Catchup!

Wow, there is so much to catch up on! Blogging is low on the to-do list, but I need a few minutes break from being thrust back into full-time motherhood.

I don't even remember where I left off. I know I posted from Guam, but there were a few blogworthy things that happened before Guam...

* Last Wednesday, my mom flew in. She's so awesome.

* Thursday through Saturday was the Dan Landry Volleyball tournament. It was great to have mom there to keep one eye on our games and the other on Mackenzie. She also donated a bunch of U.S. candy for us to sell as a fundraiser for our Guam trip.

* We won the tournament! No one can really remember, but we think this was the first or second time ever that Faith has won the 11-year-old tournament. I know my senior year we went to 5 sets, but then lost it. Shucks. Anyway, the girls played awesome and it was a great way to start off our Guam trip.



* At 10:55 on the 7th, we flew out on Philippine Airline for the 3 hr. 40 min. jaunt over to Guam. We were all so exhausted from the DL tournament, packing, and getting ready for the FE tournament, so we all crashed hard on the plane and then in the lobby of the hotel.

* The week was awesome. On Monday, we finished 1st in our pool of 4 teams, putting us in the gold bracket. After playing the 4 other gold teams on Tuesday and Wednesday, we were seeded 4th overall.


Thursday was an intense day because if we lost at all, we would go to the losers bracket and would have to play 4 or 5 matches for a 5th place finish. Thankfully, the girls came out rockin' and took both matches.



On Friday, we knocked off the #1 seed team, Seoul American (who had a 5'7" girl with a 36" vertical!!! She was amazing.) That was so exciting for us! Meanwhile, #7 Christian Academy in Japan upset the #2 and #3 teams in the quarter- and semi-finals. Saturday was the championship.



It was pretty fun preparing for, as Faith Academy has never made it to the finals of the Class AA Far East Tournament. Unfortunately, that's where the history-making ends. We won the first set, 25-20, but lost the next three 23-25, 22-25, 23-25. What a bummer. We played alright, but CAJ was en fuego. They played great. Sooooo, we took 2nd out of 20 teams. I need to keep reminding myself of that. I went into the tournament hoping for top 5, so finishing 2nd is terrific.



* I mentioned some highlights in the last post, but I'll touch on some other fun moments in the week. (Yes, they are mostly food. Get off my back.)

- Taco Bell
- Baskin Robbins
- Being called the "hot coach" by another team. =)
- Kmart
- Cold Stone
- Korean concentration games
- Sleeping in air-conditioned hotel rooms and playing in air-conditioned gyms.
- Mint Hershey's kisses
- Pumpkin Spice Latte's
- Veteran's Day BBQ at the beach



- Downtime at the beach reading The Host
- Shopping at the Guam Premium Outlets. Yes, Guam has an outlet mall. It's crazy that this little island in the middle of the Pacific ocean has all the US luxuries that we miss.
- Running into my 1st grade teacher! She and her family live on Guam and took great care of us.
- I wrote custom Mad Libs for our elimination games. They were pretty funny and helped relax the girls before games.



That's all that I can recall while hearing three different translations of "MOMMY" directed my way.

I just dropped my mom off at the airport this morning at 4am. She'll be en route for the next 26 hours or so. yuck. But I'm so thankful that she got to be here. Mackenzie keeps telling me little tidbits about her time alone with Grandma. They had a great time together. I just wish I had some more time with her! We managed to cram our favorite things into our couple of days together, so lots of shopping was had and lots of great memories were made.

Thanks for coming MOM!!! You're the best!

Hafa Adai!

Hafa Adai from super-sunny Guam! (In case you're wondering how to pronounce that Guam greeting, say "half-a-day" in an Aussie accent.)

We don't play until 1 pm today, but I woke up at 5:30 to catch the 6 am bus to Andersen Air Force base to scout the 7 am game! Now I wait for my team to arrive...

We've had a great week so far. I was shocked to realize that this was in my back yard all week...


There are Filipinos all over the island, so when they find out that Faith is a representative from the Philippines, we have instant fans at our games. It's pretty fun. We also had a sweet family invite us to the beach for a Veterans Day BBQ. It was so much fun. The sun is so intense here! It's like the PI, but there's no pollution to block out the intensity of the sun.

Here are the girls spelling out their beloved coach's name...


There are two fantastic finds at the beach in Guam. The first is star-sand. Mixed in with regular grains of sand are teeny-tiny star-shaped grains of sand! It isn't hard to look out at the endless ocean with awe, but when I see the detail that God put into a tiny grain of sand, I'm amazed at His creation.



