Tidbits from the Means

We've slept in 10 beds in 21 days!

 I got to take the ALSO (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics) course and I really enjoyed it AND I passed!

We take our heavy duty blender that would power a small lawn mower everywhere we go and drink green smoothies on the road.

 If you are a missionary on the road and you have the opportunity to cook for your family, have you considered McCormick's pre-measured spices. Then you get some flavor without buying a bunch of herbs you either have to leave behind or find room for in the car.

Another travel trip: Freeze your water bottles the night before your trip. Use these to keep your cooler cold instead of a bag of ice. You'll have cold drinks all day and no ice melting and watering down your lunch meat and cheese. No one likes soggy lunch meat and cheese!

Josiah and Sam had a great time driving this 1987 Jeep down to the border for our missionary friends in Chiapas. They were by far the oldest car rollin' down the road. They rocked the retro, father and son style.  Altogether about 830 miles, probably something Josiah will never forget.

Each child has a carry on size luggage, which they can pack a least ten days worth of clothes in and they are responsible for keeping it neat and orderly at all times.

When all the kids where little I always followed a simple rule from the time I woke up until I fell asleep. "Do something to improve a room every time you enter or leave." I don't know when or why I stopped doing that.

Our family motto is, "Remember as far as everyone else knows, we are normal." No seriously, I'm sure our real family motto is much more spiritual than that.

I think a child bringing you flowers they picked is one of the best things in the entire world.

Each of our children has moved at least as many times as they are old. Including 3 countries and 2 years in an RV. Man, I miss the RV!

Although Sam and I have been married over 16 years. We have only lived in the same house together maybe 13 years or less, due to military duties.

Haden (age 5) says he wants to travel the WHOLE world (his emphasis on world, not mine). He wants to go to China and Berlin and hear their languages, but he does not want to go to school there, because he wouldn't know how to answer the questions.

My kids LOVE going to our home church, Gospel Light Baptist Church, in Rogers, AR. They love the music and the preaching and the singing and the classes and the wonderful people they know pray for us. An undiscribable lesson in appreciation.

"Where's My Water", which Haden affectionately calls "Swampy", is awesome!

Also our kids can not figure out why our home church rarely singing, "Send the Light" and almost every other church we go to sings it all the time. Some of you won't get that one. :)
 
We had the privilege of presenting our ministry at Victory Baptist Church in North Austin while we were in the US. A nice lady who had spent some time in Mexico spent some time practicing her Spanish with me. After she left Hannah said, "Her Spanish is pretty good." I said that she was part of their missions committee. Her job was to speak with the missionaries to Spanish speaking countries and that this church didn't support missionaries unless they could speak the languages well enough. Bahahaha! You should have seen her face.

 I am just beginning to realize, that we are raising third culture kids and that they are not experiencing the mission field the same way Sam and I do, and somehow by some miracle of God's grace we are able to create some sort of stability from within our little family unit that keeps us all grounded

 In less than two weeks we will move to Oaxaca, Mexico and we have no plans to ever leave Oaxaca!

And that's a little bit of how we roll folks!

A Lesson in Civil Authority

Sara Elizabeth over at A Mama’s Story, is doing a series on home birth and midwifery.  I was very honored when she asked me to answer some of her reader's questions.  This was especially time appropriate as in June we will be moving to Oaxaca to begin our own ministry and midwifery will be become a bigger part of that ministry.  Just last week Casa Compassiva, the birth center I will be helping with, had one of the mothers they are serving trust Jesus Christ as her personal Savior.  While Church planting is our main focus, we are excited to see what ministry opportunities midwifery will open up in Oaxaca.  And being totally honest, I am looking forward to attending births, prenatal and postpartum visits on a regular basis again.  

