Thanksgiving Blessings!

Here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving at my father-in-law's sports bar. We were so blessed to have my sister, Anj, come down from northern Cali to spend time with us as well as the rest of the family that are here.

We ate to our hearts content and were so stuffed by the time dinner came around. Aunty Rose even made some Filipino food (Penakbet) to accompany the turkey and stuffing! Yummy!

Learning about Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We pray that you would have many things to be thankful for this year!

We are learning about Thanksgiving this week and I decided to have them do crafts. JP is Squanto, the Native American who helped the Pilgrims and taught them how to survive in the new world. And Gracie is his beautiful sidekick! You should read more on Squanto and how God worked in his life prior to the Pilgrims coming.

Creativity for the Harvest Carnival

We took JP and Grace C. to our church's harvest festival a few days ago. I didn't intend on dressing them up, but Vanessa and Gen found a few things laying around the house and made these costumes. We did buy posterboard, but we didn't really need it. Gen did all the artistic work except for the red lines on the straw. My beautiful wife is responsible for the beautiful red lines. Pretty creative costumes, eh?!

JP's B-day and Daddy's Surprises

Two weeks ago we celebrated JP's fourth b-day. To our dismay we found out that we didn't have enough b-day candles. We just had two singles and two number two candles, so we got a little creative. It worked out pretty well. It turned out we had enough candles after all, and with JP being older, he also got a little math lesson.

2 + 2 = 4

That same day, JP wasn't the only one who got a surprise, but daddy got two surprises; a J-O-B and a little car trouble. Niel got the job just in time too, because after he accepted the job, he jumped into his car and it didn't start! He ended up staying in the parking lot for the AAA guys. A little embarassing, but it's times like these you know God is there... God provided us a great family, a car [that can be fixed], and a job [to get the car fixed]. Thank all for your prayers and support!

God is good.

Day at the Pumpkin Patch

We went to the Pumpkin patch in Temecula today. The kids got to pet some farm animals at the petting zoo. Grace and JP did not like feeding the animals out of their hands. We thought it would be a nice autumn day, but it felt more like summer with 96 degree weather. Overall, we had a great time finding pumpkins.

oki blessings

last week some of our oki friends blessed us with a visit. they are missionaries in okinawa for those who don't know. ms. joanna came out for a pastor's wives' conference and it was at the calvary chapel bible college that her son, zach, goes to. the rest of the familia didn't make it out, but maybe we'll see them this winter...

they not only blessed us with a visit, but with "goma" salad dressing. goma means "liquid gold" in japanese or least that what it means in my house because it's that precious. we discovered this dressing in japan and always asked our friends to mail or bring some when they come back to the states.

the ruiz family family has always been a blessing to us and not because they bring the liquid gold. here's a link to their blog, so you can see what God is doing in oki through them:

http://calvarychapele3missions.blogspot.com/

so this is the pic of the "liquid gold". the one on the left, which came from oki, was actually cheaper than the one on the right, which came from hawaii courtesy of my brother. we love the dressing so much that we have been searching high and low for it and asking everybody. the only places we found it was hawaii and okinawa. so if anybody in so cal knows where to get the "goma" please drop us a line.

17th week ultrasound

here's op3's arm and foot.the next two are sample "4-d" ultrasounds. it was pretty cool, but kind of scary looking.
now remember we don't want to know the gender until birth...

umbilical cord or ???