day Monday, then the Kitchen should be ready to use. We pray that we will start our feeding program by the end of January. We might be ready sooner but Karen’s brother and his wife are coming down for a week, they arrive in 5 days so we are going to take a few needed days off. Following are a few photos of the work.