Quick December Update

Well, my parents were able to come up for a quick visit last weekend. They were hoping to see snow, and on Sunday there was plenty!! We got to take Dad to the "train shop" here and found trains for him to set up around the Christmas tree like we did when we were little. Dad and José also "worked to death" (in José's words) putting up overhead lighting in our house!!! WE LOVE IT!!
My parents got to hear José preach his first sermon at North-Mar on Sunday. Listen to it here:
http://northmarchurch.com/HomeIncludes/sermons/12072008.html

Here's our latest of Diego. Wears a sweater always! He has little fine soft baby-dog hair and no body fat, so we're trying to keep him warm. He's house training (inside on a doggy pad since it's been below 40 since we got him). And he's been so much fun, entertaining us and speeding around the house. I wish I had that much energy!!

Office: Painted!

We started painting the office on Friday, figuring we'd take advantage of the long weekend. Well, Saturday we were "interrupted" with a new puppy, Diego (see previous post), so we'd been doing the finishing touches little by little. Today I finished up all the trim (including bookshelves) and it's ready for my parents' visit on Thursday! (And it shouldn't smell too badly of paint by that time either!!


We LOVE the new colors (this has room will be used as a child's room when the time comes, thus the gender neutral colors). It's bright and spring-like, which makes me smile with all the grey skies and snow and mud....

My First Turkey & Meet Diego

Our first Thanksgiving on our own. We cooked a 5.5 lb. turkey breast for both of us and it turned out perfect!! (Thanks Dad for the instructions!)


After a morning of cooking and waiting for the turkey to finish, we sat down at 1pm to turkey, gravy (made by José), mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread, and complete with sparkling white grape juice. Yum! We had a great day!


Meet Diego!! 100% Miniature Pinscher. We got him yesterday! Now 11 wks old, he was born a week after we moved to Ohio. He's smart and will be a lot of fun. (We're already house training like crazy and so far, we're 2 days accident free!)

Snow Season

We had the great blessing of having Rosita, José's mom, with us these last two weeks. One thing she was really hoping to see was SNOW, and LOTS of it! While we kept the heat cranked up to 75, we got all kinds of snow, little tiny ice balls, mini flakes, huge fluffy flakes, wet, dry and everything in between.
José and Rosita got to build their first snowman (José has seen snow before but not in this quantity and has been getting used to leaving with 15-20 minutes to spare so he can shovel out the driveway, sidewalk, and scrape off the car!) Since it's going to be cold, I'd rather see snow! I'm realizing that it's not smart to "run" to the mailbox, winter coat, scarf, gloves, and then flip-flops and socks. The snow is cold and deep. No quick sprints to the car either, my new wardrobe is evolving: 2 pair of boots just for being outside, as many sweaters as I can find, a new total of 5 winter coats for different occasions..........

Painting, Snow, and Goodbye to Sofía

Painting the bedroom- We LOVE the color!


Our first official snow, October 30. 2 inches in 2 hours. It melted very quickly. (Thankfully).




We said goodbye to Sofía on November 6th. She was very sick and we had to put her down. We will miss her, she was a great little dog.

Missions Impact Weekend & Prayer Conference

Here's what we've been up to this past week.

Last week (Tues-Sunday) was Missions Impact Weekend, and we were able to have some missionaries going to Japan be with us for various activities and services at church. One of those activities was an ultimate frisbee & hot dog cookout.

Monday (yesterday) and today, José and I went to the Central Distict (with the CMA) 's prayer retreat. Here's a picture of us on Lake Erie (YES, it borders Canada). It was beautiful on Monday, but cold and windy on Tuesday (though still beautiful)!

A Great-Lakes Region Celebration

We've been hearing about a holiday coming up on Saturday (tomorrow). It seems to be similar to "Friendship Day" which is celebrated in Paraguay, Costa Rica, Guatemala and other Latin American countries. Here's what I found:

Sweetest Day 2008

When: Third Saturday in October

Now here is a day dedicated just for your sweetie. It exists as an opportunity for you to recognize that sweet and special someone. It doesn’t matter who that person is, or what their relation to you. They just have to be "sweet" in order to get a little recognition.

