Pics of Raquel and one of something entirely different

All ready for a neighborhood wedding (we need to get her some nice shoes. Her feet have grown so much since we've been here!)

Going on a date with Daddy to eat ice cream and color.

Getting ready for rainy season

In other news, a baby cicak met it's untimely demise on our front door jamb. He went unnoticed for sometime, until the other day one of our pembantus spotted his rather well preserved skeleton. Unfortunately I have no sympathy- there are twenty more to take his place

Our little fish

Raquel has always been scared of water. A couple months ago she fell into the deep end of the pool which didn't help matters. Since that time she would refuse to even let us hold her in the deepend, let alone try to swim by herself (with water wings). We kept trying to encourage her to try it out. Last Sunday before we went to the pool (our Sunday afternoon tradition) Raquel told me that she was going to let me hold her in the big pool. I didn't think she really would, but told her I was happy anyway:) Right before we left for the pool I was looking at my sister Kristen's blog and we saw a video of my niece, Mya, swimming. Inspired by this, Raquel again resolved to go into the big pool that afternoon.

Much to our surprise, she did it! -and hasn't looked back:)

Picinc in a pine forest

A couple Saturday's ago, our small group drove about an hour up our nearby mountain for a picnic. It was a beautiful day. The kids played really well together while the adults talked, ate (of course:) and enjoyed the cool air, scenery and sunshine:)

Ouch!

This morning as Dylan (with Raquel riding on the front of his motorcycle) was stopped with his blinker on waiting to turn right into our driveway (that's like a left hand turn in the States) a guy on another motorcylce going too fast tried to pass them on the right. Instead of passing, he hit them knocking their bike over and went crashing down himself. Thankfully Dylan was able to hold onto Raquel as they went down and all she has is the road rash she proudly displays below. Dylan took the brunt of the fall and has several scratches and bruises all over especially his shoulder and knee. Praise the Lord there was no serious injury. There was an older man who saw the whole thing and stopped to give the man who hit them an earful. He defended
Dylan and loudly reminded the speeder that our road is not a racetrack. (People go way to fast down our road). We're so thankful that he was there as a witness and that he was on our side. God is good all the time!

No more hand-made clothes!!

(If you don't understand the title of this post, run don't walk to the nearest blockbuster and rent Fiddler on the Roof immediately. You'll be glad you did:)

I didn't even know these things actually worked, but since the beginning of August I've been learning the art of using a treadle sewing machine. Now that I've gotten the hang of it, it's really easy to use. Since it doesn't need electricity to run I was able to finish sewing some curtains late one night when our power went off for a few hours. I just strapped on a flashlight headlamp and continued sewing (No I don't have pictures of that:).


a beautiful butterfly:)


The bedskirt I made for our bed.
(I had the duvet cover made by a seamstress in town a while ago)


I made this the other night:) The pattern I found on line looked much cuter than this creature

but Raquel still loves it despite it's deformities. Maybe some clothes will help. Maybe not...

new schedule

Since Dylan is in a higher unit than me, his schedule has changed and now he has class in the afternoons while I still go in the mornings. So, he got to see what Raquel does in the mornings.

Waiting for the car to pick her up for school

have a fun day at school Raquel!

Back to the beach

A couple of weeks ago we finished another unit of school and had several days off so we decided to take advantage of them and head back to Pacitan (4 hours south of us) and enjoy some beach time. We went down with another org family from Germany who have a little girl six months older than Raquel and an almost two year old boy. We had a really nice and relaxing time. Dylan got to try out his new surfboard that he recently had made (thanks Philip and TirZah for the birthday money:) and thankfully it worked great!