Together Again on Thanksgiving

Yesterday was Thanksgiving which also happened to be the day our parents and Austin were going to be flying in. This is not the actual Thanksgiving post, but a preview. 

I just wanted to show you all how tall Austin has gotten this past month. Before Austin went to the States at the end of October, I was half an inch taller than he was. As you can see, he has now surpassed both Nicole and I in height - no squinting and wondering necessary. 

This is Austin's favorite outfit. His overalls. He'd wear them everyday if he could - he loves looking like a farmer.
When he first got them, he couldn't wait to wear them to Starbucks (a pretty classy place here in Mexico). 

We were supposed to both kiss Austin at the same time - 1...2...3...nope, didn't turn out! 

~Bethany~

Home!

When I finally arrived home, to my very own house, I walked into my room and was delighted to find this little basket on my nightstand! This was Nicole's way of saying, "I love you and I'm willing to stay up till all hours of the night hearing all about your trip to the US." Notice how their are two packets of M&M's, two chocolate popsicles, and two bottles of soda? One for me, one for her.  

I was touched by this gesture! 

I had specifically told her that when I arrived home, I would appreciate a Kit-Kat and a bunch of bananas :) She came through for me! 

As I mention in the previous blog post, my suitcases were left in Houston, Texas. I was trying to mentally prepare myself for the possibility that my beautiful, purple Samsonite luggage was lost forever, along with most of my worldly possessions. I didn't have to go far with this mindset, however, because my main suitcase was delivered that day! My little roller carry-on was delivered the next morning. I was a very happy camper! 

The suitcase actually was delivered wrapped in very thick plastic and the zippers were zip-tied shut. Nothing was stolen or rifled through, thank the Lord! 

I immediately set out digging though my stuff, getting all Nicole's goodies together. 

I pulled out this bag of popcorn and Nicole wanted to know whyyyy I brought it back?! Well, my problem with this monster of a suitcase is that I have plenty of ROOM, but the airlines only allow 50 pounds. Popcorn doesn't weigh anything...and it's kettle corn! Yummm...a treat for us down in Mexico, for sure! 

I don't have any pictures of the things I brought back for Nicole - I made her close her eyes while I arranged everything out on the floor in front of her. Anyways, we had a good night and I finally breathed a sigh of relief because my suitcase and kettle corn were back with me where they belonged. :)

~Bethany~

Headed Home... (Longest Day of My Life)

On one of my last days in the States, we went over to visit with the Wheelers. Elder Wheeler turns pens, like my dad, and he had some wood he wanted to give my dad. Us ladies stayed inside the warm house chatting and sipping hot tea. 

The day I was to fly home, my parents and Austin were going to be flying out as well to preach somewhere else. So we all got to sit and wait for our planes together. It warmed my heart when Austin reached over and grabbed my hand. :) 

I had a little bit of a weird flight schedule going back home. Sacramento to Denver to Houston to Puebla. The Denver thing was out of the ordinary, but no big deal...I was to be getting home at the same time as usual. (The Puebla airport is small and only has planes leaving and arriving at certain times in the morning and night). 

When we touched down in Denver, I was absolutely shocked to see white...everywhere! 

I was so excited - I thought this was the most perfect way to end such a wonderful trip! I sat in front of the huge windows overlooking the runway eating a bagel and sipping a smoothie...I thought, "Oh man, this is the life!" HA! Little did I know how terribly my day was about to go...

I sat watching the snow fall for a couple of hours. In this picture there is another terminal across the way, but you can't see it for the snow falling and the planes stirring up the fallen snow. 

After a while, United changed my gate. I got to that gate, which was all the way across the terminal, and they changed it again. And again. And again....FOUR TIMES! When they finally settled on a gate, they decided to start delaying the flight. That happened 7 times. No joke. 

When we finally got on the plane, I crashed. I'd gotten no sleep the night before because I'd stayed up packing and then left for the airport at 2am. 

I fell asleep for two hours, but when I awoke WE WERE STILL SITTING ON THE RUNWAY! 

