The much anticipated trip to the border is now history:) It was an incredibly good trip..all went well in traveling, paper work went smoothly and the time with friends and family was simply delightful!! We were able to meet our sweet Jessica for the first time and how precious she is and our having time with Ben and Elena was totally wonderful.....it was very healing and delightful:) even tho' it was way too short!! There were 2 vanloads of friends that came from Rose Creek and now Tabbach, his daughter Anna, and a friend Donna came along home with us and will be here till Feb. 28. How happy we are to have them here and the girls Evelyn, Edith, Anna, and Donna are having a great time together.

Friend time is especially wonderful at this chaotic stressful time...we got home to mud mud mud!!:( It had pretty much rained the whole time we were gone and still raining..we have had a few days of no rain since then but today is another rainy day...evidently February and March are lots of rain before our dry months of April,May and June so it is good to be getting everything good and soaked before all the sunshine even if it is rather miserable living:( the other thing that makes things extra stressful is the shower situation...they are wanting to have an upstairs above the showers to make 2 more rooms...so they took off the other roof and began to make framing for pouring a concrete floor/ceiling over the showers before we left for our trip..we got back the day they got the floor poured......so all the showers were a complete disaster and dirty..so the next day "Hermano Tomas"(Tabbach) got right in there with Chucho to get the water hooked back up and the girls scrubbed and scrubbed to clean up some of the mess made with concrete and mud...that night people could take showers if you used a flashlight. And getting hot water was an issue because of all the wet wood...The next day Asher and Tabbach worked on lights ..so bit by bit progress was made toward clean hot showers again:)....altho at this point the post are still in the showers and make moving around rather complicated but this too shall pass and we will have nicer showers and 3 rooms above before too long:)

Goats are now at a brothers instead of here..I must admit I sigh with relief..they were taking a lot of Asher's time but now we actually get to see him after supper..and Michael gets to read his story to Papa like he likes to do and we even get some chat time before we are so tired we cant say a word LOL...so i will enjoy the little break...eventually he will be milking the cow so some of his evening time will be taken up again:) But that will be a good thing to actually have milk so we won't complain about that.

Juana's time is drawing near for her baby to be delivered..her pregnancy has been high risk and there was concern different times whether all would be well with the baby but the last ultrasound showed a healthy baby in perfect position, no cord around the neck, a healthy size...so pray with us that this would be a good experience for Juana and all would be well.

Theres a new couple here...McGiver and his wife Lilia and their 7 month old son Kevin..we are just loving have a baby around:)....he is so chubby and so adorable. I love to watch Papa Asher get his grandpa time with him..he loves his beard and Grandpa is working at teaching him to be gentle instead of pulling his hairs out:) She seems very sweet and I look forward to learning to know her better..she's a good worker and very helpful. They are expecting another baby in late summer. She seems to be handling early pregnancy quite well.

I mentioned the rain but did not include the fact that we are enjoying springtime..the temperatures are warmer even when its raining it is not frigid and if the sun comes out it quickly warms into the 70's. Several weeks ago we enjoyed the peach tree blooming, the azaleas blooming, everything is greener, the colder temperatures are fading in our memory(well, maybe)..We are so happy for those days we can actually take off our jackets and caps. Last week one sunny day Michael and Rafael were working in the garden with papa and the sun was beating down on the south side of the mountain(houses are on the north side) and Michael comes down and says, " Mama, its so hot up there and when I say hot, I mean HOT!" I was amused how quickly he was hot instead of delighting in the warmth of the sun after so many rainy days.

Will close for now..sorry the long quietness..will try to do better once again:)