Feliz Cumpleaños

This week we were blessed to celebrate the first birthday of our little man, Gabriel David!  It's hard to believe that it's been over a year now since God gave us this wonderful little boy, and grew our family from two very precious little girls to three wonderful, wild, sweet kids.

Wow, one year ago already?  Really???

Because we still had school this week, we had to juggle celebrating with Gabe and our classes (it didn't help that we both had a big grammar exam on Friday that we had to study for!)  So, Gabe and the kids began his birthday at school.  Elsa, Gabe's awesome teacher, had the door decorated with balloons for Gabe, and I think she was almost more excited about his birthday than we were.  She also got him an awesome little car present for his birthday!

The decorations that were awaiting Gabe when we showed up to class on the 16th.

Elsa, Gabe's wonderful teacher.  To use the current goofy line, "Gabe's awesome teacher is awesome!"

After school, we headed home for a wonderful lunch made by Ivonne, our empleada here in Costa Rica two days a week.  Then, before naps we had the awesome Mexico soccer jersey birthday cake that mommy made.  She did an awesome job on it, and it tasted even better than it looked.  We were surprised, because at first Gabe didn't seem that interested in the cake; he tasted it a little, but it almost looked like he wasn't going to eat it.  But, he warmed up eventually and ate it all!

Gabe with our empleada, Ivonne.  Gabe really loves Ivonne, and tries to talk to her every time she's in our home (though we have no idea what he's saying)

The awesome cake that mommy made (and Zoe helped with).  Viva México!

"Ok, I changed my mind, this is pretty good mommy!"

After naps, we opened presents.  Once again, Gabe didn't seem that interested in presents for the most part, and seemed more interested in playing with the balloons that Elsa got him.  He did help open some of them, though, and he seemed to really like a lot of the presents that we got from mommy and daddy, mimaw and pipaw, and nana and papa.  And Zoe and Caitlynn were VERY excited to have more toys in the house!

"What's in there, daddy?"

"Hmmm, only 15 years until I can actually drive one of these..."

"Look, new toys!  If you sisters are nice, maybe I'll let you touch them!"

One of my favorite pictures we've taken down here so far.

The next day, after school we all walked about a mile to McDonald's and met some friends there (who were wimps and decided to take the bus instead ;) ) and had a celebration lunch and let the kids play.  Gabe wanted so badly to be able to crawl in the play place like his big sisters, and got frustrated that he kept getting left behind (though, at the rate he's been growing, it won't be long before he'll be able to do that, too!).  I was blessed too because four teenagers were there after their school got out, and they asked about Gabe, and how old he was (one of them, Suzanna, even asked to hold him, and he let her).  While the kids played, I got to talk to these four students in a mix of my poor Spanish and Yonathan's (one of the students) broken English.  We ended up talking for more that 30 minutes about Costa Rica, the United States, my family, learning Spanish, and church (once they found out that I was a youth pastor).  I may be meeting with these students again in the future to practice Spanish and English, and hopefully to share Christ as well!  What an awesome, unexpected blessing, and very needed after a hard week of struggling with Spanish grammar.  It was nice to be reminded of why we're doing this, and to be encouraged to stick with it with the goal in our minds.

Caitlynn at school, excited to go to McDonald's!

Playing in the PlayPlace

Sweet sisters

We had a great week celebrating the birth of our son!  We can't wait to see how God is going to continue to grown Gabe and change him, and to continue to discover what he's going to be like, act like, and become.

I'll leave you with a picture that I put together from our three kids, all during eating cake on their first birthdays.  They don't look like siblings, do they? :)

Three sweet one-year olds!

El Clásico

This won't be a very long blog post, but I did want to share a little about a cool experience that I got to have this past weekend.  My birthday is coming up in a few days, and one of my gifts was that I got to buy a ticket to a soccer match down here!  We asked around, and found out that the rivalry match was happening on Sunday, Saprissa v. La Liga.  Saprissa and La Liga are both teams from the San José area (La Liga is actually from Alejuela, where the International Airport is), and are big rivals (one of the first questions that I typically get asked when I'm trying to get to know someone down here is "Are you a Saprissista?  Or a Ligista?).  I had just received a La Liga jersey (another birthday gift), so I was excited about maybe going to this game!

At the game in my new La Liga jersey!

I asked around some, and found out that a large group of guys at the school all wanted to catch a game, so we ended up getting 10 tickets!  We weren't really sure what our tickets were like until we got to the game, and found out that we were in the front row, directly behind the goal!  The seats were AWESOME!