I wanted to cry and cry and cry - exhaustion and frustration - not a good mix haha! 

Turns out, they had to de-ice the planes. There was a very long waiting line of waiting planes. 

I ended up missing my flight to Puebla and instead opted for a flight going to Mexico City that night. 

In Mexico, I found out my luggage was still in Houston. Of course. 

From Mexico, I took a bus to Puebla. Elder and Sis. Wakefield picked me up at the bus station at 3am and took me to their house...I slept sooo hard that night...ahhh :) 

In the words of a friend..."It sounds like Denver was amazing and a pain." Oh so true...

~Bethany~

West Coast Conference 2014

I know when people blog about conferences, a lot of the time they will say, "this was the best year yet!" I've probably done this. This was my third year in a row going to West Coast, but I can say without a doubt that this was the best year yet. From the preaching to the altar services, to the songs, fellowship, and fun - everything was absolutely outstanding. Really, I don't have the words to tell how each message moved me. I am so grateful I was able to attend WCC this year! 

I also would like to say a special thank-you to Cherie, Stephanie, Caleb, Jacob, and Kassia for the pictures I am posting today. I took only one pictures the entire WCC and it was of my face - showing Nicole at 4am how tired I was - hoping to get some sympathy while I was locked out of my room. (Don't worry, I won't post it :) 

So here goes...hopefully in chronological order! 

Bro. Wesley Jackson preached the first night

Tradition - Cheesecake Factory the first night!
The classic picture in front of the water fountain, except it was not running...

Bro. Townley - one of the day speakers

Giovanni wooing the crowds

Lunch at Panera

Cherie and Lindsey - my dear friends! 

Cherie and I

The minister's dinner on Thursday night - me, Cherie, Coco, Cara, Stephanie, Jen, Johnny, Andrew, Keith, Hanna, Mikey, and unnamed dude.
Quote of the night: "You just spit on my knuckle AND my bread!" (Cherie and Cara talking over Coco's plate - HAHA!) 

Starbucks on Friday morning...just we what all needed! 

Guess who's having a babyyyy!! Kassia! Yayyyy! :)) 

Friday night...the last service. It flew by so quickly! 

Coco so generously shared the caramel apple the candy people gave him. YUM! 

Counter clock-wise starting at me...Jacob, Andrew, Denae, Cherie, Cara, Johnny, and Keith. 

Cherie and I sharing a Pazookie

Breakfast Saturday morning...*yawn*...makes me sleepy just looking at us! 

Entertainment before leaving Saturday morning

I'd given Cherie a book of poetry - all of us girls just absolutely adore this writer. Austin and Bro. Bray got ahold of it though, and put a whole new spin on it! They weren't too impressed by it...BUT....

...Elder Frazier got ahold of it and gave his stamp of approval! Can't argue with the man of God! :) 

An elevator pic! 

Hilarious panorama pic

Saying goodbye to the soon-to-be-mommy :) 

WCC officially ended with one last lunch at Castillo's 

~Bethany~

Hit the Ground Running

Hello everybody!

This is Beth. I've been in the States for the past few weeks and got back this past Thursday. Saturday we got the news that Sis. Vianey's lung had collapsed and her kidneys were failing. We went to the hospital to say our last goodbyes. She passed away Sunday evening. It has been a busy week, to say the least. Her funeral was yesterday - I will be doing a post on that soon! It turned out beautiful.

I went to West Coast Conference the first week of November. It was incredible! I can't wait to blog about it. Today is my first day back to school though, and I need to focus on that. Expect some pretty interesting blog posts in the near future!

~Bethany~

28 Wonderful, Screaming Kids

It seems that every time the pastor and family is away, and we're short on adults,  we get the most packed out!! One of these times we had almost 40 kids.... Well, this Sunday was one of those crazy days! We didn't have 40, but the 28 kids that we did have were enough to keep us on our toes! We love having Sunday school with this bunch of kiddos!

Sis. Elvira started us off with a lively round of "Give me a 'J'! Give me an 'E'! Give me an 'S'!....... Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!" as they jumped up and down! 