We are currently in the U.S. for the next 2-3 weeks to renew our visas, car registrations, and for me to be able to complete some of the requirements for recertification of my midwifery.  This past Thursday and Friday I was able to attend the ALSO (Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics) course in Corpus Christi, TX.  I really enjoyed the course, the case studies, the hands on practice and all the evidenced based information, but best of all I passed and learned new things, while concreting other skills!  :)  

The trip up to the border went very smooth.  We had everything packed, including food for the trip, the night before and we made it to the border in record time, without getting pulled over even once.  Once we reached the immigration office on the Mexican side we realized we had left 3 of the 7 passports and our Mexican visas in Encarnacion, 10 hours drive away.  We could not cancel the visas, and we weren’t sure if we would be able to cross to the U.S. side without our passports, plus we had almost no identification for Haden.  Sam thought he might have a scanned copy of his birth certificate in his computer.  We had copies of the passports and visas we were missing, but not his.  And my class started in Corpus Christi, a 4 hour drive away, early Thursday morning.

After some deliberation and calling back to Encarnacion to locate the passports.  We decided to try to go in and cancel the Mexican passports with the copies we had and then try to cross the border.  A national pastor was willing to ride the bus all night to bring us our passports by the next morning.  We could not cancel at the bridge with the copies because it was not the same bridge we had entered, but we did learn they could be cancelled without everyone present at the other bridge, so we decided to try to cross and Sam would come back the next morning and retrieve our passports and cancel the visas.  

As we approached the entrance to the bridge we were pulled over by Mexican police for  “speeding”.  We were already a little up tight about trying to cross without our passports and not looking forward to the wait on the hot bridge without air conditioning.  After quite a bit a talking, we moved toward the bridge.  As Sam was placing what paperwork and documents we had in order, he could not find his drivers license.  He jumped out and ran back across to the Mexican police to retrieve it.  They said they had given in back.  Meanwhile, I was trying not to get to a gate without Sam, much to the irritation of the people behind us.  When Sam returned very sweaty and out of breath, it was without his drivers license.  At this point, I had reached my stress limit and felt a constricting panic in my chest at the idea of trying to explain to the U.S. border authorities why we did not have three passports, and now Sam did not have a drivers license.  I rummaged around the car, remembering Sam had given the Mexican policeman a tract and there was his license neatly tucked in with all the tracts.  

Hannah mentioned she had no trust for anyone in civil authority and I assured her the U.S. side would be different.  Much to her surprise the U.S. authorities were professional and followed their protocol for this situation.  And we all breathed a sign of relief as we entered the U.S.  After watching the movie “UP”, we often start out trips and other adventures by crying out, “Adventure is out there!”  Sam began the chant and everyone followed along, but promptly stated that they were ok without anymore adventure for awhile.  There is actually even more to this story, but I'll stop here.  Praise the Lord for his ever present hand of protecton!

Because we were not busying enough, while we were packing and I was doing last minute studying for the ALSO course, the girls and I sewed some cute dresses.  You can see them at the top of the post.  Have a great week everyone!  

And of course I'm linking up with A Mama's Story!