The other cool thing we saw on the beach, but failed to take a picture of (as I was running at full-speed), was a wild boar!!! Two players and I had a very "Lost" moment. We were on a path that was half-beach half bush on one side, and full bush on the other. All of a sudden, one of the girls said, "Wait. What was that?" We look over and see bushes rustling, just like in the movies! Well, that was enough for me. I took of running down the beach. One of the other girls hung back to see what it was. Sure enough, it a wild boar in the flesh! As it turns out, running is the dumbest thing to do if you ever run into a boar. Thanfully, our little guy was more concerned with his food than us. Hakuna Matata.


Volleyball-wise, we're doing alright. THere are 20 teams here, so lots of competition. After pool play, we're 4th going into elimination rounds. We started well, but have had some moments uncharacteristic of our team in recent sets. The girls had a team meeting together last night, and apparently it went fantastic, so they should come out smokin' today! That's my hope and prayer anyway. =)

While in Guam, I had to celebrate Bella's birthday w/o her! My sweet little Bellers is 3! I can't wait to see her and the others on Sunday. =)

Alright, I'd better get off this and go send an update to the parents!

Halloween Art

I smile everytime I look at Mackenzie's drawing of all things Halloween, so I wanted to share. Can you identify all the spooky Halloween icons?



* Spider and web (top left)
* Witch on a broomstick (middle)
* Black cat also on the broomstick
* Skeleton - my favorite! I love the pelvis!
* Bat - to the left of the green skeleton
* Purple ghost - I had to ask about that one.
* 3 pumpkins
* Candy in the upper right

Trick-or-Treat!

We're back in business! The typhoon came through with a lot of wind and rain. We lost power for about 12 hours and lost internet for about 24 hours. The exciting news in this little condo is that I've not heard one drip INSIDE the house...meaning no more leaks! Pretty excited.

Mackenzie and I are having a blast! I can't get over how fun it is to just hang out with your kid. No diapers to change, no mouth to spoon-feed, no translating baby gibberish, just fun! Here's some highlights of our weekend.

1) Supper on trays in bed, while watching Princess movies.

2) Popcorn with Reeses Pieces, again in bed, while watching Mary Poppins.

3) Sleeping in this king-size bed together.

4) Breakfast on trays in bed. (When I asked her what she wanted for breakfast, she said, "French toast!! 'Cause I know that's your favorite." SO SWEET!)

5) Going to Worlds of Fun (like Powerplay)

6) Having our own version of carnival food. I introduced her to Zagu. It's a kiosk that sells shakes with something special in the bottom of them. Any guesses? If you guessed chick-pea size tapioca balls, then you'd be correct! We got a chocolate shake and her face lit up when she felt the sago. She told me it was a marshmallow. Anyway, I'm getting side-tracked. We also got mini-donuts, a family fave.

7) McDonalds for lunch. Her highlight-not mine.

8) Dinner with friends at Burgoo.

9) Trick-or-treating with Abby and Olivia, aka: Snow White and Tinkerbell. Mackenzie wore her Cinderella dress again. It still fits, just a few inches shorter.

10) Church and lunch with friends.

11) A beautiful afternoon of swimming, laying out, and girl talk (we split up for this. Mackenzie and Abby's girl talk is a little different than mine and my friends.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, my two other pipsqueaks are having a blast in the U.S. Michelle posted this picture of Bella and Deacon with their cousins. Bella was so excited to see all her little cousins!


Bella was Dorothy and Deacon was Superman. I love their costumes!!! As I sit here, I can't help but think how different Dorothy's journey would have been if Superman had been one of the friends she meets along the way...

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I just wanted to share a picture of my sweet little niece, Isla (aka: CowBelle). I love her! She's so cute with her candy stashed all around her.

What Else is New???

Well, my main squeeze is over the Pacific with two of my favorite munchkins.

They are headed one direction and this is headed in the other...



This is the third time that Josh has gone to the states with the majority of the children, and this the third time that a typhoon has hit while they are gone.

Before I start whining, I need to preface with the fact that typhoons can be devasting and life-threatening to so many people in this country and I'm so thankful that I have four sturdy walls around my family and a semi-whole roof over our heads!

That being said, I like to take these childless oppurtunities to relax and refocus. I can spend more quality time with the Lord and really get my priorities straightened out in order to be a better wife, mom, and child of God. So, when the power goes out for days at a time and the house starts leaking in 7 different places, relaxing is replaced by frustration, refocusing is replaced with negativity, and the goal of being a better wife, mom, and child of God is gone with the 120mph wind.

I'm not completely childless for the next 10 days, but my demands as a mom are greatly reduced as Mackenzie can take care of her own hygiene, do some chores around the house, and creatively entertain herself. In fact, she and I have some fun things planned for this week.

