Copeland Complete

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Pre-school Christmas Pagent

Hazel was an angel but wouldn't wear her wings :D

So many babies right now! This little guy, Caris, was not even 24 hours in this picture!
He was born to a young Indonesian couple here. He is now over two months old
so you can pray for this little guy. His parents just separated
because the husband was beating his wife.

Friends

Sammy. He is the adopted son of friends here.

At our only fast food joint in town...KFC...
the kids like to gather to play on the equipment.
This was for Sammy's first birthday party.

Traveling the Green River

Over Christmas Break we did a few fun things :D One was taking this river trip up the Green River. I had to keep telling the kids (but more myself) that this was NOT disneyland...this was a real river that just looked like that jungle ride at disneyland! ha! i was so waiting for the hippos to come out of the water and shoot water at us! but it didn't happen. the only live thing we saw was a very large lizard on the bank of it. So we travel up the river about 20 min and at the end, as you enter a cave of sorts, everyone is suppose to get out and climb some really sharp rocks and then jump into the water. (that would be the picture above.) complete with waterfalls all around. it was quite amazing but i couldn't see what we were getting into because of all the congestion of boats in front of us. but not to be left out of the adventure, i get ian connected to me with my piece of fabric and i take the boys through 3 other boats to reach the rocks. there are so many people there that when i reach the rocks, no one will move to let me up them. but finally i climbed to the top and saw this scene in the last picture. everyone was swimming up the river and then jumping off rocks and sliding down waterfalls! too much fun! but i had a baby attached to me and two boys who were being excorted ahead of me to get into the water by other 'helpful' indonesians. i felt very 'out of control' because you had to shout to be heard to the person next to you. i couldn't get the boys attention. i had that 'mother bear' feeling and wanted to help them along MYSELF. all this time, greg stayed in the boat cuz hazel was scared of all the comotion around and didn't want to do the rock climb and wanted her dad to protect her IN THE BOAT. but something made her curious when she saw us all on the rocks and so soon enough greg was right behind me with her as i was getting a little scared for the boys to be going up this river without one of us. (but i should mention that our team was with us...so there were hands...but not OUR hands) but there the boys went...all big and stuff... and they did well! swam all the way up and had a great time. greg took hazel and he struggled to stay above water as she clung to his head and sholders! poor greg didn't get to do all he wanted to do either. and i, had to climb down the rocks, step back into all the boats to reach my boat with ian... because i couldn't go...i was a bit disappointed but promised to myself...we will be back when the kids are older. it's always an adventure here!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Today 2010

it's a new year. can't believe we made it to 2010!! but greg and i can attest to the fact that we are feeling much older lately :( back pains, neck pains, achy bodies, gray hairs...i will just stop there! too much! anyway, we can't ACT old cuz we have too many kids and responsibilities right now to slow down...so somehow we just keep moving and remember that we are old when we get up in the morning :D

christmas break has been so good for us. we are doing all sorts of random things. driving 12 hours at a time to get to an amazing beach! going down a green river with jungle all around us. swimming under waterfalls. surfing in the warm ocean. all three kids got up on the boards :D eating foods from foriegn lands (reese's peanut butter cups). playing games with the kiddos and adults. long heart conversations. belly laughs. meetings for anti-human trafficking. painting a mural in a local coffee shop. getting stuck in traffick on new year's. 100 yds from our house. and having to walk home around the traffick. with all the kids. trying to find all greg's new art supplies for his classes coming up. (this is NOT an easy task) eating at an italian resturant and pretending we weren't in indo for a little while. ian cutting 4 teeth in just a few weeks time. hazel is primping herself all the time. paul is getting better with his skateboard. gavin has decided to take up drum lessons! man...and we still have 5 days left of break! well, at least we do, sorry to greg who has to have a teacher inservice on monday :(

so even though we are feeling a bit old and moldy at times...we are still living the good life that God has given us here. i want to download pictures from our days but it's raining at the moment, so i will have to do that "another" day...this is today...and we like it!