SUMMER

Another sun soaked season fades away…

(Because we’re awful at monthly posts we had to figure out a different title than “this past month”….So we titled it “SUMMER” or: these past 3 months(+sep & oct)… we’ll  try to do better…:)

Summer went by so fast! There were SO many activities inside of these past months – we’ll start with Joy Camp… Joy Camp is a summer program  at CVE that is used to help grown our joy and understand different ways to fill each others “joy buckets” and different ways to calm or self-regulate ourselves.  Here is a couple pictures:

 

  The next event in summer was Expo Esperanza 2016!

All doing our best on horse showmanship!

Advanced barrels champion!

Intermediate showmanship champion!

Heres several more photos of expo to show you all a little more of what it was like, enjoy!

 

I cant believe how fast time flies! Braden’s already at college living his new life in Purdue. Here we are the end of August, all headed to swim (at a pool near the airport) and just having fun spending our last night hanging out as a family before he left for college.

This is in the end of August when Grandpa and Grandma Bahr helped Braden unload all his stuff and move into his apartment in West Lafayette. 

 

Braden’s apartment where he lives with his 3 roommates on the 3rd floor.

 

At the end of September then Dad and Brecken went to Indiana so Brecken could get his drivers permit and they got to visit Braden for a few days!

 

 

And now he’s back in Purdue doing his normal life again, working & studying hard. We miss him!

 

In September the owners of the house we were renting wanted to move back into their house, so we, very unexpectedly, moved to a different rental house through the help of grandparents, friends, and prayers from people like you! 🙂

Mom took the opportunity to go through ALL our years of homeschooling and get rid of a books and materials we don’t need anymore…

Packing up all our stuff

Spending our last night in our old house with just our suit cases, and bed mattress

Now we are almost all settled in in our new home….(Mom still has to put away some the homeschooling books we aren’t using currently;), but we’ve been so blessed to feel at home in our new house faster then we expected to.

In October Braden came back to Magdalena for a fast weekend to “meet’ his new house.

The oldest 3 went rock climbing in Magdalena.

All us kids riding horses at CVE on a gorgeous afternoon!

 

It went so fast.  Here we are driving up to tucson to drop Braden of at the airport. Notice Dad in the passenger seat now since Brecken is driving!

  Walmart stop!

 

And here’s a picture of our new house and our adorable dog. 🙂 She is from the street and came to our house a few days after we moved in.  We named her Pepper & love training her and trying to find natural ways to get rid off all her flies/health issues. 😉

>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>.>

We are so blest by all the unexpected gifts from God and His unconditional love. Thank you all so much for all your  prayers.

We’ll hopefully have a new post before March;)

 

Posted by: Addison

Spring events

Spring heralds the return of the sun’s warmth, renewal of life,

and the reappearance of green and color everywhere     ~ Jean Jan’t Hul

 

A beautiful flower by the CVE entrance with a bumble bee looking for delicious pollen. 

 

In March we had a mini-Expo for the first work team of 3 in a row during spring break. We all pitched in to make the horses look their best (braids & all) and to have bushels of fun!

We all had one question to answer.  It could be about what our job is like at the stables, what an event at Expo was like, what our favorite part about riding horses is… (or whatever creative question Ann thought up) which took a little extra courage for us to answer in front of 50-70 people.  😐    But we knew what the question was before we had to answer it in front of all those people, so that helped a lot.

Brecken doing exposition

Braden doing exposition

 

This is Dad. Yep, with a spoon in his mouth on a horse.  After all us riders finished doing barrels, exposition and answering our question, the CVE horse committee & a few random people from CVE had a little game to do. They first had to get on their horse. Then, holding a spoon in their hands with a raw egg on it, they had to walk their horse around the arena  trying to not drop the fragile egg.  Next they had to put the spoon in their mouth with the adorable, perfectly oval egg and walk another lap. When all contestants eggs were still sitting in their spoons, they now had to trot without letting the  wobbly, fragile, egg drop and splatter all over them or the ground. Yes, it was difficult, but they did better than we expected!  Katie Slagel was the last one still holding the fragile egg,…. till the dramatic moment when it too dropped. But it was pretty funny watching all those adults with spoons sticking out of their mouths with an egg on it who couldn’t even smile at themselves or they’d drop their egg!

