Things We Have Learned During Our Vacation in the U.S.

1.  Corn really does grow as high as an elephant's eye.

2.  Use turn signals.

3.  Blueberries take about 4 days to digest.

4.  Wipes always come in handy - especially after the baby throws up on the airplane.

5.  Squirrels, blueberries, water fountains (yes, you can drink the water,) trains and corn-on-the-cob produce a disproportionate level of excitement.

6.  Driving on the Interstate in New England is a pleasure.

7.  There's nothing like salt and vinegar potato chips, Dr. Pepper, triscuits, Mounds, sushi, and smoked Vermont cheddar.

8.  Ask for a clue in the corn maze sooner rather than later.

9.  It's easy to forget you know how to speak Spanish.

10. Leaf-cutter ants don't eat the leaves - they use them to make fungus to eat!

11.  Leaf-cutter ants aren't native to the U.S., but apparently don't mind native U.S. leaves.

12.  Half a bushel of apples is a lot of apples!

13.  Invisible ink books are priceless.

14.  It's okay to take a 2-year-old on the open chair lift because it's covered by the insurance.

15.  Isaac loves to slide and hates water.  He can eat his weight in blueberries.

16.  Josiah will do anything- even tube the diamonds at Schlitterbahn.

17.  Samuel completed the magic square of numbers at the science museum faster than Kim, but Kim learned something about game theory.

18.  Nathan has turned into quite a good hiker since the month in NYC 3 years ago when he often told us his legs were broken.  However, 3 hours lost in a corn maze did him in.

19.  The excitement of a train ride wears off pretty quickly.

20.  Paul can take as many pictures of the glider above the blueberry patch as the kids picking berries.

21.  The queen leaf-cutter ant is really big (1 1/2 inches) and seldom seen.  

22.  No matter how long the trip, the boys get punchy for the last 20 minutes.

23.  We're used to seeing buses on the road, not RV's and boats.

24.  Knowing where you are and where you are going isn't enough.  You need the map.  Equally true for corn mazes and unfamiliar highways.  

25.  Macs really are better.

26.  Free wireless doesn't mean what you think it means.

27.  Plymouth rock is just that - a rock in the sand.

28.  Someone else from the Shell area (or el Oriente) has been to Plymouth, MA and visited the t-shirt store where we found going-out-of business deals.

El Mayor Turns 8!

Sammy's birthday is a bit of a blur.  We celebrated a few days early with his friends at a near-by pool where the boys played, ate salchipapas and returned home for homemade ice cream cake.  On he day of his actual birthday we werein Quito picking up a team from our church.  He had cinnamon buns with a candle at the Guesthouse in Quito and lemon cake as requested with the team after our pizza for dinner, but most of the day was spent driving.  Surprisingly, he thought it was all pretty cool and enjoyed riding on the bus with the team back to Shell.  Eventually he got his presents when the team's luggage arrived 2 days later.  He was very excited about the Star Wars lego, science of space kit and the model airplane that he can put together with Dad.

We love seeing Sammy learn and grow and all his stages are new to us.  He still loves to read and has recently been reading The Hardy Boys.  He loves playing Wii and has made it through the levels in Star Wars this summer.  He enjoyed the special bonus of having a friend his age on our church's mission team this summer and did VBS in Spanish every day, translating for his friend.  He is a huge help with Isaac - gets him dressed and reads to him and he taught Isaac to say "Luv you, Be-Mul."  He keeps up in his daily children's Bible, sometime catching up during the sermon in Spanish!  He is always willing and exctied to try new things, but is also content to be a homebody as well.  He is reliably an optimist and sets a tone of enthusiasm for our family adventures.  We are so thankful that God answered our prayers 10 years ago with Samuel Paul Barton!

Texans in Shell

We have some Texas visitors in Shell this month - the Hardin family who lived here for 4 years and are back to help out for a few weeks.  They treated us to a Hoedown, Texas style.  Now I don't quite claim roots in Texas, but this sure did feel like home!  And 3 of the boys are born Texans and my husband might as well be.  So all in all, it was great fun, from two-stepping, to sunflower seeds, to line-dancin, to spittin' watermelon seeds. 

Nathan won the watermelon-seed spitting contest in the kids category!  He was thrilled because in his words, "I don't usually win things!"

Isaac was very attached to Paul all night, giving him double the work-out.

Sammy square-danced with Mom and was an excellent partner.

Josiah enjoyed the deputization of the kids and the chicken dance.

Number 3 is four!

Here is our big four-year-old:

Josiah is our exuberant, enthusiastic, rascally little boy.  He is inquisitive and loving, but seldom gentle or quiet.  He can talk for hours and when we tell stories on the nights that the power goes out, he goes on and on.  He also makes up songs on just about any topic, usually something that catches his eye when he looks around the room.  Last night he sang me a song about a toucan based on the letter "T" on the wall that Nathan made in kindergarten.  Josiah has the role of pesty little brother down pat, but he can also play well with the older boys.  He loves the chance to be a big brother to Isaac, who alternates between looking up to him and being afraid of him!  He can also play for hours by himself constructing things with magnatiles and using his cars as characters to live in his creations.  He loves to dig in the sand pile behind our house.  He would rather play pretend games than board games, although he is recently into Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders.  He is the first one up in the morning and the first one in bed at night.  It's hard to believe he is four already.  He was only 2 months old when Paul and I visited Shell with him and he was 16 months old when we moved to Ecuador.