She was a little devastated when she found out that she wasn't included in the trip home. Thankfully, her sorrow turned to joy when she found out that my mom is coming next week for a visit!!! Actually, she is coming also to care for Mackenzie while I'm away. Our volleyball team is heading to Guam on the 7th for our big Far East Tournament. With Josh gone, that meant Kenzie would have to not only care for her hygiene and entertain herself, but also feed herself, put herself to bed, wake up at the appropriate time, and get herself to and from school. She's good, but not that good. So, Grandma to the rescue! She's going to take care of Mackenzie for a few days until Josh gets back. WE HEART GRANDMAS!

There will be a lot to post about in the coming days, but it might be so much that I won't post at all. I'll start with a great big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my sister, Heather. I love you and get high speed internet please!

This is where our first day of galpal-dom has taken us. Kenzie went for the less-traditional nap-under-the-bed, but we both took leisurely naps to recover from a late night of packing and an early morning of good-byes.

Warm and Fuzzy

Usually when I haven't heard from Bella in a while and all is eerily quiet, it means that something is broken or something forbidden is in process. So I definitely had a warm and fuzzy moment when I walked into Bella's room and saw her sitting on her bed, reading her Bible!


Then she picked up Abby Cadabby and started reading the Bible to her. My little evangelist.

Fall Break

October break is just coming to an end and we've had a super memorable week! We found a really great deal on a local hotel here, so we booked it for two nights. The promo was called a "cultural getaway," and featured a 3-hour tour of Manila. We've had many 3 hour "tours" of Manila (also called "traffic jams") so we chose not to avail of that.

Instead, we spent the majority of our time in and around the pool. This hotel has a pool that rivals the ones we swam in in Mexico. It was gorgeous and even had two water slides. Mackenzie's first trip featured a look of terror as she zipped down the slide. Thankfully, she surfaced giggling and squealing with delight. So over the course of three days, she probably went down the slide 50 more times.


Bella was less interested, and a little mortified, as she went down the slide. It worked out fine because the life guard wouldn't let her go down anyway. Right next to the pool was the perfect playground. Bella split her time between the pool, the swings, the playground slide, and the sandbox. I trailed her with a bottle of sunscreen the entire time. (The hotel is right on the ocean so the kids didn't have that "protective" layer of pollution keeping them from burning.)


When we weren't in the pool, we were usually eating. We headed down the road to the Mall of Asia, a hu-uge mall here. There, I saw the most ingenious of ideas.

You ready?

It's good.

There are sensors above each parking spot that light up red when unavailable and green when available! The mall parking situation on a daily basis is comparable to US malls on Christmas Eve, so you can imagine how brilliant this feature is.

Anyway, we ate some yumm-o Mediterranean food and then enjoyed some ice cream. When I say enjoyed, I mean this...


Bella was especially enjoying the delectable ice cream. Actually, she and I looked alike, but the chocolate residue on the face is just much cuter on a little girl.


At night, we'd let the girls watch a movie in bed with popcorn. We watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Enchanted and Peter Pan. So fun!


On our last day, Deacon joined us. Oh, did I not mention that the first two days were just the oldest four in our family? Deacon stayed with our good friends here while we had fun in the sun. He had a great time and we had a great time with the girls.



On the last day though, he joined us poolside and he jumped right into the fun. The pool had a kiddie end that gradually got deeper like ocean on a beach. Deacon charged right in and loved getting hit in the face with the water.





I laughed at this one because it looks like our little guy is relieving himself on Grumpy.


He didn't last long though, and crashed in Josh's arms for a sweet moment.


Anyway, I'm so thankful that we had such a blast. Josh and I kept saying, "That was so much fun!" Up until now, any family getaway was fun, but usually it was even more work than being at home. But this time, there was very little work and we just spent the entire time enjoying our kids. Loved it!

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We play in our volleyball league semi-finals (and hopefully finals) tomorrow, so we had to practice today and yesterday. Since we had to bring the girls back early from break, we decided to make it a fun over-nighter. After practice yesterday, we headed to the mall. While us coaches waited for our Sbarros to bake, the girls had to complete a scavenger hunt on camera. Each picture was volleyball related. I'm working on uploading the pics to facebook, so I won't mess with them right now.

Maybe just one. I don't remember why this "dog pile in the dog food aisle" is volleyball-related...


After the mall, we headed back to the house of two of our players. There we played a mess of Korean games. They were mostly concentration games, but twice as challenging when they are in another language. There were a LOT of laughs. Hopefully, all the team bonding will carry over to our games tomorrow and we'll dominate a team that we've beaten once in the last 10 years!