 

We had a blast with the Leo mission trip! They got a lot of work done and blessed a lot of people here. Thanks so much for visiting!

In April our choir  went on a trip to San José to perform in a very small church with the majority of them being elderly people. It was a really fun-packed weekend filled with lots of interesting, funny, and life long memories. But most of all it was glorifying to Jesus Christ and blessed their small church.

You can’t go on a 6 1|2  hour trip and not bring popcorn!

Turn the music up!

Making magnet creations on the trip to help pass the time;)

Unloading all our luggage.

 

 We ate a lot of fruit during those 3 days! We all loved it!

Beautiful flowers in San José. Photo credit:Braden.W.Beyer

 

Delicious fresh coconut!  “Da coconut nut is a giant nut, if you eat to much, you get very fat” (hilarious song we used to always sing 😉

This is a picture we took on Sunday of all the church & our choir.

And we load it all up again on the car. It was a really good weekend!

 

Día de diversion(fun day\field day)  Once a year we have Fun day, it’s really fun with lots of different activities to do. Like, a obstacle course, long & short distance run, ball throw, basketball shooting, volleyball tournament, bicycles, & a relay race.

Obstacle course fun!

 

Ball throw

Volleyball tournament 

After the official 100 m sprint… one extra race with some guys from CVE, Braden & Jason.  

Long distance run

Brynne’s age group cheering on the 6-7-year-old’s finishing their 1K race.

Thanks so much for all the times you have taken time out of your day to pray specifically for us. We feel so blessed and prayed for here in MX.

Thanks so much for reading our update!  

Posted by: Addisonlaine

 

 

Escuela de español

We had a long trip to Morelia but finally arrived  January 2nd and have been enjoying the fresh markets and delicious Mexican food.

Waiting to board the plane at the Hermosillo airport…. at 6:30 am January 1, 2016.   😐

Ready to land in Guadalajara!

After visiting Ixtlan for 1 day, here we are waiting for the bus (with all our luggage!) to drive us to Morelia…

Delicious fresh strawberries :)>   Close by Ixtlan we saw tons of acres of strawberry farms – they sell the strawberries all over the world and so they are super fresh in Morelia!

They have fresh fruit stands that cut melon, papaya, pineapple or potatoes right in front of you and put it in a little bag with however much Tajin, lime or salt you want…. and it’s delicious!

At the market (called el mercado en español)! :)>

These are called ‘Platanos’ in Spanish. They look like an adorable baby banana but taste sweeter.

A beautiful cathedral on the main street we walk on in Morelia.

This is our front door. When you open the door you see a flight of stairs that looks like will never end. we counted and there 27 stairs, going up….Under our house is a clothing store.

Outside view  from our roof in Morelia.

Veiw from our bathroom window.

A random beautiful flower I found.

First day of language training!!

Mom and Dad in conversation class.

Mine and Addys classroom.

Doing homework.

Happy belated New Year!!!! Can’t believe it’s 2016 already!

Posted by:  AddisonandBrynne

 

The past few months….

Our cousins from Kansas came to visit us! We were trying to catch minnows.

There was this dog that randomly welcomed it self to our house. It was skinny, with cuts and browses. So we fed it, and named is Buddy. And then one day it randomly disappeared. Some of us were sad, and some were happy.

There was a snake that a girl from CVE saw in the outside  bodega, so dad and two other men from CVE got shovels, spades and a long stick to try to hit it down and then kill it. The snake got mad and vomited 5 dead baby birds. It was a pretty dramatic moment when the snake fell down. But we all ended up safe. And the snake was dead.

Making gluten free donuts! Yum!!

Smoothies at Café Sed!!

Riding bikes with friends around our house.

Swimming with friends from CVE.

Braden proving that he can braid hair:)

One of the many beautiful sunsets.

Heidi, Honor, and Eden came to visit!!

Brynne caught a big, gross frog.

Swinging on the rope swing.

Playing soccer on Sunday afternoon.

My 13th birthday!

All the advanced horse riders for the Expo.

Dad sat on the dunk tank and got dunked quite a few times!

Brecken won sheep showmanship and got 2nd in production!

Braden doing showmanship.

