Having fun

Isabella has been having a lot of fun playing lately. She loves to put "big people" shoes and walk around the house with them on (see photo below). As these next pictures will tell you she loves her daddies scooter. It is so funny to see her with his helmet on. I also uploaded a video of her of her on it too.

a couple of weeks ago

I thought I had posted these pictures already, but when I actually looked our blog I realized otherwise. I am sorry that I have not kept this up better as of late. Isabella is getting harder to take pictures of because she always just wants to look at the camera's pictures. Here are some pictures of my family in North Carolina. We had a family reunion and all 5 of my cousins were there with their families. It was so fun having everyone together. Great job with the cooking, mom!!

These are all of the kids together. My Nana would have a bunch of great-grands by now if she was still with us.

This is my family. It had been a while since we had a full family photo.


I think this picture might go on our Christmas card.

These are my brother's three kids, Palmer, Gibson, and Brantley. They are getting so big.
Isabella was not happy about taking a family photo. We must have taken 6 or 7. She has a perfect frown.

These are just a few candids that my mom took. She doesn't snuggle like that very often.

Lots o' Pics and stuff about our travels

Alrighty, we are home and getting back to normal. Matt is done with all of his fellowship interviews and about to put in his match list. We will find out in less than 8 weeks where we are heading in 8 months. We are real excited to see where God is leading us for this next year.
Here are pictures from the last two months or so:

Our trip to Tulsa was so much fun. I got to spend a lot of time with Sarah and her kids. Noah (the little boy on the side next to Isabella) loved on Isabella so much while we were there...it was so cute. We think they make a very cute couple!



Sorry this picture got blurred--she was going so fast. She loves to go down slides!
These next two pictures were from the pumpkin patch we got to go to. Isabella had a great time seeing all of the pumpkins and riding this tractor.

St. Louis

We got to go to the zoo (it's free!!). We got so close to some of the animals. Mike Gardner (who we stayed with) and I wanted to feed this really nice animal, but Matt says " The first rule of the zoo is never to feed the animals)..mike and i thought otherwise..then we look down and see the sign right in front of us "Please do not feed the animals!" We thought that was pretty funny.
But look how close we were!!


There were five tiger cubs when we were there; they were so cute playing with each other.
And here is Mr. Mike Gardner. Sorry we didn't have a picture of Jessica (his wife)--she was working.

Matt and I's first time playing this great game. Now we both want one.....anyone want to chip in??


Back at Home!!

Right after we got home my brother and sister-in-law came down to South Padre Island to speak at a Weekend to Remember conference. It was great to go hear Brian speak at a couple of the sessions and spend time with Jen. After the conference was over they stayed with us for an extra couple of days..it was great to have them here and see where we live.


We went down to the Sandcastle days and saw the great big castles. It was amazing!

Isabella loves the bounce houses!! This was at a friends birthday party..I am going to upload a video of her bouncing on the youtube.
This is Ilana Miller. We got to stay with out friends, the Millers, in Waco on our way up to St. Louis and back. It was great to see them and their new residents. Isabella played really well with Ilana and their dog, Moses, who weights 135 lbs--craziness!
This is just a picture of Matt and I on a double date we got to take at the island.

We haven't forgotten about you

well, you might have thought that we fell off the earth or that our computer has died. Well, close enough....we are out of memory on our computer. We will be getting an external hard drive very soon. And after we get it I will be posting lots of pictures!!
Our family is doing really well down here in Texas. It is just starting to feel like fall (in the early morning hours). Matt has two more interviews for fellowship. We leave on Monday for NC to finish those off and then we make the rank list. Things have been crazy around here though. Matt organized a 5k race for Harlingen and it went off without a hitch last Saturday. I am very proud of him and the work he put into it. We are both glad it is over though.
Okay..hopefully we will have our hard drive by the time we get back from our week away.

On Our Way

We have started our long road trip. We are now in Waco, TX staying with friends from collage for two days. Tomorrow we are heading to Tulsa, OK for 6 days so that Matt can spend time at their sports medicine fellowship program. We get to stay with some of our good friends, the Lees. I will post pictures from our time here in Waco when I get to Tulsa. Matt is very excited about spending time at Tulsa and then when we are done there we head north to St. Louis for a week and half...so that Matt can spend time at their program. If you think of us pray for our trip and that Isabella would do well. Will write more soon.

Recent pics

We have been pretty busy around here. Matt got back from Columbia and Iz and I got back from NC the same day. We have been trying to get our place back in order and slow our lives down a bit. Isabella is growing everyday...and getting more hair!!
She now loves to put on hats by herself. She is finally using her sign language a lot more..it seems like it has kicked in. I am trying to teach her mommy and drink; we'll see how that goes.

She is looking more and more like a little girl instead of a baby. It is sad for me. I am getting ready to enroll her into a mothers-day-out program at a local church. I am getting a little nervous about leaving her. But I know it will be very good for her and me. It is just two half days a week. It will be nice to get some time to myself...but at this point I can't imagine leaving her for the whole day. I feel very blessed that I can stay home with her everyday. I am sorry I don't have any pictures from NC; Matt had the digital and I had to use our film SLR.

She didn't seem to happy in this picture..she was just getting upset because I wasn't showing her the previous picture I took fast enough. These kids and technology.

NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO PROBLEM ....

well, i still don}t have my suitcase, clothes, medical stuff. and i still don{t know how to use this foreign keyboard. my attitude has been a little bad, and i am sorry about this. i am finding the work hard with people who have a completely different concept of work and time as myself.

we did good work yesterday and i again saw 20 patients. we went to church with the péople in the community today and the entire day has been a great deal of disorganization, which is challenging for me.

i have confirmed that my bags are in this country, but we are not sure what city they are in. please pray for this, although at this rate we might be leaving before i actually get them.


on the bright side - we had an amazing fish dinner at a beach restaurant. tremendous sunset between the mountain and ocean.

Funny Colombia Blog

Well, there actually isnt much funniness to my trip so far. The {funny} of the title is in relation to the fact that i dont have normal keys on the keyboard. some also may find it funny that my luggage is lost and i have been wearing the same clothes for more than 48 hrs, which includes working in the hot colombian weather.

anyway, im having a hard time with a good attitude down here so far. im also having a hard time trying to do medicine with a nurse stethoscope and nothing else. interestingly being on the internet for the first time in 3 days is actually the most normal i have felt, which is a little sad. please pray that they send my luggage. es no bueno que equipaje es no esta en la aeuropuerto.


i do need to report our living arrangement are absolutely amazing, with a small rooftop pool approx 200 or 300 ft directly above the ocean. to the right you see the ocean. and to the left you see one of the higher mountains in colombia, awesome

Plague of Biblical Proportions

The hurricane is long gone but are area is still reeling...... largely due to a mosquito infestation.
Now we have all heard people say "the bugs are bad", and we all have experienced mosquitoes. But imagine trying to mow your lawn and in the first 90 seconds you have a dozen of them buzzing around you, attaching to your long sleeved shirt and trying to bite through your clothes.
These little flying vampires are roughly the size of a dime. It seems they have never eaten before and they will die if they do not bite a human, drawing out some of the host's blood. I learned today that mosquitoes can only fly at 1 km/hr, which makes it sound like you could shake them by walking really fast but that doesn't seem to happen in reality.

I'm reminded of a friend named Clint who I worked with in Virginia. We did grounds keeping at a very upscale golf course. He was a simple guy who loved NASCAR. I tried to wow him with my mosquito knowledge by sharing the following fact: if you allow the mosquito to bite, draw your blood, and detach on its own without any swatting you will not get the bump of a mosquito bite. Clint responded in a way that showed he was smarter than me when he said he would rather have mosquito bites than allow unchecked mosquitoes possibly inflict him with West Nile Virus....... I couldn't argue and we left it at that

Hello Dolly

Well, we have our internet back up and running again. We are very thankful to be home and getting back to normal.

This was a picture of Isabella watching the rain. She was just upset that she couldn't go outside during the rain.

Here is the picture that I took of our front yard and street after a the hurricane was a little over halfway over. It was increadible that we did not get any water into our garage which is to the right.

This is the front of our friends house. They just started the program. Yes, that is a porta potty. The lot across the street was starting to build and this was there...and ended up in the yard. They hope it is gone tomorrow. We all think it is really funny though.

For those of you who know SMI then you might recognize this. It is the dorm that the students stay in. The SMI students were down here during Dolly. They had to get out of the building when this happened because it damaged the wall into the dormrooms....what a crazy night they had. We are very thankful that we did not have much damage done to the house, but there was a lot of damage in Harlingen. There are a couple of communities that might not have power until late this week. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers while we were sitting it out.

Hello Dolly

Well, we are alive and well after the "little" catagory 2 hurricane came through our town. Dolly did a lot more damage than we thought she was going to. We had a very long 24 hours of waiting for her to pass b/c she was only going 7 mph. We had a river of water going down our street and then the water got up 3/4 of the way up our yard..we were blessed that it didn't get into our home. A lot of people got flooding and now are taking out carpet. We still do not have electricity at our house...we are staying with friends who do. We are so thankful for the community of family that we have down here. What a blessing to have people that are glad to open their homes. Anyways..I will post pictures of stuff once we have our computer working. More Dolly pics to come. Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts.

Happy 4th of July!!

I have been wanting to make this cake for four years!! And finally I got to this year. Maybe one day I'll get to make it for my brother's birthday--HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRIAN!!
The cake was a success...it was the first dessert to be finished.

Isabella was just happy that she was able to be outside. It has rained all morning, but then cleared up two hours before our get together. What a fun day to celebrate the indepence of our country. We thank God that he has given us a place that we can worship him freely. We are very thankful for the men and woman who have steped out and defended our country for the last 200 + years.

The ZOO!!

This was a mamma monkey with her baby. They were very entertaining while we were watching them. That baby was sticking sticks through a whole and the kids that we there grabbed it and then would give it back. It was so amazing to see this little baby monkey playing with us. Right after I took this picture the mamma crawled up the wall and put her hand out to Isabella..needless to say that scared Isabella.

This was funny..Matt was pushing Isabella along side this bird. The bird stoped and looked at Isabella. I am not sure what Isabella thought of the bird.

We decided to get a good lunch at Rudy's. Yummy! They have really good BBQ and banana pudding (which Isabella is finding out). This was her first banana pudding experience. What a good day out.