At Home in the Mountains

Well, Maddy is just getting to that age where she is getting pretty challenging behavior wise. I'm not saying she is a bad kid, but most of the time she is a nightmare to discipline. Her number one strategy to get out of trouble is to make you start laughing while she is getting in trouble, and, unfortunately, she is excellent at this. Her other strategy that she has recently developed is explaining she is not really doing what she is getting in trouble for doing. Example: " Maddy stop fussing." "No. I not fussing. I just gotta cry." Hmmmmm. For awhile we were using time outs when she wasn't listening or obeying. I'd put her in our room for about two minutes to think about what she did. She hated being in there by herself--until she discovered Mommy's underwear drawer. Sigh....... I've also been trying consequences that are a direct result of her behavior. The difficult part about this is that I'm not sure her memory is q...

I made it back from Kenya all in one piece and without Malaria, in part to the mosquito net you see above, but probably more to do with the fact that I only saw about 10 mosquitoes the entire time I was there and not a single bite :-)    The trip was truly amazing!!!!   God blessed our team in both breadth and depth.  This was my 3rd time to Kenya, but the first time I lead a team.  I was a bit nervous, but we didn't leave anybody at a terminal, nobody got sick, and everybody grew in Christ so I have chalked it up as a success.  We got into Nairobi late Friday night and stayed the night at a hotel there.  The next morning we got up and went straight to our village.  The camera battery was dead the first day so no pics of us driving down the rift valley or of the wonderful welcome the ladies of Kwambekenya gave us as we pulled up.  On Saturday we spent most of the afternoon singing with the community and then introducing the tea...

After having Christmas in 7 different places I think Maddy is expecting a present opening session about every two or so days. Our first Christmas as at our house in Dallas. See previous post for how that went...an ER visit was in the mix. Next we went to my Mema's house in Farwell. We ended up having a White Christmas in West Texas. The tradition is to do gifts and Christmas dinner on Christmas eve. Aaron had never been to Christmas eve in Farwell so it was fun for him to experience how I did Christmas growing up. We saved one gift for Maddy to open Christmas morning. It was a lot of fun to see her find her gift under the tree and unwrap it. On Christmas morning we went to Lubbock to my other grandparents. We got together with everyone for Christmas dinner in the evening and then my immediate family did our gift exchange. The only downer was that Cindy and Brad and Bethany couldn't make it down to Texas. We drove to Colorado the next day and stopped at Aa...