We are here!

Ahhhh...Serenity now...

On Monday afternoon, after some heavy traffic, thinning patience, dead phone battery and "recalculating" by our GPS friend, we made it to Eleven Straight Lane in the Ft. Worth area where we will be staying for the next several weeks. We are in a beautiful house on Miss Peggy Nelson's ranch, and it could not be more perfect! We have enjoyed eggs fresh from the chickens here. Olivia is looking forward to feeding them one of these days, and we have already checked out the lake. Sam is already working on his fishing plan.

We are thrilled to be here and to see so many of you that we haven't seen in a while. If you want to find us...you can at:

(817) 490-0107 or our cell # (817) 505-7552

We would love to hear from you and see you!

They already checked out the boats to see that they are in working order

Isabella enjoys a drier ride while she waits for her sisters.

Too cute

On the trail North...San Antonio and Austin

Pretending that it is fall in Harlingen...it was still very, very hot for October

Some of the Vincent cousins try to all look at the camera at the same time

After two weeks plus with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, we packed up and started our slow trek north. While with our families, Sam attended a Wild at Heart weekend retreat for men in the Colorado Rockies. He had a great time and made some new friends.

Sam enjoying some fishing in Colorado

On our trek north, we decided that a mini-family vacation would be a great start to our furlough. So, what to do to entertain and amuse four kids between the ages of 1 and 10?! Sea World seemed like a perfect match for everyone, we really like San Antonio, and what a great opportunity to visit our friends David and Janie Padilla. So, San Antonio it was. We had a great time. Sea World was fantastic for everyone. We could not have asked for a better day -- sunny and cool! There was something for everyone to enjoy. The animals were all fascinating, from dolphins, to sharks, to whales. It was a little tricky to figure out where to be at what time, but we managed pretty good. Sofia is our roller coaster girl. Since there were hardly any people there, we were able to ride all the rides multiple times. Victoria stuck to the smaller rides, with her dad, but Sofia begged to ride the Steel Eel as many times as I would let her. We stopped at 6...She's my girl. Olivia was a little sad that she couldn't ride some of the rides, but seemed to get over it rather quickly. It was a super day, and as a family, I must say, we did great! I do have to brag on Sam. He did the all the planning and did an amazing job at leading the family in a fun-filled, calm, let's-be-nice-to-each-other day. We all hit the pillow tired that day!

Of course, the highlight of the day was Shamu and his friends. The show with the killer whales really is incredible. It amazes me how with the beautiful animals, skilled trainers, the music and the show, we all left inspired to "follow our dreams" or at least awed by God's creation. Seriously, I was in tears a couple of times. So, after this inspiring show, comes my ethical/moral dilemma. I decided to read the little information mural only to find out that most if not all of those whales have been artificially conceived and bred in captivity. In my mind the sole purpose for these animals is to entertain crowds. Of course, the trainers would say that there is value in the research that they do to help the wild whales survive and keep the animals out of extinction. Not one of those animals would be able to survive in the wild. No wag of their tail or fancy jump will get them lunch! So, here are these amazing creatures that God created for the immensity of the seas, but to survive, they are confined to a giant pool, doing tricks to get a treat. It made me a little sad...and made me think that God has created us for the immensity of his creation and dreams, and so often we limit ourselves to pools because of our fears, insecurities, and whatever else we choose to grab hold of. Food for thought...

Stroller - best money spent all day!

A hug from the penguin

Watch out for the sharks!!!

One of the roller coaster rides. Olivia got to ride this one and she was thrilled!

Olivia shows off her blue tongue...waiting for Shamu can be troublesome

Shamu or one of his friends posing

For the rest of our stay in San Antonio, we enjoyed the Alamo and a bit of the River Walk. The girls were not nearly as enthusiastic about the Alamo after a day at Sea World, but they saw it, and we impressed it upon them to "remember the Alamo." They kept asking when we were going to the mall! Oh, well...We also had the privilege of attending worship services at Oak Hills and one of their satellite churches, the Fiesta campus. It is always a special time for us to worship with other people, and it was special to do this with David and Janie. The girls were wound up at Oak Hills!!!! They were literally bouncing off the walls. It got me to thinking that I think I have a few things to apologize for to my parents, when we were on furlough...hmmm....On Sunday we had lunch with our friends and their family and were blessed with deep conversations about ministry and where God is working. It is great to have times like these.

Alamo...been there, done that

We then continued our trek a very short north to Round Rock to spend a little time with our friends Jared and Cristy Abels. Despite the fact that we adults were outnumbered 2 to 1, the 8 children in the house seemed to entertain themselves and become fast friends. Again, it was a late night of catching up and being encouraged by each other. But alas, our time came to an end and it was time to move on. Ft. Worth, here we come...

