Half Priced Shake Day!

We headed to Sonic for our traditional half-priced shakes!

 Some of these crazies wanted a slush instead!

 To each his own, I guess.  I don't even remember Jonas's hair being this short!

HEB date

One day last summer, Poppy and I had a playdate at Chick Fil A with her friend Jesse.  After lunch we headed to HEB to grab some groceries.  It was customer appreciation day and this girl scored a crown, wand, AND got her face painted!  Our next trip to HEB had a lot to live up to!

Father's Day 2014

We celebrated Father's Day (and Mother's Day too, actually) at Raising Cane's!

Poppy's 3rd birthday!

Our sweet Poppy turned 3 on June 3!  I thought this year would be the year for fun, girly party, but instead we were in Mexico.

She celebrated early with the Torres fam and got this princess cupcake game.  Obviously everyone in the family loves it.

She also got these fun princesses from Gigi and Mr. Don.  I love that she can change the clothes all by herself!

For her birthday, we had packed her present and then did a great wrapping job at our house.

It's Anna!

She was in love!

After a morning at Ciudad, the sun came out enough for the birthday girl to get in a swim.

That evening we had a team dinner in a restaurant.  Sweet Sara made our girl cupcakes!

 

The whole team sang Happy Birthday to her!  She was surrounded by all her favorite teeanagers!

Do you see that all her favorite people are boys??? We are going to have our work cut out for us as she gets older!

I would say that this is the face of a very happy birthday girl!

Ciudad de Angeles Trip 2014

I'm so excited to finally get blog about our mission trip to Mexico!  At the end of May, our whole family headed to Ciudad de Angeles, a children's home in Cozumel, Mexico.  We went with a very small group from Northside and joined a large group from College Station.

It was Poppy's first trip on an airplane. She did great!

At the end of the first day, I was kind of ready to go home.  We had an EARLY morning flight and 2 kids threw up on the plane.  It started raining minutes after we landed in Mexico and was forecasted to do so the entire week!  Jonas also cut his foot open walking home from lunch and was patched up with a paper towel and duck tape (he still has a scar!), and Poppy refused to sleep.  Thankfully after much crying and prayers, things looked up after that first night's sleep!

Our housing in Mexico was a house with a nice courtyard AND a pool!  We found this friend:

 On Sunday we had lunch at Ciudad and stuck around for an afternoon of games and playing.
Thankfully someone brought legos!

At Ciudad, children are adopted by the children's home and live in "family groups" with house parents.  It's a really neat set up.

 Poppy found a forever friend in Kristina and they loved playing Barbies together!

 As a reward after working all morning, I let the kids swim in the afternoons.  It was raining on this day but that didn't stop them!

 Our weekday mornings were spent teaching ESL classes and Bible classes.  My kids joined the "angels" for the fun.

 On Tuesday, our friend had joined us inside the house!

 Swimming for the birthday girl!  She celebrated the big 3 in Mexico and will get her own post for that!

 Because of the rain, these guys spent lots of time doing puzzles that we found in our house.  Mr. Wayne made a great housemate!

The children received money to spend at the "store" for good behavior during the classes.  Here are my guys comparing their buys.  My 2 big boys bought lots of school supply-type things, which I thought was really funny!

 2 of our evenings were spent having dinner at the houses on campus.  Thankfully the rain stopped and we were able to play outside!

 Poppy played chalk with these girls ALL.NIGHT.LONG!

 They were filthy when it was all done!  It was amazing to see how you don't need to speak the same language at 3 and 4 years old.  Poppy and Kristina knew exactly what the other was saying!

 Troy did a fun Minute to Win It devotional.  This might have been the highlight of the trip for him. 

 What mission trip is complete without ice cream?!

 On Thursday night, all the "little" boys came to our house for dinner and swimming. 

 It was a wild night with all those boys, but we had a great time with them!  And don't worry, Poppy held her own in that pool full of boys!

 Friday was our free day!  We headed to Chankanaab National Park for a day of beach fun!  As a birthday present, the nice man at the gate let Poppy in for free!  They all loved swimming and wading at the kids beach.  And there were lots of fun fish and animals to see.

 After a family lunch of tacos (Jonas eats meat in his Mexican tacos, by the way), and fish, we explored the park and saw iguanas and crocodiles before hitting the pool. 

 After a fun day at the beach, we headed back to the Ciudad campus for our final goodbyes.

We had a great time serving together with our kids and can't wait to go back next year!