An Authentic French Meal, Even in Mexico

The ingredients for Pot Au Feu are so "basic", "from scratch", "whole" that we can find them even in Mexico.  However, while the ingredients are simple, excluding the veal and oxtail, I didn't even bother with those, the process of creating Pot Au Feu is....um...well...not as simple.  Two days, brine soaking, bouquet garni, multi pot not as simple to be exact.  So why would one go to the grand extreme of creating this rather extravagant dish.  Perhaps a very important guest or an elegant party. Truth be told, I'm not sure how I landed exactly on Pot Au Fue, I must have been quite hungry and overly energized from a good nights sleep or stout cup of coffee.  The kind that makes you feel you can take on the world and you pretty much do until the three hour expiration on energy runs out.  That's why I stick to the green smoothies, much more consistent on their energy output.  Anyway, I've wandered far from the main point.
We were studying the country of France in school and the lesson plans suggested making the flag of France from colored construction paper, which was the same activities we had done several countries ago.  They did a great job on those flag by the way.  I'll post pictures of them below.  I gave them no guidance, only a photo of the flag and construction paper in those colors and all four made the same flag in a different way, which I thought was pretty cool.  As much fun as flag making is, the French flag is not exactly a challenge, so I thought it would be more fun and educational to create an authentic French dish.  So with the word challenge in the back of my coffee fueled mind and google at my fingers tips (this is a dangerous combo), as I said I may have been a little hungry too, making the famous and very complicated meat heavy dish of Pot Au Feu appeared upon my screen as a great idea.  After all didn't some other chic make a whole cook book of French food and blogged about it.
So we first found all the ingredients we could at the market and stores, than we sent Sam to the butcher for the meat.  I ended up going with the brisket, short ribs, and beef bones, leaving out the veal cuts.  I did put the oxtail on the list, but sadly, even with charades this could not be ordered.  Then we created a brine and soaked our meats overnight.  Then we cooked our meats and bones with our herbs and spices and water until we had the most fantastic tasting meat and broth you have ever tasted, I'm actually being very serious here, it was good.  Then you remove the meat and cook the vegetables in the heavenly broth.  THEN you serve it with a French bread, of course, and a variety of sauces you've also made while waiting for all this brining and cooking and removing and chopping and cooking.  While we ate we shared some of the facts about Europe and France we had been learning with dad.  Huh, maybe I should rename this post homeschool overkill: when mom gets more excited about the unit study than is really necessary.  Well anyway, it made three absolutely delicious meals.  Which was really surprising because the food in France seemed somewhat bland to me when we visited.  I guess we picked the wrong restaurants or just order the wrong things.  And really, I've tackled much larger culinary feats for much less honorable reasons.  Click the link to see the bonappetit.com recipe we mostly followed.

We used cabbage from the garden.  Isn't she a beauty!

Homemade "French" Bread

Pot au Fue: literally meaning pot in the fire. 

It was recommended to serve in with a French mustard.

Looks humble, but it is absolutely heavenly.

OK, sorry about the million pictures, but I'm sure the grandparents won't be complaining.  The flag of Norway is supposed to be robin red, royal blue and white.  However, I only had pinkish, light blue and off-white, being the ubber organized home schooler I am.  Anyway, any homeschooler will have enough imagination to work with this small setback. 

And finally, I think they were supposed to be cleaning their room.  I'm not sure if this is Ferdinand the Bull or the Texas Longhorn.  Until next time, Blessings from Mexico.

Excited to be doing a link-up with my good friend and one of my favorite bloggers, Sara Elizabeth, over at A Mama's Story.

"Fun" Mexican Style

So, here is some of the "fun" we get to deal with living outside the U.S.  Today the electricity goes out.  Sam goes and checks and it has been cut without notification of any kind.  He goes into the electric company, who conveniently cut it right before their closing hours.  Being the second time we've dealt with this, he bypasses the line and goes to the supervisor.  He explains that our electricity has been cut and we have not paid the bill, because we have not received a bill, that it is the responsibility of said supervisors to make sure our bill is delivered and we would like to have our electricity reconnected.  IF the electric company cannot find our house to deliver the bill, but they can find it to cut the service, how long do you think it will take for them to find the house to reconnect it?  I know, about a week and that will be with Sam going in every morning and reexplaining to the same supervisor where our house is.  Said supervisor explains that there will be a work order created to reconnect now that we have paid our bill, we only need to pay the 80 peso fee for reconnection, for the second time.  Sam explains he will not be paying the reconnection fee since it is their fault not ours and he already paid a reconnection fee once and explained where our house is and wonders how they can find the house to cut the electricity with no notification.  She explains the electricity will not be reconnected without paying the fee.  We have electricity tonight and we did not pay their "fee", I will not continue the story as to not incriminate anyone.  This whole process of course took a good part of the middle of the day, a huge chuck of Sam's study time.  Bless his heart, I sure do love him for dealing with everything so well.

On another front, I guess the water company has decided that water will only be supplied during the evening and night hours.  Would have been nice to have a heads up, so I could have adjusted my showering, clothes washing schedules.  Still I'm grateful for electricity, water, internet and such other luxuries.  They seem to have cut the electricity to some of the apartments next door also and 80 pesos will be much harder on their budgets than ours.

We love being here.  We love our friends here.  This afternoon Hannah and Lena went over to a church ladies house and learned some new crafty stuff.  The boys had friend in the backyard helping them make a fort.  I'm not complaining at all.  It was a little discouraging and frustrating, but we're not complaining.  I just thought you might be interested in hearing some of the interesting things we deal with from time to time.

