Botanical Garden Photos

Here are some additional pictures from our outing to the Botanical Gardens  For a little more about our outing, I posted to www.bogotabridges.com.

There were lots & lots of roses.

More roses

We liked this unusual flower which grew on these trees.

The vines of this tree were amazing & beautiful.  It was so great to see more of God's creation here that I had never seen before.

We had never seen leaves this big before.  

Housing update:  It is our last weekend in the Baptist house!  We leave here Monday to go to our new house.  We sign papers on Tuesday & hopefully have furniture delivered on Wednesday.  That will be our first night there, just the 4 of us.  I'm not sure how much I'll post next week due to moving, but I will try. Our schedule really picks up as of Monday with moving & then formal language lessons begin 6/9.  Have I mentioned how glad I will be to not be living out the same duffle bag after 7 weeks?  (I lived out of this bag 1 week before we came here & next week will be 6 weeks in Bogota).  Looking forward to a house tour post!!

Happy weekend!

Happy Days

Happy Days to family & friends.

1.  Happy Birthday to my mom!  She celebrated a birthday on Friday. I am thankful for each year with my mom.

2.  Happy Sweet 16 Anniversary to Avery & I!  We celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary on Friday. We left the girls with some teammates for the night & we went to a local hotel in Bogota. Unfortunately, Avery had fever, but it was still good to get away.

The outside of where we ate dinner.  It was so nice to sit down in a restaurant not located in a mall.  I actually heard someone who was eating here speak English!  It was not in a North American accent, but still English.  It is amazing how just hearing someone that you don't know speak English makes me turn my head.  It is a rare sound.  It is very different from Europe here because we haven't found any waiters/waitresses who speak any English.  I'm telling you, ordering & getting through a meal is a  small victory around here.  

The hotel where we stayed, which was very nice.

Directly across from the hotel is a nice park.  This area of Bogota was bustling Friday night & kind of reminded me of NYC :)

Bible in the hotel drawer

This is a sight I hadn't seen in a month....a heat & air unit!  Houses do not have this here.  It was nice to turn on some air, if nothing else for the background noise.

3.  Happy Memorial Day!  There are many holidays here in Colombia, so many that even some of the locals can't tell you what they are.  Memorial Day is not one of them, so it is just a normal Monday around here. No pool parties (people are wearing coats & scarves here year round) or grilling out. They both sound so good!

I hope you have a happy day taking a day off work & enjoying this US holiday!

Home Food

Because food makes up so much of our day, here is a little bit of food from home we found!

We were told about a store here called The Market, which is an import store.  It has imports from the US & also from Asia.  We saw several products which got us excited, but this is what we bought.  I will refrain from telling you how much we paid for these luxuries.  However, we did refrain from the box of Raisin Bran, which cost $24 US dollars (although it did include 2 bags).

This is what we did buy!

Our friend here went back to the states, & yesterday, I was greeted with a Target sack!  It had 3 things we had requested:

Chocolate chips - You can hardly find them here, & I've heard they are not too good when you do see them.

Sunscreen - We definitely need sunscreen here living closer to the equator, but it so expensive!

Cliff bars - I have picky eaters & we need snacks :)

On our walk to the store, we found a nice park.

The girls are still smiling thankfully & doing well, although they have been congested this week.

On our walk home, we saw this guy working from the side of the building.  He had on no gear!

He was just sliding down a rope sitting on a wooden board.  

And this is a pretty window on our walk back to our temporary home.

Happy Wednesday!

Friday's week highlights

This we week included a lot of big things, like meeting our landlord, our language teacher & buying furniture. We like all 3!  So from a timetable perspective, we are planning on moving in the first week of June & probably starting language classes the second week of June.  Here are random pictures from our week:

Brook loves to pick a flower & stick it in her hair!

This is a preview of some of our furniture.  This is a picture of the girls headboards.  Next week, we will buy mattresses.  I will post pictures of our house once we get it furnished & set up in a few weeks.

A sign near our new home.  We will be living on the very northern edge of the city.

Welcome to Bogota!

After we got off the bus yesterday, we caught a ride for the first time on a Colombian rickshaw.

