Easter

After a fun day at my Mom's eating our body weight in a yummy lunch, Easter candy and birthday cake for Braden & Katelyn we went home and burned off our native grasses that surround our house. I thought I would point out to Kurtis the correct way to have a grass fire and not have to call the fire department. :-) We did call the police department to tell them we were doing this and then got a call from them an hour later making sure everything was fine because they'd had 40 calls reporting the fire and heard it was incredibly close to the buildings. Not sure what fire they were looking at.

Katelyn made a bargain that if we all helped with this project that we should head to Jersey Freeze for supper. There's nothing better than green apple ice cream covered in caramel for supper! I'd already totally blown my diet for the day so I might as well blow it really good. Back to Triscuits and Healthy Choice Steamers today! :-)

Prom, a wedding, Easter... whew!

This weekend was a busy one. Katelyn went to her first Prom Saturday night. I told her since she was only a freshman she was going to have to borrow or find a free dress this year. I'm not going to be buying new dresses for the next 4 years!

She got really lucky and got an old dress from a friend that is as tall as Katelyn and Mom only had to take in a little bit at the top so it wouldn't fall down all night since it wa strapless. I should've told her I wouldn't pay for her hair being done though too after I wrote a $62 check. Jeesh, I should've got into hairdressing!

She looked great though and had a lot of fun. Curt and I had a friends wedding at the same time Kate had to get ready and leave so thank goodness Mom lives up the road and played taxi driver, photographer .... for me. Thanks Mom!

Curt and I were off to our wedding where the ring bearer was the grooms hunting dog. A new one for us but pretty cool. The Pastor made a reference in the ceremony about now that (Andy the groom) has trained Chase his dog, he now has to train Carol his bride in the way God wants. he had a point tied to his scripture (just didn't come out right) but you should have heard the gasp by the women in the crowd and the "No he didn't just say that!" comments. needless to say Curt thinks we should always listen to the Pastors and believes that he should start"training" me. I'm thinking after 20 years he has no hope! :-)

Last night we had the Jews for Jesus organization come and present Christ in the Passover for our church.YF was the lucky ones to head up serving 120 people supper and getting the presentation set up which was a huge undertaking I found out half way through prepping for it. if you ever get a chance to go to one of these presenations I highly recommend it, it was really cool and interesting. A lot of work but really worth it.

Not liking the horseradish part of the presentation.


Washing of the hands

Off to set up for a prayer path our church is doing this week now. I really need to learn the word, NO.

Bowling

On Saturday night Becky organized a family outing of Pizza Ranch and Bowling. We had alot of fun with my extended family, Wayne & Marilyn and their kids. Unfortunately we live in Iowa and got a freak snowstorm so Jennifer's family couldn't come. Not sure what it would've been like with 4 more kids!

You get that many kids together and you know there's going to be noise, fun and more noise!

At the bowling alley somehow Curt ended up on the lane with Madeline, Anna, Jaren, Grant and Bethany. Madeline being the oldest at 9. He's not sure how that worked out except he was being a bah-humbug and not wanting to bowl so....

The girls were on the next lane with the boys on the last with Katelyn because we couldn't possibly be seperated from the boyfriend! :-)

Erica, Lisa's youngest found that she didn't need to bowl because she had the air blower which was way too much fun.

Who won?? Grant or Jaren???

Spring Break

Katelyn and I finally got around to painting her room over spring break. I absolutely hate painting so fun was not had by all. :-)

It did turn out pretty cool, painting all four walls didn't make it as dark as I was afraid. We did find out that flat black paint is not very fingerprint friendly though. At the end of the week as we were putting on her colored circles and handing pictures we found everywhere we touched left marks. AARGH! If anybody has any solutions, please share!!

Here's a picture of the almost complete room, she needs to add her personal touches yet (like clothes on the floor, a billion more blankets and pillows on her bed etc...) I'm not sure what the white dots are from on the picture, the only thing we can think of is a reflection from her blanket or Katelyn's thoughts were ghostly spirits (she's been watching freaky movies lately) :-)

Curt's New Job

This last month has been a bunch of new experiences for Curt. First Curt put in his notice at PPI where he has worked since a week after he graduated high school in 1988 with his last day being the day before we left for Honduras. Which was Curt's first mission trip experience besides a local trip to Parkersburg last summer.

We got back from Honduras at 1 AM on Saturday night and Monday AM he started his new job as Farm Manager at VK Farms in Lynnville. Gone are the 4AM alarms (In which I am SO excited!), roach coach (VP Bakery truck for breaks), weekly paychecks (monthly income means better budgeting for us), guarenteed 401K (well that hasn't been so great lately with the stock markets) & managing 40 guys who really don't want to work (he now has two Mexican employees who are great and a part-time guy).