Herbert Birch Kingston, a Cleveland, Ohio philanthropist and candy company employee started Sweetest Day. He wanted to bring happiness to orphans, shut-ins and under-privileged. His intent was to show these people that they were not forgotten. In 1922, he started this holiday by giving candy and small gifts. He often used movie stars to distribute the gifts.

The popularity of this holiday quickly spread. Today, is celebrated with loved ones and friends.

The Colors of Fall in Northeastern Ohio

Well, after an entire week (last week) using the heat, this week we've had a heat wave, and it's been nice to enjoy the changing leaves in short-sleeved shirts. Here's a little of what we've been seeing:
Looking North from our Kitchen Window.



From the Porch looking toward the South.

Sofía always enjoying being outside!



Ohio does pretty well with leaf-changing. We do miss the mountains, but are especially glad to have some changing leaves up here in the north/mid-west.

Pondering paint colors

Well, as winter approaches (it is already fall in full-swing up here in Ohio), we're trying to figure out which colors will make us feel warm and happy during the 5-6 months of grey skies and cold.

For the kitchen we're going with a yellow (it was blue--see previous pictures if you want to visualize it).


For the entrance way, hallway& living room, a neutral/light yellow tone so that we can continue to change the decor without being stuck.

And for our room, a grey-blue shade that's dark-ish (we are also going to add dark curtains conducive to sleeping as we live right beside a main road and our bedroom is closest to the road).

For the office/guest room/everything else room (and traditionally it has been the children's room) a brighter, fun, yellow and tangerine striped look. We'll see how this turns out. Hopefully not like a circus, but more like a fun, modern, but peaceful and warm place to hang out and read or exercise.

We're still trying to think of creative options for the bathroom, it has a wallpaper type backsplash all around the bottom half of the walls, so we need to try and combine with that or paint over it... Any suggestions would be fun to hear. We'll send pictures room by room. Though it may be a while before we finish things up.

A Dead Raccoon.

Well, this morning, Sofía, our cute little 7 pound min-pin, found a dead raccoon. Since she was on her leash, she didn't get close to it, THANKFULLY! But we were left to figure out what to do with a dead raccoon. We have wonderful landlords, whom we love, and the guy who keeps up the place (ours included)--we love him too!. We gave Jack a call this morning. I found his response really funny-- I told him we had a dead raccoon, what should we do, and he said " That's great! I put out some poison in the barn!" Anyway, it was taken care of before I could get my camera (I'm telling you, he's great!), but it was pretty funny and we were relieved.

I'll be doing more posts more frequently. Life just got full all of the sudden, but I will do blurbs on different activities we're involved in, and include pictures when possible. Thanks for reading.

IKE in Ohio!!?! What??

Well, thanks to those of you who have been praying. Yesterday around 4pm, the "fun" began. We were watching the Weather Channel and saw that there were strong winds headed our way (north eastern Ohio) which were the aftermath of Ike. Yes, in Ohio. What we also learned is that thankfully there was a hot air system in place which prevented the aftermath from causing tornadoes throughout the mid-west (as opposed to cold air). It was eerily hot the last few days and incredibly humid but not rainy yesterday. We heard the wind getting crazier and crazier outside and began to see branches fly off of the trees around our house. Being from the south, we went outside to enjoy the power of the storm (sounds crazy, but there's something very awe-inspiring watching a big storm like that). While we were collecting a few of the small branches from willow trees by our house, a large branch cracked on a bigger tree right beside our house (just 5 ft. from our kitchen window). Then the wind kicked up and blew our WOODEN patio furniture around, so we rushed inside. We prayed and anxiously waited while we could actually feel our house tremble a little. Around midnight, we went back out to see the damage, the wind had died down for about 30 minutes. While many branches on the ground, trees stripped, there was no damage to our house, car, the fence, or our landlords property. Thank the Lord! There were more downed branches this morning as we woke up, though nothing touching the houses or cars. Today is really nice weather and we've taken the opportunity not only to clean up the mess, but to start getting the shrubbery around the house cleaned up a little.

