Wednesday, November 28, 2007

To elf or not to elf

Just because it's still November and I'm not totally into the Christmas spirit yet doesn't mean Mollie's not. A parent of one of the children in my class sent me this internet link where you can "Elf yourself". All you have to do is upload a picture to this website and instantly you become a dancing elf. It's hilarious! I showed Mollie how to do it and she took care of the rest. She not only "elfed" herself and Wil but she "elfed" herself with her friend Hadley. Go take a look at her handy work. Then, if you have idle time, go elf your family!

Check it out here.

Sandy C

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

We made it home and I'm thankful

We're home....YEAH, we're home!!!

What a trip! We spent a majority of the time in the truck, but the time we spent actually working in the Mexican villages was incredible. This was my 4th trip into Mexico and I don't know if we have ever worked harder. I'll give you a day by day entry of what we did.

Saturday---
We left Athens at 7:30. We drove all day, crossed the border about 6:30 and arrived in Muzquiz, Mexico about 8:30. We stayed there in a church for the night. With the help of two Tylenol PM I was able to sleep all night. That is until the 100 roosters started crowing the next morning about 4am! I never knew there could be so many roosters in such a close proximity. It was crazy!

This is a picture of our hostess for the night. She's the one with the gray hair. She was so happy to have us all there. She was up with the roosters cooking breakfast.

Sunday--
We left Muzquiz and headed out into the desert. Our first stop was San Miquel. We fixed lunch for the villagers, played with the kids and then packed up and headed to our next destination. We drove another 3 hours on unpaved, desert roads and pulled into La Rosita about 5:00. We set up our cooking station, unpacked luggage and got busy cooking dinner for the villagers. My duties this trip were all in the "kitchen". That night we fried fajita meat, and french fries. We probably fed about 200 people and had a church service with them. We had an inside place to sleep and this...

We were livin' it up. No roosters tonight!

Monday--
Busy, busy, busy!
But first, it was a hair washing day. Hurray!

The youth painted 12 houses in a matter of about 8 hours. They all worked so hard and the villagers were so thankful for their freshly painted houses. There was the one incident of the youth almost falling through a roof, but besides that, not much drama. The drama was going on back at the cook tent. Because of my fry cook status, (that should be humorous to those of you who know I never eat or cook anything fried!) I was assigned the task of helping to cut up the meat that would be fried for dinner. I thinking great, I'll have beef to slice, but OH NO! It was deer, dove, sandhill crane, and turkey. Just picture me sitting out in the heat, cutting up raw meat in the middle of the Mexico desert. How in the world was I supposed to get the blood off my hands and make sure everything was clean? I don't think I got it all out from underneath my fingernails until about 30 minutes ago when I was in the shower. Talk about out of my comfort zone. I got through it and we cooked about 85 pounds of meat that night along with probably 35 pounds of french fries. Our head cook will deep fry anything, bananas, hamburgers, bratwurst, etc. Needless to say, I don't want to see anything fried for a very long time.
Here are some of the other things that went on that day.

Medical/vision clinics


Food being served-Mollie worked so hard!


All in all-a GREAT day!

Tuesday--
We packed up equipment and headed back to San Miquel for fuel and then on to Los Eutamis. We visited this village last year and just stopped long enough to serve a meal, Dr. T did some medical work, and the kids had a short bible lesson. We packed up again and took a "short cut" through the desert back to the main road. The short cut ended up taking us 3 hours on roads that were not travelled often. It got dark and many times we had to stop because the dust was so thick we couldn't see if we were on the road or not. How many people can say they've been through the desert at night on unpaved roads? We felt a little like smugglers!! We drove over 100 miles through the desert on this day. We made it back to Muzquiz around 9:00 pm for a short nights sleep.

Wednesday---
We left at 7:20 and headed for the border. It was fairly uneventful until 4 of us in the caravan missed our turn, and one of the trucks cut a Mexican off trying to do a U-turn. The Mexican chased him down and stopped him. It was a little scary at first, but after apologies were made, all was well. We crossed back into Texas about 11:00 am with little trouble and pulled into Athens at 9:00 pm.

