Super Holidays!

Well, seems that the Holidays have come and gone so quickly that who knows what this year is going to bring for us. The season that we just went through was a one that was full of joy but also sorrow. Let's recap what has happened recently.

Nov 22 @ around 1 or 2 am Rey received a call from Mexico. It was his sister and she broke the news that Rey's dad had gone into a coma. It was kind of expected to get a call like that but not that soon. Rey had just come back on the 19th from a one week trip to Mexico to visit his dad and although in bed, unable to move and feed himself, he was sharp and could remember everything. The news of him going into a coma were not too unexpected but still hard. Rey and I did everything we could to leave ASAP to Mexico. Rey got home at 7 am from work and we departed at 11 to the airport. Sadly we did not make it to Mexico before his dad had passed. He died at 3:05 pm and we got there to his city at 2 am of the next day.

It was a long day. We went to bed an hr after arrival and then got up early enough to be ready for Funeral Services for his dad at 11 am. It was a very good service. All the messages were inspiring and reminded us of the truthfulness of the gospel and the hope that we would see our loved ones again. It was a great testimony builder for all.










Since we had planned to be in Mexico on the 7 of Dec, our vacations got extended a couple of weeks. We attended the Mexico city Temple for a session and it was awesome.




We spent a lot of time with Rey's mom helping her get all his business with her husband squared away. That was a big job. We painted an apartment that was getting ready for renters to come in. We went also went with Rey's brother and his family to Leon in search of shoes for the family. It was quite the trip considering we had to deal with a 3 year old that was not very interested in shoe shopping all day.






We also went to Brownsville, TX., to help Rey's mom buy and select merchandise for her business so that it would last till the new year. That was hard work! We also took a trip to visit Rey's grandma, who lives an hr away from Acapulco. It was the first time for me to meet her. Then since we were so close to the beach, we went to Acapulco and stayed with one of Rey's cousins there.













Anyway, there was lot's to do and it was good, considering that at the beginning of our trip we did not have too much fun. It was a good time to get better acquainted with the in-laws and also a good time to spend on Vacation. Total we spent 35 days away from home, and when we got here it felt so good. It is nice to come back to our own life again.

Merry Christmas!!!

We just wanted to share an awesome video that is a good reminder of the reason for this Christmas season. Click on the link below to view:

A Gift to the World

“This project is not endorsed, approved, or sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"

Here we go again...

Well as you may have noticed we haven't been very faithful in posting on the blog very often. Seems that our lives have become full of a lot of things to do. Since the last post many good things have happened but very many other challenging ones have come our way.

We have been able to enjoy time with each other and also with our friends. We have had lots of fun and have been doing some stuff we haven't done in the past like we went to carve some pumpkins for Halloween and that was so fun. Rey was able to put together a haunted house with the young men he teaches in he says it was very good. Like last year, there was lots of people and of course leaders with them. That and many other things have kept us busy.

Recently we learned that Rey's dad in Mexico was diagnosed with terminal Liver cancer. It was a big shock and has been difficult for Rey being away from his family but we are trying to do our best to be with them as soon as we can. Seems that Rey's dad will pass onto the other side soon, and although it sounds mean, it is better sooner than hanging unto life forever with pain and suffering.

This upcoming season is a good one to cheer us up from all that has been going on. It is a season to be thankful and to see the good we've received during the year. We have the hope that it will help in the times of difficulty and hopefully it will give comfort.

Sad reminder

This time of year two years ago we had our failed placement. We had a sad reminder of this event as we heard the news in the last couple days that some friends of ours have had a failed placement as well. This family has been waiting so long to have children come to their home. They were so very excited. As we think about it, so many memories are brought back from our experience. It was a time of a lot of different emotions some that even conflict with one another. We needed space yet on the other hand we needed support and to feel love from those around us. Our hearts ache for our friends as we remember what a difficult time it was. We pray for them-if you want to pray for them as well, I'm sure that it would be helpful.

Recent Happenings

One of our big projects for the summer was planning a family reunion. This was for Dianna's siblings and parents. We've been doing this for several years with each child taking a turn in order of age. We thought it would be fun to do themes for some of it. Our reunion lasted Mon afternoon until Wed morning. The first evening our theme was Mexico. We ate Mexican food(YUM), learned a little about Mexico, and broke a piñata. Dianna tried to break her ankle as well to get out of her responsabilities with the reunion. Rey was left with much of the leg-work the remainder of the reunion(He handled it wonderfully). The next day our theme was Hawaii. We made necklaces with seashells and learned a Hula dance. We have family in Hawaii that could not make it this year to our reunion so this day was partly in remembrance of them. Some of the other activities we enjoyed with our family included bowling, rollerskating, and a big screen outdoor movie-until the weather turned, then it was an indoor big screen movie.







What a good looking hula dancer!

On another note,Rey recently joined the city's volunteer fire dept. For our city's 4th of July celebration he started out early helping with breakfast, then rode in the ambulance for the parade. The parade was followed by other activities including the chance for children to catch fish with their bare hands and pie eating contests.



You have to look close but you'll see Rey is in the passenger side of this ambulance.





Rey nearly won-some would say he did.

Also this week we had the great opportunity to see the Angel Moroni placed on top of the Brigham City temple that is under construction. It was supposed to happen at noon but there was too much wind. Lots of people who came to see it left after about an hour or so. There were rumors that they'd cancelled it for the day but we decided to stick around until they announced it officially. In the end waiting paid off. They started the process at 2pm and by about 2:30pm it was done.