The game was great: really crazy fans, fun, some good action at the goal in front of us, great weather, and no 'violence' or other issues that people tried to tell me would happen.  The only negative was that Saprissa beat La Liga 2-1, so I didn't get to see my team win.  Overall, I can't wait to do it again.

I took some video with my camera (not with my good camera, unfortunately, which I left at home), and I wanted to share some of it with you to give you just a little taste of what it all was like.  I hope to get to see a few more games down here while we're studying here!

A few looks at the kids

Just wanted to take a minute today to share with you a few things the kids have done lately!

First, Gabe has discovered that he can move his crib around... he also discovered that he can use this moving crib to torment his sisters :)

Then, this morning, the girls for some reason were spinning around and singing.  Zoe declared that she was singing the back ground part, while Caitlynn sand "Beauty and the Beast" over and over again... Gabe found this all very entertaining.

Visiting the Folks

It's been too long since I updated the blog!  We've been trying all week to get a different type of blog done for you to check out, but it's been harder than we thought to finish it up, so I decided to go ahead and finally write this blog in the mean time!

Sara talking with Elizabeth Fly while we wait for Courtenay in Cartago.

Last weekend, we were blessed to get to go visit some fellow GO missionaries serving here in Costa Rica, Jacob and Courtenay Folk.  For those of you who don't know, we're part of a GREAT missions organization, Global Outreach, that is dedicated to sharing Christ around the world.  There are several GO missionaries serving here in Costa Rica, as well as quite a few of us at language school right now.  We went to see the Folks with John and Emily Darnell and Jared and Elizabeth Fly, both GO missionaries to Ecuador.  The Fly's have been in Ecuador for 3 1/2 years already, and were in Costa Rica for a month of special tutoring at ILE.  John and Emily are attending ILE this year, and will be serving with the Fly's in Ecuador.  Other GO missionaries at the language school, Cody and Maria Whittaker (formerly in Haiti) and Tony and Beverly Steele (heading to Mexico in April) weren't able to come this time.

Jacob and Courtenay have been here in Costa Rica since 2008, ministering near the city of Cartago.  Cartago is just a 30 minute drive from where we are in San José, so we were able to catch an easy busy ride there.  We met up with Courtenay, and all went to the church they attend there in Cartago.

The church we attended in Cartago.

We really enjoyed the service there, though much of it was missed by my poor Spanish.  It was encouraging, however, that I knew every song they sang, either because there were Spanish versions of common English worship songs, or they were Spanish worship songs that I had heard before.  We were also blessed to meet some great believers, including one lady who has taken in (as PERMANENT adoptions) 45 children from the streets of Cartago (you'll hear a little more about her story in an upcoming blog).

The woman on the right has taken in 45 children now into her home from different situations.

After church, we rode with Courtenay up the mountain to their home.  They live on one of the mountains overlooking Cartago, and are working with several church plants in villages in the area.  While we waited for Courtenay to go back to Cartago to pick up Jacob and their kids, we got to hang out at the restaurant adjacent to their property.  The restaurant had a stocked fishing pond on the property, where you could toss out a line, catch a fish, and they would cook it up for you (that was the theory, at least!).  Jared, John and I tried to catch a fish for close to an HOUR, with a few strikes, but no success!  Finally, we had to have them throw a net in and bring some fish out for us.  Jacob said that if the fish aren't biting, it's pretty rare, and it's probably because they had just stocked the pond today, but either way, it was pretty humbling for a Wyoming boy to not be able to catch a fish in a stocked pond!

We then went into the restaurant to get out of the cold and rain, and enjoyed some great company and some amazing fish!  I'm not sure that I've ever had a fish that was that good before (or one that had so recently been in the water).

The fish was amazing!  Kinda seems mean to keep the head on it, but the whole thing was fantastic!

Zoe and Caitlynn really loved the fish! (the fried fins tasted kinda like chips!)

We then went up to see some baby cows that had been born in the past few days, then walked up to the Folks house.  God has totally blessed them with an amazing house!  It used to be a rental that Ticos used for weekend get aways and other vacations, so it wasn't used continuously.  The owners were surprised to hear that someone wanted to live there all the time, but they were excited to have someone paying rent all the time.  Now, the Folks have a fantastic property with some land, and enough rooms and showers in their house to put up a mission team of ten!  God is so good!

Caitlynn was REALLY excited to see the baby cows!

It was a huge blessing to spend the day with the Darnells, the Flys and the Folks, and we're blessed to be a part of the same organization as they are, sharing Christ with the nations of Central and South America!

The view from the Folks front door.