Needless to say, we are all happy to be home. Also, no adjectives can describe the bath I just took. There have been no baths since Saturday. I did wash my hair twice, but only to have it covered in dust while it was drying. These trip always make me so thankful for what we have here at home. We are all so lucky! I'm so glad I went.

After having a massive amount of time in the truck to think about it, I compiled a short list of the things I am most thankful for.

10. No roosters at my house to wake me up at 4 am.

9. Running water.

8. Toilets that flush.

7. Ice cold diet coke-After a lengthy conversation with Dr. T about my little addiction, he assured me that I'm not going to die of renal cancer.

6. The Body Shop's Body Butter-All the dust, dry weather, and hand santizer left me skin a bit dry. I basically bathed again in Body Butter.

5. Paved roads

4. Peter Pan Chunky peanut butter, wheat bread, South Beach protein bars and sugar free Life Savers-This was my diet for the past five days. I wasn't eating the fried food or anything cooked out in the desert, for that matter.

3. Those 21 sweet faces who meet me every morning and who will always be "the smartest class at Bel Air."

2. Old friends and new friends who just make me laugh and make me a better person.

1. My family-I'm so glad we spent this adventure together.


I'll have more pictures to post later. Thanks for thinking and praying for us while we were gone.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sandy C

Monday, November 12, 2007

Off to Mexico

So this Saturday we head off to Mexico for another fun filled mission trip. You can go here and here to read about my previous trips. I'm excited but a little apprehensive.. I'm not someone who flies by the seat of their pants. I like to know what's going to happen and when. These trips are never like that. We are going to some new villages and we don't really know whether or not there will be an inside place to sleep. If the weather is like it was last year, what with the wind blowing 50mph and the temperature being about 40, sleeping outside is not an option. To solve that problem, sort of, TENT!!! Yes, we are taking a family tent. We can only hope it doesn't end up back in the US before we do because of wind. To be honest, I'm also not looking forward to being in the truck with Wil and Mollie fighting in the backseat for 4 days. My prayer is that Wil ends up in someone else's truck or better yet, I'll end up in someone else's truck. That way, Wade can handle the kids. Sounds like a plan.

Recent discussion between Wil and Mollie....
God love them, they are so totally opposite,it's hard to believe they are related.
They were sitting at the kitchen table eating dinner. Mollie's best friend, Hadley, was also there. They were talking about the upcoming mission trip. Wil just mentioned that when he gets out of high school that he wants to spend a couple years doing mission work. (so so proud!) Mollie chimes in with the fact that he then would be poor. Wil says that he would rather do mission work and be poor than live in a million dollar house. Mollie said that she would choose living in the million dollar house over anything. Hadley of course sided with Mollie and poor Wil was outnumbered, but he argued his case very well. He didn't ever win her over, which is not surprising, but she got his point, maybe!
I love those two kids!

See on the other side of Mexico!

Sandy C

Friday, November 02, 2007

The football player and the floor of a movie theater

Halloween has come and gone for another year. My kids have always been known for their costumes. My mother in law is a great seamstress, so we have always had an array of costumes. Wil has been a cowboy, a knight, a scarecrow and my favorite, a bumble bee when he was 3 months old. Sugary cuteness! Mollie has been a flower(inside a flower pot) a 20's flapper, a cowgirl and my favorite for her was a little 50's girl with a poodle skirt and her daddy's class ring around neck. Precious, precious, precious.

This year, much to my surprise, Mollie announced she wanted to be an Aggie football player. She already had a 12th man jersey and cleats. A friend, who is a football coach, got her some football pants. We painted under her eyes and she was ready. Take a look...


Wil came in several weeks ago and said he wanted to go as the floor of a movie theater. After a few WHAT?s He had a plan. He got a black t-shirt and glued all kinds of items that one could find on the floor of any local cinema. He had cups, greasy napkins, chewed gum, popcorn, movie tickets, candy wrappers and boxes, and crumpled pickle holders. It was the funniest thing to see him so excited. I ask him where he got the idea and he said he saw it on a TV show. He gets the award of originality, don't you think? Take a look at him.


Funny kids, funny ideas. I love them both to pieces!

Sandy C