Life in Ceiba

In the midst of looking for a house and doing ministry, we've found some opportunities to explore our new city.

I can't believe it took us 2 weeks to find this!


This was a great park near the ocean, it is all in the shade which makes it bearable to go out and play. We look forward to many more days spent at this park.


This is what Ellie and I did while Lucy was playing.


As you can tell it gets hot here, but we have found a easy solution to keeping the girls cool.


Lucy enjoys helping Ellie along with her tummy time.


Since we have moved here Lucy decided she wanted to switch to a big girl bed. I have been wanting to do this for several months now but wanted to wait until all the transitions were over. Lucy decided that she was tired of waiting and one day for her nap just asked to sleep there and we have never gone back. She fell out of bed one night, hence the new bed rail.


And last but not least our new home- this time for real we have paid our deposit, signed the contract, now we are just waiting for the keys which we should have tomorrow night if all goes as planned. Stay tuned for moving pictures.

Housing Update

Well the beautiful home pictured below is no longer ours. We went in on Tuesday to finalize the contract and found out the owner decided to move in. We were very sad and upset as you can imagine. Thanks to my dear sweet husband who has spent the last 24 hours searching all over this city we are happy to announce that we have found another house (sorry no picture yet). We have had to make a few compromises in some areas but I believe it is going to be a great house for us. We hope to move in on Monday, although I am not getting my hopes up because like I have already seen things can fall through at any moment. Our hearts are longing for a home of our own as we have pretty much been living out of our suitcases for 5 weeks now. So please pray that everything happens smoothly and quickly. We will post pictures soon.

Whats happening in Honduras

This past week has been crazy. We have been busy learning the city, getting involved in ministry, finding a home, attending training on team building and on dealing with children who have been sexually abused, and oh yeah parenting. Too say the least we are exhausted. We know that it will all calm down soon though and we will be able to get comfortable in our new home and settle down a little bit. For now please pray for strength and endurance though because I know I need it!

Lucy has loved being here and has enjoyed all the extra attention she gets from the interns- Jamie, Josh and Andy. It is amazing because she really does feel at home here even though we are still living out of suitcases. The other morning we were eating breakfast and our conversation went like this:
Lucy: Mommy where are we?
Me: We are in Honduras now.
Lucy: (with a very excited look on her face) Mommy this is home!

Relaxing on the hammock. We don't have much time to just sit and relax but when we do this is the first place I go. Both Lucy and Ellie love just to rest for a while in the cool shade.


We got to reunite with our friends, the Eubanks, the other day. We were in Costa Rica with them until they left back in May so it was so fun to see them once again. The dog in the picture is Max, he belongs to the Pettengills and is the sweetest rockwailer you will ever meet. Lucy is still getting used to him and kind of has a love/hate relationship with him.


Lucy showed Liam how to play the piano while cuddling up beside him.


Sweet Ellie has probably suffered the most from all the transition. She misses having grandparents and aunts to hold her (as do I!), she is battling a horrible cough that she got while in the States, and she isn't sleeping great due to the fact that I won't let her budge even the slightest bit out of the fear she will wake up Lu. But we bought her this chair and she loves it so when all else fails we just put her in it and she enjoys a couple of minutes of pure joy.

We have a Home!

I will post more later but for now I wanted to let everyone know we have a home! It is a great home for us- about a 8 minute walk from our teammates, 4 small bedrooms, a great yard, on a cul-de-sac and it even has a bathtub (for all those who know me this is not only good news for the girls but also for me). The backyard has a coconut, avocado, orange, and lime tree- Yummy! We are still not sure when we are going to be able to officially move in but the house is ours beginning Feb. 1st. We will post pictures of the inside soon. Thank you for all your prayers!

Home Sweet Home

As for now we are living with our teammates, the Pettengills. They have one room filled with 5 bunk beds to be used for short term teams this summer. The fan in this picture is one of 2 fans that we use at night. There is no air conditioning and so we have the fans on full blast (although as far as weather goes it has been very mild every since we have arrived).