This guy was pedaling hard for 4 people!  I for sure think we were over the limit.

This is a picture of what we were riding in yesterday.

He dropped us off & I needed to walk to buy a few groceries.  We stopped at Isabella's happy place, which is right next door to the market.  Here we are about to enjoy Papa Johns pizza!  It was funny, I even struggled a little bit ordering a pizza, but we got through it & all enjoyed it.

Hope you all have a good weekend!

Weekend in Review

Here is a recap in pictures of last weekend:

Friday afternoon, the girls & I took our first outing outside of Bogota.  One of our sweet team members took us to a pottery store just north of the city.  It was nice to see a different part, even if we were stuck in traffic most of the time!  Have I mentioned how horrible the traffic is here?  It's really bad, but at least we have the mountains as scenery along the way!

  

We also went to a factory store of a local dairy plant here.  It was really pretty with the thatched roof & mountains in the background.

So I splurged & bought a North American imported grocery product.  Notice there is a huge spanish sticker over the English instructions!  

And this was my result from my first high altitude baking.  I'm going to blame this on the oven here.  This is how the cookies looked after just 3 minutes of baking!  Never thought I'd miss chocolate chip cookies so much!  So if you're planning on coming to visit us in Colombia, please bring chocolate chips! (and I'm sure I can think of plenty of other things too!)

A view of the city from a mall rooftop

My creative mother's day wrapped gift from the girls.  I got a beautiful necklace & earrings.

At church  Sunday, all the moms were honored with a red rose.

This is a view as we are approaching the transmilenio stop, which is the bus public transportation.  Thankfully, the bus has its own lane though.  Do you see this traffic?  It is like this at most hours of the day.  People who own a car here can only drive on certain days at certain times & traffic is still this congested.  Notice the girls walking down the ramp to the station.

We had an excellent Mother's Day with dear friends here.  Here is Isabella, Brook, & Mateo.

My new BFF in Bogota!

but so sad she will move next month :(

If you are curious, this is what our 3rd temporary house looks like.  We live on one side of this big house owned by the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.  They have been so gracious to open up this space to us for the rest of the month.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there!

Today, I say thank you to the moms in my life.

Mother's Day 2013

First, thank you to my mom.  She is always encouraging to me.  She always wants the best for me.  She has laughed with me, cried with me, & sacrificed so much on my behalf.  She has loved me through some crazy ideas.  She has answered many questions for me.  She has loved my children well.  She has prayed for me faithfully.  Thank you mom for being the best mom God knew I needed.  I love you!

I do wish I had pictures of my grandmothers to share, because they were instrumental in my life. My grandmothers both lived long, full lives, although they have both been with Jesus for a while now.  Both of my grandmothers loved the Lord with all their hearts & served Him faithfully on Earth.  I love my grandmothers & miss them, but truly cherish memories with them.

I am thankful for a good mother-in-law who loves me & the girls.  She has also encouraged me & prayed for me.  I am blessed.  Here she is with the girls & Avery's 2 sisters last fall.  Stacy is a great mom to her son & Sara will give birth to her first child this fall.

My sister is a wonderful mom to her 3 children on Earth & she has one sweet angel in heaven.  Here is my sister & I on a cruise.  I'm with one of my favorite people in the world here doing one of my favorite things!  

And here is a family picture of my sister, sister-in-law, mom, & me with our spouses.  My sister-in-law is also a terrific mom to her 3 children.

And then of course, I will highlight the two girls who call me mom today:

Aw, at Chick-Fil-A!

Isabella, age 7

Brook

Me with Isabella on her first trip to NYC

Me & Brook

Museum in St. Louis

Flower girls at a wedding in Michigan

Fall 2012 in NC

At the Redbirds baseball game in Memphis

Sitting on the edge of the Sears tower in Chicago 

Peabody Hotel,

Memphis, TN

Buffalo River, Arkansas

NYC!! 

9-11 Memorial

NYC Tony Awards

Graceland

Kiawah Beach, SC

And usually, I find something like this on my phone!

Last but not least, a little bit of comic relief

And my favorite...

Thank you Jesus for mothers!