Jazmin and Sofia in the My Little Pony beauty salon

The impossible photo: Cristy and I with Victoria, Sofia, Olivia, Isabella, Jazmin, Jonathan and Kayla. Eliana was at school and very sad that she could not be in on the fun

Furlough

I have decided that I can either live life or report about my life, but it's a little complicated for me to do both right now. So, the fact that it has been more than two months since I have blogged, should come as no surprise. We will see how things go. We have been in the States for a week now... We are on furlough for the next couple of months. This is a special time for us to break away from the normal routine of our lives, to regroup, refocus and enjoy the fellowship of family and friends. This is the first time that we take our furlough in the fall, which should be special to be at Richland Hills for all the Harvest activities. On the other hand, this means the girls are not in school. We are keeping up their school work via email and that means mom gets to be teacher also. So far it is going well, and the girls are staying focus. Hopefully it will stay that way!

The beautiful scenery on our way north. Not snow capped mountains, but mineral capped, or something like that.

More scenery

A walking break during our travels.

We are in South Texas right now enjoying family time. It has been a special challenge with our four girls, or maybe it has been a challenge with our attitudes and expectations, but all in all, we have all done well. The trip up was as uneventful as could be expected and everyone did well. We will spend another week or so here before we head north to be in Ft. Worth at Richland Hills. Stay tuned...You may or may not hear from us!

Some great cousin time with the GeoTracks

Cousins are so much fun and we are learning a lot about sharing!!!

Birthday season

 Our very cute one year old!

These past couple of months have been birthday season for us.  In June we celebrated Isabella's first birthday.  I know that everyone says how much time flies, and it certainly  has.  Isabella is such a joy to our family.  Her sisters love her (she isn't quite old enough to get into all their things yet) and she loves them.  She certainly knows how to get our attention with a blood curdling scream that makes you think she just had some body part amputated, crushed or otherwise mutilated, when in fact she just wants a drink of whatever we have or a toy that Olivia is playing with!  We celebrated her birthday a few days after the event since on the actual day I was at the beach with cousins ( I know, I wasn't there for the big day, but she won't actually remember that her mom wasn't there, so no one tell her, please).  Anyway, we had a small gathering and had cake for her.  The special thing for Isabella was that she got to celebrate with both of her grandmothers.  It was special for all of us.  Sam's mom came to help Sam with the girls while I was gone, and my mom enjoyed the beach with us cousins and then came to help us move (another story).

The black eye was a small accident while I was gone!  The hard knocks of life came early for her.

Isabella enjoyed tearing into her birthday cupcakes.

 A birthday caterpillar.

Our beautiful girls in their new beach dresses and one last shot in our ity-bity back yard.

Moving onto July, we celebrated Sofia and Sam's birthdays together.  Sam turned the big 40, so we had to do something big to ward off any mid-life crisis ideas!  So, while Sam's brother Isaac was here, we had a fun party to celebrate.  We planed on about 25 people and ended up with 40 or so...But, it worked great in our new house and we were excited to put it to good use.  We rented an "inflable" or bounce house, and let me tell you it was worth every penny we spent on it.  The kids had a blast the entire time and I didn't have to worry about what they were doing to the house.  We cooked out, ate, ate and then ate some more.  Sam got a restaurant-strength, professional espresso maker for his birthday, so he enjoyed making espressos for the men.  The women had to settle for coffee pot coffee.  Sam also got a trip to Wild at Heart men's retreat for his birthday.  He gets to enjoy that in October.  It was a fun birthday festivity, but we are also glad that we are done with birthdays for a while.

Sofia turns 7!  She wanted a Barbie cake

Blowing out candles.  Sofia was especially excited about "mordida" taking a bite out of the cake.

All the festivities in our backyard

Fun, fun, fun bouncing around

All of the kids enjoying the "inflable"

Sofia got an American doll for her birthday, and we think it looks like her.

Our other American doll

The rent place was generous enough to leave the "inflable" overnight, so the girls were up very early the next morning to get a little more jumping in.  It was a lot of fun!

Kidnapped, Ransacked or Stolen???

Really, none of the above are true, we are here safe and sound, but it would make a good excuse for not blogging in the last who-knows-how-long!  This is the busiest time of the year for us, and when there is so much to write about, and yet it seems like I'm too busy to write.  I know, it's a vicious cycle.  So, I will try catch up on all the fun, interesting, and otherwise things in our lives.

                                      See, we all look fairly happy and safe and sound!

Swine flu update

Cardboard boxes from Costco:  $50 (really they were free, but all the other things that we really needed...)

