There is so much that life brings that we would love to be sharing with others that aren’t here in Peru, and keeping up with the blog is such a great way to communicate for us……..as long as I actually write things on it. 
Seriously, though. When I’m not busy with whatever we keep busy with, I mostly feel like sitting down and catching my breath. The pregnancy has kept me tired pretty much every day. None of this 2nd trimester energy going on here. I mean, I feel great physically (great for being pregnant that is), but I could crawl in a hole and take a 3 hour nap nearly every day if I didn’t have 2 other kids. Or, maybe that’s actually why I’m so tired. God and my husband have been so gracious to me, because I not only have a great gym membership, but I have time to use it! So, in between waking up by 6:30am every day for our morning routine before leaving for school and exercising most days, my energy level sinks each afternoon! Right now, both of the kids go to school all morning long. Awesome, right?! Yes, it is in many respects, but my idea of having lots of time in the mornings for doing “stuff” has been more like a couple of days a week…if that. I am certainly not complaining, because I know any mom who has a young child (or several) would nearly sell her left arm for even 1 morning a week to gather her emotions, thoughts, and groceries, I’m just saying my time has filled up fast! Between weekly team meetings in the mornings, team discussion days on the Holy Spirit and it’s role in our life, a women’s Bible Study I’m in, and grocery shopping, I am home to get other things done occasionally 2 mornings a week. It’s fast and furious, folks! Just like anyone else’s life, I guess.
I don’t think I’ve announced it on here, but we’ve actually decided to homeschool the kids starting in Kindergarten for Cailyn. Right now she’s at an amazing school here in Lima for PreK, and she loves it. I know that a small part of me will be a bit sad that she won’t be there enjoying that experience next year, but I have no regrets about our decision to bring her home for school after this year is over. I’ve personally been on a journey of God preparing me for homeschooling and these decisions we’ve made for about 2 years now, and it’s not all been pretty or peaceful, but it’s been wonderful nonetheless because of the things I’ve learned about life, myself, my love for our kids, some fears I have, and how to get past those fears. Justin’s journey was probably more peaceful than mine, but I know for a fact that it wasn’t all peaches and cream, because he’s had to listen to me and hear me cry over my heart’s journey for the past two years…haha. I will plan to write more specifically about our decisions and how we came to make them in another post some day.
Anyway, that is why Corban is in school already. Our main concern for the past couple of years (and the thing that kept making us question if homeschooling the kids was the right thing or not here in Peru) was that Justin and I just do not have the same ability to teach our kids Spanish like they would learn in a Peruvian school here. Cailyn’s spanish skyrocketed last year in her preschool (Nido is what they call it), and we can see that it’s only getting better this year. When we felt God was really telling us to finalize our decision to homeschool while here in Peru, we then had a more peaceful feeling that He would provide a way for us to continue the kids’ Spanish education even while homeschooling. When we began to think about things, though, it just made sense for us to give Corban 2 years of Nido before keeping him home. We feel like this will give him a great foundation to start with, and honestly, he’ll probably be farther along in his Spanish abilities than Cailyn will be once he starts homeschooling. He’s just a bit more outgoing, and he repeats anything he hears. It certainly keeps us adults in the house in line! So, he is going to the same Nido that Cailyn did, and he is doing well there.
I don’t want to bore you all with more writing, so here are a few Easter pictures and a 21 week photo of the baby and me from nearly a week ago. Time is flying!
We made a Resurrection garden a week before Easter. I found it here on a blog I read. Please do not compare ours to the one we copied. We are seriously lacking in prettiness in comparison, and the worst of it is that it never grew grass. It still got the point across.
Our Easter outfits were normal clothes, which I know is completely fine and even probably less stressful to get together for the day (no shopping, etc), but I can’t lie and say I didn’t have a small twinge in me that wished we were in the States to have a fun reason to wear Easter outfits to church. We certainly could have done that here at our church service, but the Peruvians don’t dress up for Easter any different than any other day. I’ve realized about myself that I love little details around holidays and birthdays like shirts that have easter bunnies on them or phrases like “I’m wickedly cute” for Halloween for instance. I also love having small things to make those days a little more fun – like a new Valentine’s plate from Target or a fun $1 store treat on the 4th of July. Nothing big, but something fun. The thing is that Peru doesn’t have stuff for all of our American holidays (duh, right?), and even on the holidays that we share, the fun stuff you can buy is limited in cuteness and costs way more than I would want to spend. There are no Dollar Bins here much less Dollar Stores. Our families have done a fantastic job of treating us to special little things for holidays that we wouldn’t have had otherwise by way of sending packages, but sometimes there’s a part of me that wishes I could just run down to Wal-Mart or Target for the little extras in life. Not necessary, just fun. I miss some of the “not necessary” things the most around the holidays…in case you were interested in hearing about my very worldly desires, I guess I’m in a confessing mood. 
He really only cared about digging into his chocolate…
Our Easter baskets were filled by our grandparents!
The kids had already gotten to eat the contents of 3 of their aster eggs, so when they got their baskets, we were clear that they would not get to eat much out of it. Corban didn’t quite read his memo correctly, and he thought we said they WOULD get to eat a lot of it.
We really do work so hard to try and teach our kids about the wonderful, spiritual realities of many of our holidays like Christmas and Easter, and this year I really felt like we’d just total driven home the wonderfulness of the fact that we serve a Risen Savior and that THAT is what Easter is all about! I was feeling very proud of our hard work as parents…….until…on the morning before Easter, Justin asked the kids in the car as we were on our way to have a small breakfast in the park and read the resurrection story of Jesus,
“So, guys, I want to ask you again if you remember what tomorrow is!”
they both yelled, “EASTER!”
J: “And do you remember what we’re celebrating and what Easter is really all about?”
and Cailyn very loudly yells, “YEAH! We get EASTER EGGS and lots of TREATS!!!” (**enter excited whooping and hollering from Corban at this point)
We were glad we were at least on the way to the park for a spiritual lesson.
We had a wonderful Easter this year for sure. Thanks again to all of our grandparents who made the day a little more “treat filled”!