Brynne doing showmanship.

Me doing barrels, i got 3rd place!

Saying goodbye to Auburn at the airport. Auburn is in California living with our aunt, uncle and 2 cousins helping out, while doing school.

Posted by:Addison

March…

It’s been a good month.  Busy and real, but blessed.   We continue to be thankful for all your prayers!

March events:

March 7th we celebrated Dad’s birthday!

The 8th-13th the ISU team was here  and Joe & Heather came down for a couple days that week!

March 15th was Katie and Denver’s wedding.  Friday night we had some welcomed visitors over for the evening:)  We had the privilege of keeping Raquel, Erica, Abbey and Serena over the weekend… Loved spending time with them!

This week we have our spring break!  We have a week off language training and the girls have two weeks off school.  Started off our break with some time in Tuscan with Grandpa and Grandma Beyer.

Sushi for Dad’s birthday dinner!

Taking  Joe and Heather to Cafe Sed!

Musicians in the house!

Ready for an afternoon walking around Magdalena!

 Love this couple:)  beautiful wedding!

 Skype class with our first teacher: America:)

 Young group night at Casa de Los Beyers 😉

 Girls ready for Spring Break!

Lunch with Grandma and Grandpa at Old Pablo Grill.

Driving home again with our last load of boxes from the warehouse!

Posted By: Auburn

Language Escuela!

I have succeeded in introducing our female rental agent to our children as Señor……and called eggs “Friday” . ; ). We’ve had Mexican kids rolling with laughter as we try to roll “r’s”, and been blessed as they show mucho grace when we try to form a grammatically correct sentence. With our house mostly settled, we have explored 4 Magdalena grocery stores, a restaurant, feed store and hardware store. However, we have either had a fluent Spanish speaker with us…..or Keith’s phone. He has gotten quite proficient at communicating via Google Spanish Translator (even at intense border crossing checks. :).

Basically, none too soon we begin Spanish language training! Keith, Auburn, Braden and I will be in formal language training classes beginning tomorrow. Brecken plans to spilt his school day between formal classes with us, Independent studies and time at the CVE school for a bit of immersion. Please pray for us all, but especially for Addy and Brynne as they take a break from homeschooling and jump into 4 hours of CVE school for a bunch of Spanish immersion!

For the first time ever they packed a backpack for school, not for an overnight stay at a friends house. They set out their uniform red polo shirt and gave us extra long bedtime hugs.

“What if we get in trouble for doing something we shouldn’t when we couldn’t understand the Spanish instructions? Can I take a water bottle? How many pencils do you think I should bring? And then one smiles and says,” Should I take my bandana in case someone cuts their arm off?” “Sure sweetheart.” I grin back. We read in Genesis where God says, ” I am with you wherever you go.” One took a deep breathe and then turned over to look at me. “Mom, don’t you think we should post on our blog again? Cause we could ask them all to pray too. ”

So hear I am. :). Past time to be in bed, but extremely grateful for a community of family and friends who love us and pray. I have learned one phrase you hear over and over again at our Magdalena church that seems most fitting: Dios te bendiga! God bless you!

Posted by: Alisa

Exploring Magdalena

Its actually been raining here the past couple days! And the people in Magdalena love rain since it doesn’t rain very often, and they love to play in the water and get all wet and dirty:)  In between some rain showers we went on our first bike ride!

This is a 5 minute bike ride from our house-

The boys biking down by the water- when ever it rains a lot here and the river gets high, the people here like to take their cars and drive them out into the water and do tricks and show off.  They usually get stuck and need someone to pull them out, they think its fun.  🙂

Posted by: Addison

CVE!

We arrived! And spent our first Sunday in Magdalena. Thank you for all your prayers!

Here’s a few pictures 🙂

Our new house

Driving into campus

Just a stop to pet a horse on our walk to church

Heading into church

Spanish… Here we come!

Posted by: Auburn

Day 3 Dream Date

Not to make any of you men jealous, but yesterday I got to spend 10 hours alone with my bride… In a truck.

And today I get 6 more hours:)

Posted by: Keith

Day 2 Reality Check

Braden may be moving to MX, but his on-line writing class still has an assignment due. : /

 

 

 

Posted by: Alisa