Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Happy New Year!

Oops! I just looked and discovered that I haven't posted in a while. I'd love to say that it's because life has be just too frantic but it's more that we've been enjoying the relative quiet of this time of year. (Though only having two team families in town does mean there's some extra work to be done!) We had a nice Christmas, though it was a little strange because it was the first time Russ and I had ever been completely alone. We handled it okay, I guess (well, he did anyway but I'm hormonal so I've got an excuse!).

We spent yesterday (New Year's Eve day--is there a word for that?) at the beach. A family that has been coming to church lately invited us and the Porters to the beach house they rented just north of town. We spent the day swimming, sitting in the sun and eating. John and Evelyn Willis (from Abilene) are visiting the Porters right now so they came with us, too. It meant we also spent the day translating back and forth, but no one seemed to mind. After a day in the sun, we didn't feel much like going out so we stayed in last night and watched an Everest marathon on the Discovery channel while we waited for all the fireworks to end.

John and Evelyn are celebrating their 52nd anniversary later this month so today we had a get-together with some of the couples from church. They shared what they had learned about marriage with us. It was quite the multicultural (and multilingual) gathering because one of the couples is a Brazilian woman (who is from the far south of Brazil which may as well be another country!) and an man from El Salvador (who really doesn't speak much Portuguese but lived in North America for several years so has great English). So we switched between English, Portuguese and Spanish. In the end I think everyone made themselves understood and were able to learn a great deal from John and Evelyn. It's nice when we have older people around to share wisdom with us--our congregation is young and made up of relatively new Christians so times like today are quite special!

This morning I had the realization that it's now January. It's January and we're having a baby in February. Wow. Just for kicks, we've set up an online baby pool. You can access it here.

3 comments:

Heather A said...

So glad you're enjoying John and Evelyn! They're a great couple! I joined the online baby pool, even though I did terribly in Matt and Mary's this summer! Love you lots!

Jennifer Schroeder said...

I truly enjoyed the irony of a missionary couple doing a baby pool.

I'm voting for a 10 pound baby.

Valerie said...

Yes, Jen, I couldn't help but notice what a mean person you are. Ten pounds. Ugh. I figure the pool is okay if we don't have people put money on it. Other people can have other pools for money but the official missionary-sanctioned pool is for bragging rights only. (Though that doesn't quite sound right either...)

And Heather, we can't wait for you to get back down here! Last week was really quiet though--all the Chapada kids had chicken pox!