when 7th graders steal my camera

they take pictures...some quite funny:

or

and these are the culprits:

the day the propane went out at mi casa

so, i was standing over my two burners and the oven which were lit and thinking wouldn't it be funny if the propane ran out the night before thanksgiving while we were preparing our feast....

in hindsight, funny is not the word i would use. here's the puppy responsible: (ours is the grey one in the back.)

the bike

well, we were able to purchase our bike. it is used, it is a yamaha, and thankfully it was less than we expected. thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who helped us with this purchase. i have driven it twice (just around the neighborhood) and realized a very important thing: we don't really have 'roads' here...i mean, there are roads, but they are almost all dirt. i learned to ride on concrete or asphalt and it is not nearly so slippery as the roads here. so, i dropped the bike tonight. no biggy, just embarrassing. i was going about 5 miles an hour and hit the hand brake instead of the foot break and slid out the back tire. live and learn. (for those of you concerned i have been faithfully wearing a helmet on both of my expeditions unlike this pic where i drove it down to the end of the drive and back.)

because the bike was less than anticipated, Rachel and I out of gratitude want to put some of the balance between expectation and reality toward purchasing a moto for Clarissa (ser previous posts). We are working on raising money towards this end among our friends here. please pray that God will direct us and that we will best know how to help Clarissa and her family.

again, THANK YOU!