Sorry it took so long

Alright, I am going to back up about a month or so in order to talk about when my brother-in-law came out to visit us. I had planned on doing this the day that we got hit by Typhoon Ondoy, but got sidetracked and haven't really had the chance to go back and talk about it til now.

Its been so long now, I'm not positive of the dates, but sometime in mid September Daniel's brother, Ryan came out to visit us. I always love it when people are willing to make that absolutely dreadful trip to come spend a few days with us on this side of the world. Anyway, Ryan wasn't really here very long, but he and Daniel managed to pack a ton into a such a short time. Again, it has been so long that I don't necessarily remember the order of events but here are a few picture from his time here.

This is at one of my favorite restaurants. It is a Greek place called Cyma. They have good food and most of it is relatively healthy. Anyway, we took Ryan there for lunch one day and while we were sitting at the table Ryan had his computer out working on it and was trying to find an internet connection. One of the guys that worked at the restaurant stood right behind him and helped him find the best connection...and then continued to stand right behind him with his hand on the back of Ryan's chair looking over his shoulder at the computer for what had to be almost 5 minutes. It was pretty funny to watch how Ryan increasingly became uncomfortable with the guy standing there and how the worker seemed to think nothing of it. One of the things I have learned over the last few years is that the Filipino idea of personal space is much different than ours and they also do not consider it rude to stare either directly at you or in this case whatever it is that you are working on. Ryan handled it well, but it was still pretty funny to watch.

This picture is from Malaybalay. Daniel thought it would be fun to take Ryan outside of Manila and show him how beautiful the Philippines can be and at the same time see the other orphange that is connected with the one we do things with here. This is Daniel and Ryan with two of the Filipinos who help run things in Malaybalay, Donald and Grace. Although, I get jealous of Daniel any time he is able to go the province and I am stuck home in the pollution and congestion of Manila, I was thankful they went without me on this trip. They left very early Friday morning and got back just over 24 hours later on Saturday morning. Both of them were exhausted by the time they got home.



Saturday night, Daniel rounded up a few other missionaries to play with him and Ryan in a ministry game not too far from the Arthur Center. JoAnn and I went along with them to cheer on Daddy and Uncle Ryan. I ended up not seeing much of the game since I spent most of the time making sure JoAnn didn't run off the side of the stage she was playing on and tyring to keep her away from the red ants that were all over the place, but from what I did see the guys seemed to have fun and the crowd enjoyed the game. I didn't get a picture but at half time they were able to share a quick word with the crowd and invite them to church in the morning. The next picture is Ryan right after the game...I don't think he was used to playing in such hot and humid weather and he looked like he might pass out.


It didn't take long for him to regain his composure and brag to the camera about the 41 points he scored in the game though.

The next day we took Ryan to church with us at the Arthur Center and that night Daniel took him to watch Kirk play for Ateneo at the same arena that Ali fought the "Thrilla in Manila" fight at.

All in all, it was a lot of fun to have Ryan out to visit. (Although I said it to him when he was here and I will say it again, I would have very much enjoyed it if he would have brought Heather and/or the kids with him.) JoAnn made quick buddies and loved having Uncle Ryan around.

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On a completely unrelated side note I have had a few people ask me if I was showing yet and to put up a picture of my belly. Getting a picture was actually a little more difficult than it probably should have been since we don't have batteries for our digital camera right now and we tried to use our video camera to take the picture, which for some reason doesn't like to focus when taking a still picture. So, after taking 4 or 5 pictures, this is the best we ended up with...

Sorry for the annoyed look on my face and to tell you the truth I feel much larger than I look in this picture.

A Few Updates

First, I'll start with this picture...


Notice the color of the icing? Does it mean anything? I just had my appointment Wednesday and found out we are having a boy! I will admit, it sort of shocked me. Not that I really felt strongly about wanting a girl or a boy for that matter, but I guess since JoAnn was a girl every time I imagined this baby it was wrapped in pink. Which also led to the realization that pretty much everything we have is pink or has lace, so my mind started almost instantly thinking of things that I will need to get in boy colors. The doctor quickly helped me snap back to reality when she started showing me his heart, face, feet, hands, etc. on the ultrasound though. Everything looked great and the little guy seems to be completely healthy. Unfortunately, this appoinment had gotten pushed back due to the typhoon last week and when it was rescheduled Daniel wasn't able to go with me. So, wanting it to be sort of special I made these cupcakes to tell him it was a boy. Daniel being true to himself, had no idea why I was making cupcakes with blue icing and didn't really care, he just wanted to know if it was a boy or girl. So much for my fun way to tell him.