In more news, we sport green mustaches at are house instead of the traditional white ones.  :)

 The boys' fort they have been building in the backyard with the neighbors.  Quite impressive!

 Also, not all, but much of my herbal knowledge is obsolete here in Mexico.  I'm having to learn new natural and herbal remedies.  For example. my go-to advice for a UTI in the U.S. would have been cranberry tablets, which are easily purchased at the health food store.  Cranberries aren't easy to find here and most cranberry juices are loaded with sugar, which would defeat the purpose of using them for UTI.  My new Mexican remedy for UTI is fresh coconut water, oregano tincture and corn silk tea.  That's right, the "pello de elote" made into a tea or better yet an infusion.  When I told the vendor I wanted the corn with a lot of silk of the ears, he did not seem surprised.  I learned it is also good for heart problems, edema and to dissolve kidney stones.  I will have to discuss with one of the Mexican midwifes to see if it is contradicted in pregnancy, as it seem to have some natural diuretic proporties.

Random Things We've Been Up To

We'll the kids and I have been hitting the books hard everyday, this is the most stable our life had been in about 4 or 5 years.  Everyone is enjoying seeing their progress day by day and week by week.  It's probably a little hard to appreciate this blessing we are enjoying if your whole life hasn't been picked up and dumped on its side a few times, but rejoice with us anyway.

Samuel's birthday is exactly one week after Haden's.  He's such a good sport about letting us go on and on about how it's almost Haden's birthday for the whole month of January.  Some extra money came in so we were able to do some special things on his birthday and he got a really cool Lego set.  His actual birthday was so packed full that I got the cake baked, but not decorated.  So we celebrated again Friday night when we finally got around to decorating the cake.  It was a little crumbly, so I was sure it was going to be even more a flub than Haden's.  I apologized a few times when I was trying to put it together.  Hubby came in and saved the day somehow and it turned out really nice.  It's held together with a LOT of icing.  Hahaha!

In other news I have tried some new recipes I got off of Pinterest.....my life since I discovered Pinterest.....Facebook who?  LOL!  So I found this recipe for Portabella Pepper Steak from Once Upon a Plate blog.  You can get the recipe by clicking the link.  So I made something a lot like it but my own version.  Portabella mushrooms are actually kinda "meaty" and comparitivly priced to meat and my family loves mushrooms.  So I also read in Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories and Recipes from the Great Depression that sometimes her mom would use some of the bread dough on "bread making day" to make pizza.  Then Monday as the kids and I were in the middle of our own "bread making day" it all came together.  I had some of the wonderful fresh sautéed tomato sauce from making Huevos Rancheros, I added to that 5 or 6 sun dried tomatoes and one can of stewed tomatoes and it was AMAZING.  I rolled out some of the bread dough, put my AMAZING pizza sauce on it, topped that with the Portabella Pepper Steak and Mexican cheese.  I served it with sautéed collard greens from the garden.  What a gourmet dinner! 

But that wasn't the end of the portabella mushrooms.  I was able to get a huge package for less than $5, so I still had 6 left AND I had some of the Portabella Pepper Steak left AND I still had some of the AMAZING pizza sauce.  I placed the portabella mushrooms in the oven topped with olive oil and salt, while I added another bell pepper and onion to my "pepper steak" mixture along with the mushroom stems and let that sautee.  After about 5 minutes I pulled them out and topped them with the "pepper steak", pizza sauce and mexican cheese.  Then they went back in the oven until then were done.  So delicious.  I served it with Spicy Curried Beans.  

Hope you're having a great week too!  :)

Green Grass in a Dry Land

As I stepped outside our house and surveyed our town, "They are going to think we are crazy," is exactly what came to mind.  Our neighborhood is called Buena Vista or Beautiful View, it should just be called Vista, because for this Arkansas girl raised in some of the most beautiful scenery on God's green earth it is just a dusty dry view of the town.  A nice place to look over when you are praying, but the words beautiful never come to mind.  Several of the church folks mentioned that the winds come in Jan and Feb.  OK, I thought, what does that even mean - the winds come?  I didn't give it much thought.

