Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Update!

Ghana says yes! Tim and Raelynn are the official legal guardians to the boys! Now they are just waiting for approval from the US government!

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Ebenezer and Joshua

Patrick's dad and stepmom have decided to adopt. They are waiting for the final appoval letter to come and then they are off to Ghana to finish the process. Eben is 13 and Joshua is 11. Raelynn sent them journals in which she wrote about the little things that they do in their lives. (What time they get up, what they like to eat, etc) She asked them to write back so that they could practice writing so that they could be prepared for school here in the US. They are adorable and on all of their school work they already sign their names Eben Martin and Joshua Martin. The following videos are the boys opening their journals and the photo album that Raelynn put together. They were so excited! We should hopefully find out this week if they will actually be adopted!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AcH6kQIJCM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T92_OYXZzC0

Friday, December 4, 2009

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Nursery Kids!

These are some of my nursery kids at our Halloween Ward Party. They are so cute!
Princess Elli
Cupcake Ella
Spiderman Lily
Our Primary President's little boy, Cody.

The cute little red headed boy in our ward. He isn't quite in nursery yet.

Turtle Time!

We love our turtles! They are so funny!


Saturday, October 17, 2009

Pictures

I'm taking a Humanities class this semester and one of the projects we had was to take some pictures using the principles that we have learned about in class in regards to photography. Here are a few that I played with.




Thursday, September 24, 2009

More Mexico!


One of Patrick's favorite families in Teoloyucan.




Patrick wearing an authentic Mexican sombrero.


Giant cactus!


These are cool. In Mexico they are called Tunas. They are the fruit off the cactus. You peel it and squish it in your mouth. Yes, I said squish. There are too many seed that you don't want to chew so you take a bite, squish the bite to the roof of your mouth with your tongue, enjoy the wonderful juice running down your throat, and finally, swallow! Seeds and all! So good!


We visited a place called Tula. We went to the pyramids. This is our destination!


Distracted by a cool looking cactus.

These are the playing fields. It's in the shape of a big "I". People would play games here while onlookers watched the players die.


A cool puma/jaguar/beast on the side of the big pyramid.


Pretty sure this means "Keep Out" but I don't speak Spanish.


Sideways piture! If you turn your head sideways you will see the wall of snakes. It tells a story about giant snakes eating corpses. Gross. But still in pretty good condition. Some of it was redone.


We called this the cigarette building.


It would be a great place to play paintball. These are columns with plaster on the bottom to keep them from falling.


This pyramid used to be huge! The top collapsed and now the only way up is a steep trail up the left side. It was too hot so we didn't go.


Here is my favorite part: the stairs! These things are about as wide as my foot. It is almost impossible to go down forward because of the size of the stairs and the steepness. The stairs were designed this way so that people had to go down sideways, that way they couldn't turn their back on the King. This pyramid was actually a temple and on top live...


these guys! They held up a ceiling that collapsed. There is a lot of symbolism in these guys! There are four of them on top of the pyramid and only one of them is the real deal.


Patrick, me, and my cool chinese hat that I was forced to wear by the sister we went with.


They have very defined rears.


Here is an origional statue found on the pyramids. They put it in the museum thought to protect it.


I never imagined that while I was in Mexico I would teach the relief society sister to dance...


Yup...I can't believe it either. They asked me through Patrick's mom if I knew any dances. This is the first one that came to my head that was easy and didn't require partners. They performed it a couple weeks later at a Relief Society Pageant thingy...
Zoe!


Chicks for sale...they must put food coloring in their food...


Turtles for sale! These are about the size of a quarter.


This is where Patrick lived in the city of Coacalco.
Our last day was spent in the heart of Mexico City. We walked around all the street sellers and saw awesome street performers and dancers.


The cathedral.
A govenrment building. This building is so big it has it's own block!
The statues on top of the cathedral.

Leaning tower of Pisa eat your heart out! This whole street is leaning!

Inside the cathedral.
The really cool organ in the cathedral on the upper level!
After a night in Mexico City we flew home to the United States! It was an awesome trip and we can't wait till we can go back!