One more picture...


That's right, JoAnn is eating a banana in this picture! After months of trying to get her to eat bananas at home and not just when she is at someone else's house I had given up. Since neither Daniel nor I eat bananas ourselves I haven't bought them in a long time, so when JoAnn turned to me the other night and asked for a "nana" I thought she was talking about the toy that goes with her toy monkey. I'm not sure why, but she kept asking for one for about 20 minutes and each time I told her we didn't have any, she would get upset. So, finally we walked down to the neighbor's and they were kind enough to let JoAnn have one of their bananas. You would have thought they had given her ice cream by how happy she was to finally have a banana. I couldn't believe it.

Alright, on a completely different note...thankfully the second typhoon that I wrote about last week ended up heading more north than they had thought, so it really didn't affect us too much. It was cloudy and windy and it rained for a little bit on Friday and Saturday, but we were spared from anything too serious. However, Daniel and some of the other guys left this morning to head to a city up north for the weekend and I guess the area they are going to got hit pretty hard from the second typhoon. They had planned this basketball trip before either of the typhoons, so they had no idea at the time that they would be going into an area that is still really flooded and as of Wednesday still did not have any electricity. I can't help but think that their trip may be used even more during a time like this, so I am praying that the guys will stay healthy and be open to how God wants to use them.

Patiently Waiting

Well, while Manila is still struggling to recover from Ondoy (aka Ketsana), we are preparing for Super Typhoon Parma. Here is a sattelite picture of where it is now. I had really been hoping that for some unexplained reasons it would change course at the last minute and miss us altogether. Unfortunately, that seems less and less possible.

Alright, scratch that. I just spent 20 minutes trying to get our internet to work enough to post the picture of the sattelite and it still won't work. I give up, but trust me when I say the storm is getting closer and closer to Luzon (the island that Manila is located on) and it is a big storm.

So when I say we are preparing I really mean we are only sort of preparing. Really there isn't much to do except make sure batteries are stocked and/or charged. We don't have much food that can spoil in the refrigerator since it already spoiled during last week's typhoon, we can't ever drink tap water, so there is always plenty of bottled water and we know exactly where all of our candles and matches are since we just put them away a couple days ago. Really I can't think of too many other things to do to prepare since we are about as sure as you can be that any storm at this point will knock out electricity. All that leaves right now is to enjoy the things we do have before we can't for a few days.

So, in the spirit of enjoying what we can now, Daniel and I went to watch another of Kirk's basketball games. They were supposed to play game 1 of the championship series on Sunday, but since everything went a little crazy for a few days it got pushed back until today. It was a close game most of the time and Ateneo ended up winning so, it was fun to go and enjoy the game. On the way we had to pass through an area called Marikina, which is one of the places that was underwater for a few days. It was pretty dirty with mud and trash most places and people still had things hanging in the sun to dry out. I had meant to bring my camera with us, but totally forgot as I headed out the door. However, if you want to see pictures I am sure there are many out there on the internet. Since we were just headed to the game, we didn't try to see any of the neighborhoods around there that are still underwater, but just to see how high the river was at one point was sort of crazy enough for me.

Anyway, after we got home from the game JoAnn was playing in her room. After a few minutes of complete silence I looked over and saw her pacifier on the kitchen table, which having her pacifier when she isn't supposed to is usually the reason why she is so quiet while playing in her room. So, naturally I wanted to see what had her attention so much that she would be so quiet. That is when I walked in to see this...


(If you can't see it in the picture, JoAnn had taken a blue crayon and colored all over the wall, her crib and the floor.) All I could think of was the story that my mom tells of my sister coloring an entire window purple while my dad was sleeping when we were little and I had to laugh a little to myself. My mom is always telling me that my sister's son reminds her of me as a little kid, now it sounds like JoAnn might be taking after my sister a some.