My kids

My kids are amazing, they can make me want to hug them and spank them all in a matter of a couple minutes! ha ha Jeff is leaving in a couple weeks and will be gone for a month. The kids and I will stay here in Abancay and try not to count down the days until Jeff returns. We'll try to enjoy our special time together and I'll try to be patient with the boys knowing that I don't have anyone to hand them off to during the day.

Typically when Jeff travels, he is gone for a week. During the week we get into a routine that works for us, the boys have to step up to the plate and help me a lot--especially now that Sophia is here. When I'm feeding her or she's fussy my hands are pretty much tied and the boys are on their own. They've learned to get their own breakfast and of course they dress themselves and brush their own teeth, but I do feel like it's sometimes hard for them to not have me free to do things with them like when Jeff is here.

But we'll trudge on and survive and pray for safety while Jeff is gone. It is my fault, after all, because I was the one who suggested he take this course...rats! lol

What's ahead??

I am a worry-er by nature...well, maybe not so much a worry-er, as a planner. I love to plan. I love to organize. I'm the typical type-A personality. I have to laugh at my friend, Denisha, who calls herself an "OCO"--Obsessive-Compulsive Organizer!! That is me, to a "T". The reason I bring this up, is because we now have more or less of an idea of when we are leaving Abancay and leaving Peru. If you don't know, which most of you do, we are leaving the field for a few years while Jeff pursues more studies to get his Ph.D. Once he finishes that, we will return to Peru, but will live in the capital so Jeff can teach at the Seminary there and our boys can go to a good school.

Our plan is to leave Abancay on January 1st and go to Lima. The January 4-8 we will have our annual Spiritual Life Conference at the beach with the other SIM missionaries who serve in Peru. The last 3 weeks of January will be spent in Arequipa while Jeff teaches 3 week-long classes. The boys and I will hang out with friends, maybe I'll put them in a soccer camp again, but mostly it will be just enjoying friends. We will fly to Lima around the 30th of January, and hopefully leave the country on February 2nd. We don't have our tickets yet, but that is the tentative plan. We will spend that first week of February at the SIM offices in Charlotte, NC and then fly to Minneapolis. Unless we buy a car, then we'll drive to MN. But of course that still needs to be planned out. Maybe I'll plan that out next week. ha ha

Am I excited to be going home? Yes. Will I miss Abancay? Yes. I will miss our friends, our church, and the teachers at the boys' school. I'll miss hanging laundry in the warm sunshine. I'll miss the sound of roosters at 4am (I really will miss this sound). I'll miss the smell of our neighbors burning wood to cook their food. I'll miss the sound of chopping wood. I'll miss having a maid (vain, I know)--not only because of her help but because she is a good friend to me. I'll miss the ministry opportunities of telling taxi driver why we are here. I'll miss people "petting" my kids' heads because they love seeing the gringos on the street. I'll miss eating out for cheap.

The thing is, now that I have Sophia, I'm finding it hard to be "here"...meaning to focus on the things here and now. I find my mind wandering at planning and I know I need to just stop and enjoy life here for these last 6-7 months and stop making a list of the things we are going to sell. I need to call the girls in my mom's group and invite them over, instead of packing a suitcase for Jeff to take with him to the States. I need to call my friend, Silvia, or go to her house to visit her instead of packing up some of the boys' books. My prayer is that I will enjoy these last months and finish well. I feel completely blessed to have served here and to have been touched by the many people we have come to know and love. God has been so good to us. Please pray that we can stay focused!

2 months old

It's a beautiful thing to see Sophia's smile. She started smiling around 7 weeks and now freely gives out smiles to her brothers, her daddy and of course I see them all the time. She has brought so much joy to our family, not just because she's our sweet princess, but because having a baby does that. The sweetest thing that I will remember forever, was the first night (she was about 2 weeks old) that we really heard her cry. Brandon was upstairs in bed and he came downstairs crying, and so, so sad that Sophia was crying so hard!! It was such a tender moment to see him so sensitive to his sister's needs.

I love dressing miss Sophia up in her little pink clothes, I've found that dark pink suits her more than light pink, and I'm already starting to plan some shopping trips. lol Not really, but I do love playing dress up with her. She loves having her diaper changed, she can be crying up a storm, but the minute we "free" her up, she is happy as a clam. Once those clothes are back on and she's in a clean diaper, she resumes her crying.