He's already a much happier guy, maybe the sleeping in til 7 has something to do with that, but he just LOVES being out on the farm. He's already been a mechanic, bull-dozed, put in 10,000 ft. of tile and been to his first "farmer" mtg. and free lunch. I told him to watch it or he'll be sitting at the coop playing cards before long!

Here's a picture of the tiling job they worked on...

Working with his brother ( not that we don't love him dearly but he is a Van Kooten!) will have it's challenges I'm sure but with his blood pressure already dropped to a healthy reading and a smile at the end of the day instead of growling and worrying about being dropped down to 34 hours a week I'm sure it'll be worth it.

Honduras pics

Honduras

We're back!

Katelyn, Curt and I made it back from our mission trip in honduras Saturday night after 14 hours of traveling. It started at 8:30 AM with a 2 hour bus ride through the mountains to Tegucigalpa, plane rides from 1-8 PM and a 3 hour car ride from Omaha. Add a weeks worth of Land Rover and bumpy bus rides on roads that make my gravel road look awesome and boy does my bum and back hurt!

Let's start at the beginning....

Saturday we landed in Tegucigalpa on the worlds shortest runway. Meeting up with the rest of the group was great and it sounded like they'd had a good time on medical brigades outside of Teguc. Now it was time to head 2 hours east to Guaimaca where we would stay for the week.

Sunday instead of the normal 2 hour church service at the compound we got to travel up the mountain to a river where we were blessed to share 7 baptisms with our new Honduran Christian friends. I know that I've already been baptized and made profession of faith but we were all very moved by Pastor Mingos sermon and wanted to join them in the river. God was surely with us that morning as the sun came through the clouds at the exact moment the first baptism started.

Monday was full of unpacking our 42 suitcases full of medicine, blankets, hats and toys that we brought with us. We were allowed two carry-ons with our clothes and that was it, Katelyn slightly pannicked but found you can get a heck of a lot of clothes jammed in if you have too. :-)

I got to play with the daycare kids in the afternoon and it was great to see old friends from my last trip. Little Diego, Emerson and Melvin were just little tykes last time but are growing up to be heartbreakers.

Tuesday saw all of us off up the mountains on our first brigade. We saw 280 people that day 5 hours. Alot of scabies, allergies and asthma was the main complaints. Everyone came to our "pharmacia" and received vitamins and a gift and whatever prescription they needed. Katelyn worked in the pharmacia all day except for an hour outside where the honduran boys decided she was a bonita chica (cute girl). that made her a bit uncomfortable so off to the pharmacia she went. It was hard to tell them no mas(no more) when they are asking fo more knowing that they own almost nothing and it was really cold in the mountains which is unusual right now. I just wanted to give them all blankets.

On Wednesday Curt & Kate stayed behind and built a much needed fence to keep the daycare kids safe. No more waterlines were hit (ask Kate about that one sometime!) and it went and looks great. I went to a village called Agua Fria way up the mountain, we ended up above the evergreen line up in coffee land. I told Nate that the "road" we were on would be a great dirt bike path. NUTS! These people were so appreciative and we found out that if we don't come to see them the nearest clinic is at the botom of the mountain which if you don't own a car and walk everywhere means hours of traveling. We saw a 90 year old man all the way to a newborn baby with a 14 yr. old mom.

The local school brought it's 50 students to see us to get worm medicine and vitamins. It seems unbelievable that we had to worm people but if you saw there water supply and living quarters you'd understand.

On Thursday we all went to our last village. We only saw 80 people that day but that gave us a chance to play frisbee and ball with the kids. The scenary was breathtaking! That afternoon we worked on our fence again and by the time we were done Dr. Daining and Dr. Dale Vander Broek, nurses and a few others were digging fence post holes and hammering away. That was what was great this past week, we made an awesome team. Whether we were doing medical stuff, construction or hanging out we all got along so well and we made friends for life.

Friday was our free day and we headed to Valley of the Angels to do some awesome shopping and eat at a "steakhouse". Imagine a Honduras Galena Illinois. My goal was to buy a really cool engraved wood rosewood box but after packing found myself out of room. :-( Next year it's mine!

Yes we're hoping to head back next Feb., Katelyn asked already on the way home and Curt found that Doctors are really fun and he does have something in common with them. I loved the medical aspect of this trip, we had a surgery team with us this time too and I would've been able to watch a surgery but things got a bit tense so I passed. I did watch a little bit of a hernia surgery through the window but next time, I'm in there!

Thanks for everyones' support and prayers, they were felt by everyone, we experienced a lot of "God moments" and knowing you were all here praying for us was felt. We'd love to share or pictures and stories with you if you'd like! :-)