A fun week!

Ethan got his drivers permit Tuesday and then turned 17 the same week.  What an exciting journey we are on!  Now every time we go somewhere he wants to drive or he wants us to take him "out driving" just for fun.  

This is Megan and Madison in the back seat while Ethan is driving. (sorry it's a little blurry)

I tried to get Ethan to let me buy him a cake but he wouldn't let me.  He wanted a strawberry cake with white icing, you know, Betty Crocker.  Isn't it a beauty?  haha!

We decorated Ethan's door for his birthday, something that we've been doing for a few years now.

After Ethan's birthday dinner he wanted ice-cream so we went to Andy's.  He didn't have the pumpkin pie concrete but Megan did and it was so good.  I highly recommend it.

I guess that about sums up our week.  Who knows what this coming week will hold.  

Foto Friday (on Saturday with words.)

Just returned home from a great woman's retreat in Hot Springs.  I had a great time seeing old friends and making new ones.  

I thought I would share a few pictures from the week, since I didn't do my picture post on Friday because I was out of town.

Ethan is nuts!

She's such a good dog.

Loving the rain.

Shannon ran his first half marathon today.

I'm loving this weather and the fall colors.  

Foto Friday

I thought I would start doing a "picture only" post once a week.  I'm going to post pictures that I take through the week and post them on the blog without any captions.  So here's the first one.

Things I love right now.

Things I love right now:

1.  Driving on Tuesday.  In Ecuador we had a driving restriction on Tuesday and it usually rains every afternoon in the rainy season.

2.  Anti-bacterial hand soap from Bath and Body.

3.  Pumpkin anything.  (and I can't even eat a lot of it yet due to the amount of sugar)

4.  Target

5.  Seeing friends and family anytime I want.

6.  Smell good candles, preferable the scent of food.

7.  My kids walk to school everyday.

8.  Coffee (still limiting that too but I think I could be a coffeeholic if I could.)

9.  That there is toilet paper in every bathroom stall in a public place.  So, so, strange.

10.  Boots and sweater season is just around the corner.

Ok that about sums it up for today.  I wonder if I will still love the same things tomorrow.  Who knows?

Updates

I thought that I should take the time to do a quick update about the kids and my health.

The kids are loving school and they stay busy with activities after school as well.  They have made lots of friends already and they just "fit" right in.  We are so thankful for that and we feel like we made the right decision by moving here just for this school.  School is a big deal when you have teenagers or at any age for that matter.  Another thing that they are loving is they don't have much homework.  When we were in Ecuador they had tons of homework every night, like 3 or 4 hours.  Ethan is taking Spanish 3 and Megan is taking, wait for it, Spanish 1.  I asked them several times if they were sure they wanted to take Spanish because I knew they would be bored and they both said, "mom it's an easy A."  Megan is more like a teachers aid in her Spanish class and Ethan doesn't study at all for Spanish and makes A's.  It's kinda funny to me but whatever makes them happy.

My health:
I am feeling somewhat better but not 100%, yet.  Did you get that part?  Yet?  I am believing that a 100% is in my future, near future.  I am off all of my medicine and I am now trying to get the acid level right in my stomach.  It has been all over the place and I had no idea that too much acid or too little acid can make you so sick.  I think that's pretty good progress going from taking 30 or more pills a day to 0. Wow!

Now on to the next thing.


We have some really good friends that we met in Costa Rica at language school, the Ogdens.  Tammy has been in the states since March, the same time that I flew back to see the specialist in WA, she flew back to have a biopsy.  Tammy found out that she had cancer and has been in the states since then.  She has been doing chemo and is finishing up her radiation and then they are heading back to El Salvador.  We could not pass up an opportunity to see them because we weren't sure when we would both be in the US at the same time again.  Did that make sense?  We didn't have a service last Sunday due to the holiday and neither did they, so we made plans to meet up.  And I'm so glad that we did.

Tammy and I are hoping that the next time we see each other I will be fat and she will have lots of hair. haha!  I'm certain that she will have hair but I'm not sure how fat I will be but I'm hoping to gain a little weight.

Nothing better than great friends.

Here's another picture that I took while we were away and I couldn't help but think, I wish this was a snow capped volcano.  We really miss Ecuador!