One Last Time

One thing that we wanted to do before moving was to get together with the Hagens one last time. As both families looked at our April calendars, we realized that if we didn't plan this during March, it might not happen! Our April schedules were both crazy! So one afternoon, Carly and I drove to their house in Iriga to spend the night with Jen and Mikayla. Meanwhile, Steve, Zach and Ben drove to Legazpi to spend the night with Wade and Caleb. So we had a girls' sleepover in Iriga while they had a boys' sleepover in Legazpi! Then the next day, we all met at Oh La La for a day of swimming.

Carly and Mikayla snuggled up while watching movies.

Amazing the cool hairstyles one can make when one's hair is loaded with sunscreen!!

Boys!

Eatin' lunch

Birds of a feather....

Please humor me......

Well, for those of you who haven't heard, our family will be moving in a few weeks to Bacolod City, Negros Occidental. Our office in the States has asked Wade to transfer there to assist with our association's publications ministry.

So at this time, we are busy packing and preparing to move from one island to another. Although we are excited about what God has in store for our future, we are very sad to leave Legazpi City and the Bicol Region. We have been here for over 5 years and this is home! We have friends here that we love dearly and can't imagine our lives without them. However, we know that God's plan is best and are willing to be used however and wherever He chooses to put us.

So if you will humor me.....here are a few more pictures of "our mountain." Being able to look out our window each day and see the magnificence of Mt. Mayon is something we will dearly miss. What a reminder of God's power!

This was taken from a roof-top restaurant in Legazpi.

Across from the restaurant is a very old cathedral. When we were there, the sun was rising behind the bell tower.

One evening, while we were busy packing, I happened to look outside and the sunset was absolutely beautiful. We quickly dropped everything, grabbed the camera, hopped in the car and drove to this spot to get a better picture. It's a little blurry, but you can still get an idea of the colors!

Easter Sunday

I took these pics of the kids just before Bible study on Easter Sunday morning. I know I'm a little bit biased, but I think they are some of the best pics of them ever.

Easter baskets



Yum!

Bible study

We invited our friends, the Johnsons, over for Easter dinner.



For dessert, we had pound cake with strawberries and cool whip! A VERY RARE treat here in the Philippines!!

Easter Egg Hunt

We had our monthly BEEF meeting (missionary fellowship) the day before Easter, so we decided to have an egg hunt for the kids.

Here, they were all waiting while the adults were hiding the eggs.

Steve, don't you think you have a little bit of a height advantage??!!

Uncle Dave looked so cute with his little Easter basket!!

Aunt Jen gives the "instructions".....(in other words, older kids need to let the younger kids get some of the easier ones)

Looking....

...looking....

....still looking....

.....found 'em!!

Water Olympics

On Tuesday of this week, the Hagens came over for Caleb's "official" birthday party. Yes....I know.....it's 3 days in a row of partying. But what can I say, you're only 7 once!!

(Actually, the Hagens had visitors and this was the first time we could get together.)

We decided that the theme of Caleb's party would be WATER OLYMPICS! We started by playing volleyball. (Our volleyball game had nothing to do with water, but volleyball is an "Olympic" sport and we did use a "beach" ball. Does that count?)

Next we played a version of baseball where all the bases were little pools filled with water. I think Ben was enjoying being on "base!"

We played Kids vs. Parents. Apparently, Uncle Steve just hit a fly ball!

The kids (and dads) quickly discovered that the most fun part of the water baseball was sliding into home!! So....we gave up on the baseball part and just made it a slip-n-slide!

(Sorry for the sideways view....again. Someday I'll get the hang of it!!)

Caleb with his "7" cake....not my best piece of work, but it tasted good none the less.

???????

The NEW Justice League

My mom had sent this Pin-the-tail-on-the-Donkey game and Caleb was SOOOOO excited to play it. He didn't win, but got pretty close!! Thanks, Minnie!

Caleb with his new treasures

God decided to join in with the party theme and sent us a torrential downpour!! We'd already planned to play with water guns, so they just played in the rain and still had a blast!

Again, ??????

Always room for one more!!

Still Celebrating....

Since Caleb's REAL birthday fell on a Sunday this year, we decided to keep celebrating on Monday, our usual day off. We started with lunch at McDonald's with our friends.

Kate and Carly




Kirby enjoying his hot fudge sundae



Kate put on quite a show for us! Here are some pictures followed by a video.

Caleb got to open one more gift (which was a clue to where we were headed next)........

....new swimming trunks!!!

Our family then headed to one of our favorite "hang-outs".....Oh La La. No one else was there, so we enjoyed a nice quiet day with just the 4 of us.

The kids found this snail and we were all surprised by how BIG it was!

Our snail friend compared to Caleb's foot

This was taken on the way home from Oh La La. Even though it's been months since Typhoon Reming, you can see how high the dirt/mud is still piled on the side of the roads. In some places it was higher than our car.