As you can see we have made ourself at home and all of our bags are spread everywhere in order for us to be able to find what we need. It has been a adventure to say the least, but we are thankful that the girls are doing very well staying in the same room and all of us are sleeping well at night.


You can see Lucy's crib at the corner of this picture. For now Lucy is using it and Ellie is sleeping on a bed since she doesn't roll yet. But the plan is when we move to switch Lucy to a big bed and move Ellie to the crib.



It has been such a blessing to stay with our teammates and to have this extra time with them, but we are looking forward to finding a home our own. We are going to look at house tomorrow that sounds pretty promising so please pray that all would go well.

We're Here!!

We arrived yesterday in Honduras. It was almost 3 years ago when we began this process and now it feels so good to finally be here! I know it will take a little bit to get really settled and feel like it is home but we are enjoying the adventure in the meantime.


All the grandparents came to the airport, it was nice to have all the help but of course sad to say goodbye.

Our Travels Continue...to Charlotte

We have so many pictures (because of our new camera) and we have done such a bad job blogging, so hopefully over the next couple of weeks we will catch you up on our time in the States. After we left Durham we headed to Charlotte for 2 nights. We were able to catch up with some friends, eat at some of our favorite restaurants, and go to the doctor.

Sam and Lucy were instant bff again. They enjoyed hanging out in the morning in their pjs and having a tickle war.


Ellie loved meeting all of her mom and dad's friends. And like always enjoyed having some extra cuddle time. We went to the pediatrician while we were there and found out she was 13lbs 12oz. which makes her "off the charts" as far as the percentiles. All that to say she is chunky (much more so than her sister at this age)!


Caught red handed!


Faster Sam, faster.


This picture looks like they could be 20 years old.


Going in for the kiss.


Smooch.


Park fun. Ms. Melissa can do a mean Superman trick on the swing.


Lucy pretty much went up and down the stairs about 20 times a day and each time she would try to drag Sam to come along with her.


Lucy was in awe of Maggie's big girl bed and had to give it a try, hopefully she will like her own big girl bed once we get to Honduras.



Just a quick update. We are leaving tomorrow for Atlanta, spending the night in a hotel and then will fly out early Thursday morning. We have 9 bags all packed and ready to go. Its crazy to think about all the changes we are about to experience, but we are excited and ready to once again have a "home".

Christmas Fun Continues

We celebrated Christmas with the McCanns in January, it was great to extend Christmas a little and to be able to celebrate with Aunt Curly who flew in from Philadelphia.


The morning started off with donuts for breakfast, Lucy was a big fan!


Lucy's favorite part of the whole morning wasn't opening the gifts but rather playing Elf and giving out the gifts to everyone.


Ellie enjoyed her Christmas morning on Gannie's shoulder.






Enjoying one of her Christmas gifts, playdough.


A little girl filled with joy and wonder during the Christmas season.

Go Duke!

Ellie went to her first Duke game during our time in Durham and Lucy her second (here is her first Cameron experience). It was kind of crazy having both girls there but nevertheless fun.

Everyone got Duke gear for Christmas.


Lucy was facinated by the game and we are not sure what she thought of it all but every now and then she asked "where did the horses go?"


Ellie enjoyed it as well and pretty much slept through the whole thing in Gannie's arms.


Here is a moment of calmness.


Go Duke!

Our little Ellie

We got a new camera for Christmas and it has been able to capture some great pictures of Ellie so I thought I would share them. Ellie has brought so much joy to our lives. She has the biggest smile and at times seems to smile so big that she appears to be laughing. I used to think that Ellie and Lucy looked so much a like but each day Ellie gets bigger I think she is looking more and more unique.


I love this picture! Cuddled up with Gannie by the Christmas tree, life doesn't get much better than that.


This is her first time meeting Aunt Curly (who is also Nancy, her name sake).

















We Love you Ellie!