Cleaning out the junk!

Well it's not actually spring, but heading fast towards fall, with a chill in the morning air. But, we are nonetheless doing major cleaning. We're getting rid of junk, the stuff we've kept around, but haven't dealt with in a while. It seems to be a theme in our lives these days, dig out the junk, deal with it, and live in a free-er cleaner way. It's actually very refreshing, after all the effort in cleaning out. Here are a few pictures of our junk, the trash for the dumpster, and stuff for a yard sale.



This is the trash, it's gone! And the black tote, empty and in the basement!

Here's the stuff, usable, however we don't want it in our storage! It will feel nice to get rid of it.

Playing around

Well, in these last few days, José & I have been able to take advantage of the pool in our "backyard" (our landlords live behind us and are very generous people who find us interesting). We've eaten hamburgers and hot dogs 4 times this week, and we will have a lamb roast tomorrow after church. We've gotten to know probably 100 people this week in various small groups, we've learned what a potato launcher is, how to perfect the art of smore making, and most recently played "corn toss" and bocce ball.

In addition, we've been "playing around" with the furniture arrangements in our cute little house. And as you may notice, we've been playing around with some new ideas for our blog.

We figure that life is more fun if you laugh, so why not help people remember us better by laughing with us. So, you will notice the new addition, Chinchilla Life, which should (if it works) feature a new chinchilla picture daily for your viewing pleasure. This will remind you of us, to pray for us, and continue on this journey with us. You can also see what kind of weather we're enjoying at the moment, and keep up with the blogs we enjoy reading.

So, stop by, enjoy the page, and have a little laugh.

Also, if anyone happens to know how to make a spanish version of this same website, without changing the url or having both languages on the same page, we'd love the information. We're trying to make it easy for all of our readers. Thanks!

What we've been up to...

These days, we've been spending most evenings in the backyards of people from North-Mar Church for barbecues. Instead of southen baked beans, and slaw/chili hotdogs, we're enjoying corn on the cob, cheesy potatoes, and tons of fresh veggie salads from people's gardens. (Including squash casserole!)


It seems that at one of the small groups, we had an interesting bunch of kids. They really did build this potato launcher that is PVC piping, hairspray and a spark/lighter. Pretty amazing, and it works well with apples too. They taught José how to do it, too. Hahahahaha.

In addition to the amazing potato launcher, José also had his first experience with smores and roasting marshmallows. We are having a great time here, and enjoying the hospitality in many people's homes.
Thanks for taking a minute to read up on our latest. We'd love to hear from you!

Making Ohio Home

Come for a quick visit to Cortland, Ohio, right outside of Warren.Warren, Ohio. We've been here 8 days now, and the house is getting in order, slowly. Here's a picture tour of our house here in Cortland (right outside of Warren, and off of Hwy 46).This is us!
This is the view of our house from the road.
The front portion that is sticking out used to be the front door/porch, but was closed in to make a 2nd room.

From the driveway.
Come on in!The front door is a landing, go right, and down a few steps and you'll be in the basement. Go left, and up a few steps, and you'll be in the kitchen.
There's a little corner/shelf kind of space on the landing, and that's Sofia's new spot. It's MUCH smaller than her room in Asheville, but she likes it.
Creative storage units above, and down the stairs to the basement.
Kitchen view from entrance.The kitchen. All gas appliances, we LOVE the gas stove!The bookshelf turned pantry leads into the hallway. (Notice the new wood flooring the owners just put in!!) Bathroom's on the left and office on the right. Living room straight ahead, and beyond that the bedroom.
Bathroom.
The clean/organized part of the office, with the desk & Melanie's craft stuff.
A work in progress. Thankfully there are plenty of bookshelves.
Living Room, right sideLiving room/dining area on the left.
Finally, our room. Notice the amazing quilt. My mom gave it to José & I just before we moved. It's king-sized and we LOVE it! Thanks Mom!!!


Well, that's our house. Now I should probably head back to into the office to put things in order....