Josiah requested a pirate party this year, mainly becasue his other favorite toy is an Imaginext pirate ship.  So his 3 friends and his 3 brothers joined us for a Treasure hunt.

The pirates made hats, walked the plank, pinned the eye patch on the pirate and ended with a treasure hunt that required some serious digging!

We love out little pirate and can't wait to see how God uses his unique gifts and personality to His glory.

Ah, Quito

This week we are back in Quito.  We have been in Shell almost two years now and it's nice to have a few days in a row here where we started our Ecuador tour.  We love the cooler weather, city life, lack of bugs and seeing our friends here.  Yesterday we drove in and went to a mall for dinner to that ubiquitous American institution that our kids think is the ultimate dining experience.  The garage parking for the mall had new sensor lights installed at every parking place and  electronic signs directing you to the available parking places.  Very modern and pretty cool.  We really did feel like hicks coming into the big city.  We haven't seen anything like this even in the States, but maybe it's common there, too, now.  Unfortunately we agreed to that "restaurant" for it's playground which had been torn out to be remodeled.  Another unfortunate thing, with rather providential timing is that our brakes started grinding as we arrived in Quito, so today it's being fixed and we are enjoying a quiet day sticking close to the Guesthouse.  Nathan and Josiah are enamoured with TV programs since all we watch in Shell are videos and Paul and Sammy are playing Stratego while I read and Isaac naps.  We hope to catch up on some of the blogs that are only written in my mind while we are here.  And we are trying not to think about the fact that this is our friends the Skillins last week in Quito before moving to Uraguay.  Sammy and Laura were best friends in Kindergarten when we were here and they have visited us many times in Shell.  Maybe their move will be our chance to do a South America tour!

Oh, by the way, any guesses on what "restaurant" we went to?

Super-Nathan is six!

You know you're getting old when the years just seem to go by more and more quickly.  It's hard to believe our sweet Nathan is already six!  I have to write his birthday blog before I get behind because Josiah's birthday is fast approaching.  Nathan has grown and matured in the past year and is a delightful six-year-old.  He continues to be very active, contemplative, sensitive to others and somewhat pessimistic!  He is all boy and our days of calling water pistols "squirters" are long gone.  Nathan is constantly asking us for a bow and arrow, which we have resisted, but light sabers and pretend guns and bombs supply the arsenal for our boys.  His birthday present from Paul was a skateboard and he is a natural with an easy grace.  Paul was apparently a skate rat in his younger days, so Nathan takes after him.  He also share a love of airplanes and kites with Paul.  Nathan is pretty good on the remote-control airplane trainer box.  He (and Sammy) have also recently been working on pinewood derby cars with Paul for the school race this week.

I imagine he would be a good gymnast.  He hardly ever sits in a chair right side up - prefers to be on his head!  This makes school a bit of a challenge, but he is becoming more and more comfortable with reading and I love seeing this open the world for him since I also love to read.  Math is his strong suit and he is good at a new game we have called SET where you look for patterns in a set of cards.  It's a game that Paul and I find challenging.  He is also good at Pictionary - both the drawing and guessing parts.  So that was another birthday gift.  Although this is a game that I love, his artistic talent does not come from me! 

Nathan has normal spats with his brothers and friends, but is a good friend.  He is sensitve to the feelings of others.  He loves his baby brother and it's very sweet to see them together.  Isaac of course adores Nathan (Na-Na.)  and Nathan dotes on him (as do we all!) 

Nathan is enamored with all things superhero so his party this year was a Superman party complete with decorating capes, completely and obstacle course and various "Super-games."  His cake of choice was cheesecake (another love he shares with Paul.)

Of all the things I love about Nathan, his endless questions are the most fascinating.  He wonders about heaven, God, life and death.  One day a couple weeks ago we were saying prayers together and Nathan prayed that he would see Granddaddy when he gets to heaven.  We started talking about the fact that we don't need to worry if we are going to heaven or not if we have asked Jesus to forgive us and live in our heart.  He said, "I want to do that right now."  and proceeded to pray that God forgive him and be in charge of his life.  It is such a privilege to see these moments of faith in our little ones and I was so thankful to share this one with Nathan.  Happy birthday our precious boy.  May this next year bring many blessings and joy in your life as you have done in ours!

The Rain is Back

We had a rainy Saturday today.  We love waking up to rain, especially because the boys tend to sleep a little later.  We have had lots of rain this week.  In fact, the rain caused problems on the roads.  There are two roads between Shell and Quito and this past Tuesday morning, the last day of our Easter break, there were such heavy rains that one of the routes was blocked by mudslides and the other was blocked by flooding.  A good bit of the Shell missionary community was stuck in Banos and Quito that day.  Thankfully, everyone made it back safely the next day.  Just another of many reminders not to take safety in traveling for granted.

It's been a busy week.  Paul has had quite a few cases, especially at dinner time or bed time. One night he was called in for an accident victim who arrived in the back of a pick-up but the young man didn't have a heart beat and didn't make it.  Please pray for his family.  The newest precious Casa de Fe baby is in a hospital in Quito right now with an overwhelming infection and multi-organ failure.  She was at Casa de Fe for less than 24 hours before going to Quito to get a previously undetected heart murmur evaluated.  She ended up in the hospital and the next day was transferred to the ICU.  Her sudden decompensation was extremely unexpected and seems unrelated to her heart murmur.  Her parents are there with her now and she is still in extremely critical condition.  Please pray for her family as well as Patti Sue and the folks at Casa de Fe.