TBT

Here's an old picture for ya! This was taken near Winthrop, Washington, on September 1, 1998. We were on a family reunion vacation with Dan's parents and his sisters and their families. Twenty-nine days later, on September 30, we arrived in Ecuador to stay.

My kids ask me why I was crouching in this photo -- it's because the rock was a bit slippery and I was afraid to stand up!

TBT and a Birthday

 The above photo was taken exactly 15 years ago today, even though it doesn't feel like it could have been just a few years. The photo below was taken one week ago. That boy has grown a lot!

Happy 15th Birthday, Andy!

Earthquake 5.1

Some who read our little blog may have noticed on the news that we had an earthquake yesterday. It caused a lot of dust around our house. Here is a picture taken from our bedroom window of the hill just east of our house.

 It knocked out our electricity, internet, and phone lines until 10:30pm last night. During that time, we had 9 guests for dinner. Thankfully I have a gas oven and know how to cook rice on the stovetop since there was no way to use the rice cooker! We ate by candle-light and my mother-in-law brought instant coffee since we couldn't use the coffee pot to make real coffee for dessert. We did a bit of clean up by candlelight, but had to be careful about opening the refrigerator.

Dan was up early this morning and loaded most of the dishes into the dishwasher (bless his heart as my Texan-side would say!). The kitchen is still looking like this:

but hopefully later today that will all be taken care of and most of it put where it belongs. I'm also thankful that Dan didn't use that extra package of candles he bought to take into the jungle -- I think we used all but one of them last night!