Packing tape:  $8

Left over paint from other project:  $0  (don't remember since it was more than 5 years ago)

Water for clean up bath:  $3 at least.  It was more like a swimming pool than a bath

A morning of unencumbered imagination, cooperative play and practically no sibling rivalry:  PRICELESS!!!

One less day of swine flu quarantine:  ALSO PRICELESS!

As you can see, we are surviving and even enjoying this swine flu craziness!  Today they girls made and painted a cardboard house.  I had visions of grandeur with refrigerator boxes to make an amazing castle, but those are hard to come by here, so we settled for as many smaller boxes we could get into our shopping cart, and the girls did indeed make an amazing house.  They carefully crafted it, with some minor taping help and then painted it.  I was hesitant to let them do it inside, but they actually did great.  The toughest part was keeping their little sisters away from the wet paint.  It was fun to hear them working together and have their project made a reality.

Schools are officially closed until the 11th of May.  What I don't really understand is what is going to magically happen on May 10th to rid the world of swine flu?!  Victoria did admit that school was more fun than being with her family.  Oh well...  It seems like people aren't too affected by it here.  Other than face masks (which I see around people's necks more than on their mouths), people are out and about.  On our trek to get boxes at Costco, there were a lot of people there.  The place was full!  We even saw Sofia's teacher.  People have been concerned about it, but now are wondering what it's all about, included several conspiracy theories with the government.  

We will have cell groups this week and we will have our assembly on Sunday in hopes that all will be back to normal soon.  Thank you to all of you who have been concerned and prayed for us.  As it turns out, many of you are in the same boat we are!  Enjoy the change of pace.

Swine flu...

Several of you have asked, so I thought it might be appropriate to let you know we are all doing well.  Mexico seems to be taking some major precautions on protecting people and it is easy for people to panic over all of the information or lack thereof.  The majority of the cases seen have been in the Mexico City area (200 miles away from us); although, people are getting sick here.  Relatively few cases have  been officially confirmed as the swine flu, but I'm sure more are to be confirmed.  There have been 13 confirmed cases in this state.  All schools have been cancelled until May 6th and they are encouraging people to stay home and away from public places.  We will try and have some of our usual activities like small groups and prayer group, but most likely they won't happen since people really don't want to be in these situations.  Sam has been sick with a cold for several days, but has seen the doctor today and is at ease that it most likely isn't swine flu.

You can pray with us that people will not give into fear and that people will not panic.  This is a good time for people to see God in the church here and seek comfort where it cannot be found.  We also pray that life will return to "normal" soon.  In the meantime, the girls were less than thrilled to hear that I would be waking them up in the morning and we would be doing some schooling (we'll se how the teacher holds up on this one!).

Thank you to all of you who have been concerned with us and for us, and thank you so much for your prayers.  Blessings to all of you!

Olivia's birthday

Olivia feeling shy or tired at the water park.

Our sweet Olivia not wanting to blow out the candle

Today we celebrate Olivia's third birthday! It has been fun. Yesterday we went to a water park with several people from church, so we had a cake and piñata with everyone. By the time we got to the birthday festivities yesterday, the kids had been in the sun and water all day, so Olivia was a little waterlogged and tired. She had talked and talked about her cake; blowing out the candles, and "mordida" (where you take a big bite out of the cake and hope your friends don't shove your face into the cake), and she had also talked about the piñata and how she was going to hit it. However, at the moment of truth, she didn't want to do any of it! It was sad, but she did enjoy a piece of cake and wishing she had hit the piñata after it was all done.
Today after church, we had a low-key family celebration. We ordered pizza, and had cake (with the same water theme) hoping she might want to blow out the candle, at least and presents. But again, she got shy and let her sisters do all the work. She finished her afternoon off with a great nap!
I thought back to the the day she was born, to the blessing she has been since that day. The night before, as we waited eagerly for her, was a night of wrestling for me.  We wanted so much for her to come, but it just wasn't happening, so it was a wrestling with my body to try and get it do what I wanted then (didn't work at all!!!).  It was also a night of spiritual wrestling.  I remember drifting in and out of the pain of contractions and in and out of praying for our friends Jake and Mandy who were upstairs with their baby daughter, fighting for her life.  It was intense and long, but at the end of it all, we got to meet our beautiful Olivia and she has been a joy since then.  It's funny, I also remember the ride home from the hospital and noticing how life just went on around us.  It was no big deal for anybody, but for us, we were headed home as different people, with something so incredibly amazing and life changing.  Everyone was just going on in the usual.  Weird, I should think that time should stand still for everyone else as our lives changed so dramatically.

So, here we are, three years later enjoying a beautiful, expressive girl.  She is just as cute as the day she was born, and she keeps us laughing.  Happy birthday, sweet girl!

Some of the kids at the water park.