On our drive to Oaxaca Haden got this picnic idea in his head.  He wanted to stop right where we were and have a picnic.  I think he just wanted the 12 hour drive to stop, poor guy.  Anyway, I assured him we would have a picnic when we got back home, with the kids.  He agreed a picnic with his brothers and sisters would be funner.  So, we've had several backyard picnics, but Haden really wanted a picnic at the park.  His birthday was in a day or two, so I said, "We can't have a picnic at the park today, but how about for your birthday."  His eyes lit up and he immediately got pictures of a park and nice green grass in his head.  Folks, it hasn't rained in months and when it did rain it wasn't a very plentiful rainy season.  I thought, we'll worry about the grass later, maybe the cake and festivities will be enough.

Wednesday came and we began to make picnic party preparations.  As I baked the caked I noticed there was quite a bit of wind, when we went to the market for a few things the vendors were starting to have a hard time keeping everything from blowing away.  By the time I had everything packed for a picnic and began loading the van, I thought, "They are going to think we are crazy having a picnic in this wind, and they are going to be right."  Not only was there no green grass anywhere in sight, the dust from the months of dryness was blowing everywhere.  Sam just smiled and said, our little five year old wants a picnic, lets go to the park.

We hadn't been to this particular park for a while, so I was very surprised to see they water it year round.  Maybe that's what they use that small entrance fee for.  There was a huge lawn of green grass, which really cut down on the swirling dust and made a very nice place to sit upon a blanket.  The wind had even died down and was hardly blowing by the time we left.  Another family had come and were having their own picnic, so we weren't the only crazy ones.  What a lovely little picnic party God provided for our little guy.  He of course, never even notice the wind and was not the least bit surprised by the green grass, which was just what he expected.

He's showing us which piece he wants, basically the whole head!  LOL!

Isn't this card Lena made him soooo cute!  On the hand is says, "I love you...." and when you open it up it says, "THIS MUCH!"  She got the idea from Pinterest!  LOL!

Cake idea is an alligator from the Family Fun web site.  I don't know if any of you have seen the picture of the super cute cookie monster cupcakes and then the picture of the total fail cookie monster cupcakes, but this kind of made me think of that!  Normally I'm pretty good at birthday cakes, but I got my icing too thin.  Anyway, he's cute and Haden was happy. 

We Won!

Well, somehow we won the war of the leaf-cutting ants.  I have to say, it's bitter sweet.  They were such fascinating, happy, industrious little creatures.  Now the garden seems so still.  Still, I'm thrilled to be harvesting all the beautiful produce.  

Beautiful beets!  This one was juiced with carrots and some wheat grass I also grew.  It made a very sweet juice.

I harvested most of the lettuce that was left.  Some of it was going to seed, since it's starting to get warmer.  This should be enough for our lunch salads for the rest of the week.  We've enjoyed lots of salad from this little patch this winter (along with the ants).  I was a little sad to pull it up, but that's how the cycle works.  I've planted bush beans in their place.

Lots of veggies for broths, stir fries, and salad fixn's

This is cabbage and swiss chard.  The six small squares of swiss chard are doing so well, that I have enough for green smoothies for the whole family about every other day.

The radishes are doing great.

Lena loves eating them right out of the garden.

We planted this smaller variety of carrots.  The ground can be pretty hard, so these little guys don't have to battle the hard ground to grow.

This is the first time I have even planted broccoli.  They have done really well.  We also have leeks, turnips, collard greens, parsley, cilantro, and kale.  

So, there's my winter garden!  I just started some tomato, eggplant, pepper, and lemon grass seeds for the spring summer garden.  The little pods with seeds and all their potential are sitting on my dresser in my bedroom, just days away from sticking their little green sprouts out of the top of the soil.  I'll be able to put tomato plants out in March!  And just think our friends up in Greenland are celebrating because they finally saw the sun for 10 minutes last week!  Happy to be serving God in Mexico.  Happy Gardening ya'll!