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!