The piñata ready to be beat up!  It didn't take long to get it open and dumping candy.

So much help

It is great for the girls to help with Isabella. Sometimes, they want to help too much, but here is a little video of Olivia helping feed Isabella. Enjoy! I know I sure did.

Leadership with VanRheenen's

Gailyn and Becky



This past weekend, we had an amazing time with Gailyn and Becky VanRheenen.  Gailyn was one of Sam's professors at ACU, so it was nice to catch up with them 

On Friday evening, Gailyn spoke with our leaders at Rio de Vida.  We invited leaders and those we considered potential and committed leaders.  It was neat to have about 20 people there.  A few of these people were surprised we would invite them!  It was also sad that there were some that we wanted to be there and should have been there, but weren't.  On Saturday, we had a day long seminar for our leaders and leaders from the surrounding areas.  There were about 40 people here that came from Guadalajara, León,  and Mexico City.  Both Gailyn and Becky spoke to us, and it was a great day!  We learned so much and got several important ideas.  Of course, it was a special blessing to catch up with friends and missionaries from Mexico.  As usual, there wasn't enough time to talk as much as we wanted to with everyone.  Most of the out of town people came in just for the day, so they had to head out as soon as the seminar was over.  Our leaders were truly blessed and inspired.  A special blessing, straight from God was our situation with the kids for the day.  We were short on space and people to take care of our kids, but Sam and I remembered a day care near by.  The lady is a Christian, and when we approached her about the possibility of using their facility, she was glad to help, and added the teachers in also.  It was great!!!  They had a place to play, they had activities, supervision and tender loving care.  Some of our older kids weren't as thrilled to have so many limits -- they're used to much less supervision or restrictions at "church activities."  Hmmmm...  A highlight of this time was dinner around the pool with the VanRheenens and our friends the Brednichs and Grays both working in different areas of Mexico City.  Our girls loved the down time at the pool (thanks for sharing the hotel pool with us), and we enjoyed the down time with good company.

We got a day of sightseeing where we went to Tzitzhutzan (I just forgot how to spell it) to see some indigenous ruins -- yacatas not to be confused with pyramids and Patzcuaro.  Our indigenous guide did a great job at sharing not just what we were looking at, but also at explaining and expounding on ideas of animism, syncretism and a few other -isms that I missed in my multiple trips to take Olivia to the bathroom, clean a skinned knee, nurse a baby, peel an orange, etc...You get the idea.  Anyway, it was right up everyone else's alley, so it was fun.  In the travel time, we continued to talk about ideas presented at the seminar and how best to fit it with what God is doing at Rio de Vida.

All in all, it was a refreshing weekend.  We were encouraged and challenged to think big in God's eyes.  We are so grateful to Gailyn and Becky and giving of their time to be here in Mexico.

 

Sightseeing at the ruins

The kids on Friday night

Some of the people at the seminar

The price of a good deal!

Before

After 

It has been a long time in the waiting, but we finally have a new table!  It is beautiful.  It is big and it is just what we have wanted for a long time.  The design of the table was inspired by our friends Bill and Sarah Ramirez, so we get to think of them every time we sit at our table.  You have to understand, though, that this table comes with a story... The end product can be attributed to Sam.  He is the man and it is thanks to his persistence and patience that we have what we have.  So, here's the story... We had the table made here by a carpenter that Sam found.  We started back in January.  He said it would take 3 weeks, so I assumed 4-5 weeks would be about right.  Two months later, no table delivered.  Sam put the pressure on, and last week, he delivered the chairs.  Later that afternoon, the table arrived, and at 10:00 p.m. he brought the china hutch over.  Except, there were a few things not quite right.  The china hutch had no glass shelves, no glass in the doors, no handles and no latches on the doors, oh, and no stain on a couple of spots.  Details, just details.  So, the next day Sam and my dad worked amazingly quickly (since we had small group in our home that night) to put in glass, and install handles.  After that, my mom and I worked to get everything into the hutch and the table in its place.  Beautiful!!!  Two days later, the carpenter (who had even asked for a tip) showed and was amazed that Sam had done all that work.  But, he was here most of the day working on "details" on the table.  At Sam's insistence he made the mechanism for enlarging the table so that we don't have to climb under the table to get it to work and keep track of some pegs in order for it to work.  He stained the spots that were not done and my nice white tablecloth in the drawer.  Finally, he also shortened the table a bit since it was so high.  

It only took two months, a long day and sawdust in our house, be we have a beautiful table and chairs.  Just what we wanted, and we did get a good deal compared to everything we had looked at.  So, we are thrilled and can't wait to share it with our friends

.  Come visit us and we will feed you at our new table!

China hutch

Happy people at the table