If you wish to learn more about our church and why we build temples, please visit mormon.org

We hoped this time would be better.

As we have written before, this year we celebrated our 5th anniversary. We wanted to do something more than just go out to dinner but as we really wanted to go to Yellowstone we felt it would be better to go sometime other than in March when we had our anniversary. Last year we went in April and we were very disappointed with our experience because of the weather. We decided to go in May this year hoping that going a month later the weather would be better without fighting the crowds of summer.

We found a cabin to stay in that is or was a cabin used by members of the Forest Service. The government has all kinds of these cabins they rent out. The one we stayed at was only about 10 miles from West Yellowstone. It did not have electricity or running water. It was almost like camping only inside. We did have a wood stove for heat and a wood cook-stove. There were three bed platforms-a full sized and a set of bunkbeds-without mattress or anything other than a piece of plywood.

We spent three night away. The day we left, we started out later than we planned so we arrived mid to late afternoon. We decided not to go into the park that day but did some window-shopping in West Yellowstone before returning to the cabin for the night.

I would have to say our experience this time was much better than the last time. We were able to see a majority of the park(or at least what you can see without going into the back-country). The first day in the park it did rain most of the day but it did not stop us from stopping at the places that looked interesting. We went to Mammoth Hot Springs and Tower Falls. We saw a fair amount of wildlife as we drove including bison, elk, a moose, and a bear. We passed some bison traveling on the road, so close we almost could have touched them. The second day we went to see "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone", the upper and lower falls, then to "Old Faithful". The weather started out about the same as the first but by about mid day the skies were partly cloudy and we were seeing sunshine here and there. It was great! Again we passed bison walking along the road. We were very amazed because we were in an area that still had snow piled on both sides of the road. It was that way for miles so we wondered how that worked for the bison. It seemed there were very few places to stop. We also saw a black bear really close. Unfortunately we were driving on a one way road and the bear was going the opposite direction so we didn't get a clear picture. We backed up as much as possible until there was another car coming up behind us and it was too late.

The last night the wind started to blow bad in the middle of the night. When I woke up the wind was crazy and it was snowing. We thought we'd better get out of there as soon as possible or we'd be in for a bad time. We'd wanted to do some shopping in West Yellowstone but we were out of the cabin about 9am so not much was open when we reached town. We just decided to head home. Since we had packed very simple meals for our three day trip, we closed our little getaway with a long visit to a buffet. Yummm!






This was the only picture we took with both of us. We had a great view of the Lower falls on the Yellowstone River.





The above three are all at Mammoth Hot Springs. They truly live up to their name-they are HUGE!








"The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone"











Wildlife we saw during our trip.

Who would have thought?

Have you ever thought about racism in the US? Well, I thought, being Mexican, that there was going to be nothing like that at all since this country is a one of liberty and all that. Well, that is true but I was amazed to find that in the animal kingdom (poultry to be more specific) racism is a lesson they need to get a hold of still. Let me tell you what happened. We encountered in our flock of chickens that there was two hens with desire to be mothers. They would not get off the eggs for anything. We decided that either we could let them hatch their own eggs (which in fact was what I wanted to do), or buy chicks and have them adopt them. We did the latter one since it was more beneficial for all and we are pro-ADOPTION. The hens would be happy and we would rotate our flock of hens as we wanted to and get meat out of some of the other ones.

We placed our order for chicks and waited for them for three weeks. The poor hens had to sit a week longer than normal, which showed us how much they wanted to be mommies. The chicks decided to arrive at a time in which we were not home, so we asked a very good friend to do the introducing of babies to mommies. She did, and did it well. We are so thankful for her and her availability to go through all that for us. During the process of introductions one of the mommies decided she didn't want to do it at the last minute, and since we had bought 16 chicks well one mom was left with all of them. Who knows what happened but this hen left with all of the chicks, got too disturbed that she killed one of the babies and it was decided we were not going to let her have chicks anymore because of what she had done. (That was a hard one to go through for our friend). When we got back into town we picked the chicks at our friends house and brought them home. I really wasn't about to give up so I thought I would try it again, so I did. Late at night I went out with our 15 baby chicks and put them under the hen that was still sitting even after we had already put babies under her. Well, to my astonishment she did not care. She took them under her wings and went through all night with it. In the morning I went to check how they were doing and it looked good. Well by noon, we went out and the only three red chicks we had were all in a corner. We observed for a little bit and noticed that if they would get close by, she would peck them hard. In fact one of the times, she stood up and tried to get the INTRUDERS away. It was so sad :( Why the brown ones and not the yellow ones? I waited two days and tried again to introduce the brown ones back. She took them for the night but in the morning she was very mean to them again!!!

Lesson learned. Although chickens are color blind they still can see who is lighter than the other. An sure enough they don't like brownie ones. Or she doesn't at least. Too bad we didn't know that from the start or we would have done things different. Probably that's why that hen pecks me more than it does Dianna when we put our hand in. Darn hen!



Here is the happy mom with all her 12 yellow babies!



Here are our orphan brown chicks. Too bad the mommie doesn't know that her yellow chick will last only 7 weeks and then they will meet the bottles and a freezer! These ones will be happy mommies and egg layers for at least two years with us. Go Brownies go...