(This specific Sunday's lesson was on baptism/oneness, so every activity emphasized the wonderful name of Jesus!)

Next, they went with Sis. Bella and learned how when we sin, our hearts become dirty, but with baptism Jesus washes the dirt and sin all away!

Clean hearts all around!

Here are the kids decoding the memory verse!

Cutie pies lined up to quote the verse

Bro. Baltazar teaching the lesson about John the Baptist

Rosaura Belen answering a review question for her team

 Merienda - snack time!

Ismael and Armando enjoying their jello

Sis. Francis (or Franny as we affectionately call her :) hands out the candy every Sunday after class! 

*Nicole*

Spider Scare

The other day I was on the phone with Beth... 

(For those who don't know, I'm-way e-thay only-way one-way in-way y-may ouse-hay ! :D)

The amily-fay ent-way to est-way oast-cay! Ay-yay! LOL.

BUT this was about a week ago, so dad was downstairs working away on his pens. I was sitting at our dinner table just chatting away on Voxer with Beth. My chatter suddenly stopped, and screaming started when I looked up into the entryway and saw THIS:

(It's actually quite funny. I was able to go back to the message I was recording and listen to myself freak out :)))))

I. Hate. Spiders. More than almost anything else in the world of flora and fauna. 

I screamed, cried, and paced around not knowing quite what to do. I ended up yelling down to dad to "Come up!!!" Which he did very quickly, thinking there was an emergency. I don't know about you guys, but to me this classifies an emergency. He grabbed some raid and sprayed away at the monster until he fell off of the wall, dazed and confused. By that time I had mostly recovered, though my hands were still shaking a little from the adrenaline rush. I may be deathly afraid of these things, but I also was veeery curious to see this spider upclose and un-squashed. So as he fell to the ground, I was there waiting with a plastic jar to scoop him to safety! 

Of course, I immediately googled him and came up with... not much. Things could have been a lot more exciting if I would have found out that he was the most poisonous spider in Mexico! ...or something like that haha. Maybe one of you readers know what kind of spider this is... The pictures that matched up the closest with this one were brown recluses. But I'm not sure!

But anyways... I watched him until he took his last breath. After spending his last hours together, I really did feel sad when he died. But I'd rather have him dead than in my bed. 

:D I'm a poet.

Until next time,

*Nicole*

Homemaking with Honeycomb

A few days ago a lady came by our house selling raw honeycomb! Believe it or not I'd never seen actual honeycomb in real life haha. It is amazingly beautiful!

 Our construction workers spotted this lady down on the street and excitedly came downstairs to crowd around the honey wheel barrow :))

Everyone wanted their share!

Valentin holding his panal (honeycomb)

I was downstairs in class working with the boys, so I didn't know that this lady was out front until dad came into the school holding this! I was amazed, so I ran outside to snap a few pictures to share with you all.

After school, I finally got my hands on this treasure and quickly disassembled it haha.

Once I got it all out of it's little wooden frame, I weighed it and it came out to be 2 1/2 pounds!!!

For only 75 pesos! With the current exchange rate that's almost 6 bucks. I'd say thats a good deal.

Holding the honeycomb in my hands made me feel very inspired.. I had many plans for this honeycomb. Among my plans was to make lipgloss from the beeswax! 

But things got messy. Pots may have gotten ruined. (Sorry mom!) HAHA. 

And quickly my new found desire to be a beekeepers wife faded away. LOL. But before all my inspiration left me, I was able to finish the lipgloss idea. I had an empty eos container, so I put my mixture of beeswax, coconut oil, and honey into the little pod and left it to firm up... It turned out to be a great success! I felt like such a homey little homemaker! 

^Miraaa homemade Eos!^

I now know what to do if I end up living in the desert, with dry lips, and no chapstick stores anywhere around... Just as long as there is honeycomb available. And a stove. And pots. 

....Otherwise, my powers are rendered useless. :)

My favorite breakfast of late is honeycomb & yogurt. Yum!

If you haven't ever tried honeycomb, go out and buy some! It's delicious!

*Nicole*