The Busy Season

Well folks, six months have already slipped by. The rainy season is begging to arrive, the ocean is still warm enough to convince us we're on vacation (until we remember we're doing laundry and paying bills), and we just wrapped up the busiest stretch of ministry of the year for us all!

This spring and summer we got to host 9 different missions teams from all over—Ohio, Washington, North Carolina, and PA. The pace was wonderfully exhausting, but we got to know lots of cool people and eat Tia's awesome food each night. The kids especially loved the younger teams—college students and youth groups from Grace Collective and Grace Bath. Everyone looked forward to those Friday mornings and bright afternoons on the sunny, sandy Stone Island. The kids got to jump into ministry alongside some of the teams, helping with projects at the Salvation Army, VBS programs, and camps at Academia Ancla over on the island. 

June also brought two wonderful additions to life around the base: our summer interns, Kendrick and Kaylie. Kaylie lived just across the courtyard from us while Kendrick stayed just around the corner, so they became honorary siblings for family dinners, church Sundays, beach afternoons, and other adventures. We're thankful for the encouragement and pizzazz!

Testing our banana boat technique, Dimmy's fire-making technique

Winning at life (next-level VBS prizes?)

Mustangs into the golden sunset

We've also settled comfortably into our church family at Sión. They're quickly becoming our home away from the STS base, and we've been grateful for opportunities to serve there. As we write this we're about to dive headlong into two straight weeks of VBS, helping with teaching, crafts, and games for what we've been assured are...enthusiastic children. Please pray for us. We've also continued playing music during services, and one Sunday Daddy was handed the entire piano accompaniment about an hour before church, practiced for approximately ten minutes, and somehow everyone survived. 

Mexico vs South Korea

vs Dimmy

Attempting to fit in a single pew each Sunday morning

Violin lessons with Mafer

Roasting platano snack

Singing with Mom!

One highlight from the spring was our missionary retreat at beautiful Lake Chapala with the rest of the STS missionaries. The retreat center looked like someone had accidentally built Eden around a swimming pool—a sprawling property with lush gardens, open fields, multiple buildings, and the lake stretching out beside us. We spent several days in missionary training, explored nearby towns, hiked, paddle-boarded across the lake, played far too much Spikeball, Frisbee, and volleyball, stayed up too late playing board games with Mafer and late-night rounds of Murder in the Dark, and enjoyed countless conversations with old friends and new ones alike. Those few slower days came at exactly the right time.

Hiking champions

Did anyone order the head taco? Tongue taco?

Simple machines: First class lever

Ready for an Easter egg hunt...why do we do this?

Life is a Mexican Highway (definitely don't ride it all night long)

Now that missions season has wound down, we finally cashed in on one of the perks of living beside the Pacific: surf school! All four kids absolutely loved it. They're all standing comfortably on their boards now and riding waves all the way to shore, occasionally even catching waves completely on their own. Between surfing, fishing, balance exercises, snack breaks, and making new friends, it was probably one of the highlights of their summer.

Happy mango baby

Rope swings, where engineering meets adventure

Surfin' Safari

First big paddle for Elia

And just last week we celebrated the eruption of Summer Dimmy into her seventh year of life! Naturally this required an enormous ice cream cake. She and Dad also enjoyed an almost-free birthday trip to Playtica, where they conquered slides, trampolines, climbing walls, zip lines, obstacle courses, and just about every opportunity available to wear themselves completely out before bedtime.

Happy birthday to me!

Playtica WOOOOOT!

I'm going to eat all this chocolate and not share!

Let it rip!

Elia our enigma difficult to summarize because her interests now seem to change every few days. One week she's writing the background to the background of her latest novel's fictional history, the next she's inventing unnecessarily complicated versions of classic playground games. Then she's researching for an imaginary European family vacation, and in between she's painting custom pieces for a 3D Settlers of Catan set. With her growing strategic mind. she keeps getting stronger at games like chess, Catan, Wingspan, Everdell, or whatever new challenge Dad throws out. She's started doing her own workouts, jogging on the treadmill while listening to podcasts and audiobooks. The boys have started noticing Elia, occasionally bringing her little gifts or trying to become friends, but her current level of interest remains somewhere around 0%. She would far rather direct a movie or dig a hole at the beach.

Paddling all the way to the middle island!

3D Settlers of Catan

Because they match

Capybara cuteness attack!

Sophia has absolutely fallen in love with violin, taking lessons from our friend Mafer at Sión Church and, in fact she'll be playing with the worship band this very weekend! Sophers still somehow manages to occupy three entirely different worlds simultaneously: best friend to Elia, chief goofball alongside Ezra, and faithful mother and member of Summer's fan club. Her Spanish has continued improving rapidly, to the point that she's now helping teach and translate craft instructions during VBS events. With her entrepreneurial bracelet empire slowing for the moment, she's been freed up for a new creative obsession: she and Mom have begun making beautiful beaded earrings (honestly they look far nicer than you could imagine). On the occasional "Dad Question Day," Sophia has become our family's chief engineer-in-training, asking endless questions about how things work and how they are made, so there seems to be no end to her creative curiosity.

I can do all crafts through sugar which gives me strength

Day 2, separating the water from the sky 

"Second Peter, what a riot!"

Am I standing up straight? What about now?

Ezra has not lost a bounce. Nay—not one. The heat has made formal mile races somewhat unbearable, so we haven't tested his speed recently, but surfing may have become his newest athletic love. After camp he's convinced he's ready for a board of his own. Might not be wrong. He and Summer have been competing in the World Cup down in our "basement" (i.e. two tiny soccer goals and the size-one soccer ball that Ezra won at VBS for being the most "compliant" child, the award nobody could have expected Ezra to win). He remains a fascinating mixture of enormous emotions and remarkable intellect. If he's not crying or bouncing, he's probably asking a question that starts with "what if?" that usually isn't a question at all. In piano he continues moving at an impressive pace, occasionally learning songs he wasn't actually assigned when reading the assignment notebook feels optional. He's still our resident board-game enthusiast, Lego architect, audiobook addict, and certified genius who loves discovering new ideas almost as much as asking impossible questions about them.

Surfin' USA Mexico

Home Depot Kids Mini-shop

Before panicking that he couldn't climb back down

My favorite merman

My favorite monkey

Summer has officially turned seven, and her greatest classroom continues to be simply living with three older siblings, especially when it comes to math and science.  And playing outside. And wrestling on the furniture. Spanish however remains...under negotiation. She'd rather avoid that subject entirely if possible. We're convinced that physical touch is unquestionably her love language. She delights in being picked up, tossed into swimming pools, launched onto couches, hugged, carried, spun around, and raving about smoochy kisses. One thing we love about Dimmy is how content she is in her own little world, happily spending long stretches reading, drawing, coloring, or Legoing entirely by herself until suddenly her siblings all want to play The Great Goofy Gooberfest. Mom has also been experimenting with chic new hairstyles that have achieved at least temporary victories against the famous Dimmy frizz. Speech continues improving through regular lessons with Oma, though certain "s," "th," and "r" sounds remain stubbornly slurpy. 

ROSA! ROSA! ROSA!

Just a spot of tea m'dear

Stevie Wonderdim

Sandmonster 7.0

Don't knock it down I want to leave it up forever

Ready to rumble

As always, we're grateful for the opportunity to watch these four grow in such different directions Life in Mexico continues to feel less like a vacation and more like a home. Continuing to follow along as the Mexican kiddos keep making memories. ¡Hasta luego!