Coaticook

Land of ice cream and the world's longest suspension bridge!  This was our final field trip before the semester ends on Wednesday and we receive our diplomas!  From here, we will be heading back to Ohio for a few weeks before continuing on to California.  We are busy packing, cleaning, and studying for our final French exams.  Here are a couple pictures from the past few weeks:

The Guinness Record for the longest suspension bridge in the world, 169 meters long (554 feet) and 50 meters high (164 feet).

Kaitlyn started crawling a few weeks ago, and she's already grabbing onto things and trying to pull herself up and walk.  This is her "can you put that silly camera down and come pick me up...I need some snuggle time?"  pose.  She ate baby food for all of maybe a month, and now all she wants is what mommy and daddy are eating.  So we chop everything up in little pieces and she feeds herself.  We don't get carrots and peaches spit all over us, and she gets the satisfaction of doing it herself, everybody wins!  I've never seen a child down spaghetti quite like her though!

My Weekend with Daddy

has been awesome!  It's been just me and daddy the whole weekend long!  Mommy and Grandma went somewhere (daddy says Quebec City) and we've had so much fun together!  We went to the park yesterday and got home just in time, right before it started raining really really hard.  I got to go on the swing, down the slide and on the teeter-totter (although daddy said it was really hard with no one on the other end).  Then, when we got home, we had a tea party!  Well, daddy had coffee and I had a bottle, but we had a tea pot that talks and plays music, and some crackers to munch on.  He even let me stay up later than usual so we could hang out and watch the first game of the Stanley Cup finals!  I think we're rooting for Chicago because daddy says all the good teams got kicked out.  Then, in the morning, I shared my oatmeal with him and we went to church where I just usually play with a couple of my friends while daddy and mommy sing songs and listen to the preacher.  After church, we ate some lunch and then went on another walk to the park so I could swing some more.  I just love it when we go outside!  When we came back from the park, I had to take a nap because I was really tired from having so much fun.  In fact, I think I set a new nap time record; I slept for 3 hours!  Well, it's time to have some more fun before dinner time...and still no signs of mommy and grandma.  Daddy says he has some big news he wants to share, but he's waiting until next week...so tune back in a few days from now!

Grandma's Here!

That's right; all the way from sunny California!  She even thought to bring the sunshine and the warm weather with her!  Check out the 3 generations:  Grandma, momma, and baby!  We've been doing the tourist thing again, seeing all the sights, having picnic lunches at the park, going on long strolls.  The only difference now is that we can get around mostly in French!  I guess two and a half semesters of classes are finally paying off!

Our monthly support has begun to slowly climb towards 90% now.  That's a wonderful thing; it would be so nice to just focus on all the little things that need to get done and our shipment of belongings.  We are still hoping to depart sometime in September.  Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day next weekend!

7 Month Pictures

Actually, I'm just about 8 months old now, but mommy and daddy took all these pictures a few weeks ago.  We went for a really long walk because it was so nice outside.  They took me to a huge park where I got to swing and play in the grass!  They showed me dandelions, and a big place where water goes called a river.  It was so much fun!  I can't tell you how happy I am that it's nice outside now; there's so much to do and see!

I'm working on crawling right now too.  It's really hard, but I've almost got it down!  Mommy and daddy have been working hard to finish up the rest of their schoolwork and have been sending lots of emails to people, asking them if they want to join our team so we can go to Africa and help the people there.  They say we're really close to meeting our goal, if we only had about 25 people who could give $25 a month, we could go!

The Tourist Thing

Aside from our regularly scheduled program, that's what we've been doing lately.  We took a day trip to Québec, North America's oldest city.  It's got more of a European feel with narrow cobblestone streets lined with shops, cafe's, and bistros.  The one on the left is pretty wide, they get much more narrow than that.  The building on the right is the "Chateau Frontenac," or Frontenac Castle, named after the French governor of the then "New France."  In 1690, He famously mouthed these words, "I have no reply to make to your general but from the mouth of my cannons and muskets," when British forces sailed up the St. Lawrence River and demanded he surrender.

I just thought this sign was a little funny.  Tourist Information, the Citadelle, Parliament Building, Frontenace Castle, and...Youville?  Hmmm, wonder what that is?

We also spent this past weekend in Montréal with Grammy and Papa Konop who came all the way up from Ohio to visit.  We went shopping, swimming, saw an IMAX film, saw the Body World exhibit, and got a passport for Kaitlyn too!  Here me and Kaitlyn are learning about "African army ants" on the Discovery Channel.  Hopefully we will get some pictures of Kaitlyn swimming soon; she LOVES the water!

The Park!

Did you know they make these chairs outside that go back and forth?!  They're so much fun; all you need is for someone to push you!  Daddy says it's as close to flying as I'll get for a while.

They also have this bumpy plastic thing that you ride down.  It's ok, I like the swing better; it's a little scary to be up so high sometimes.

Mommy and daddy both took turns taking me on all the fun toys there.  I like going there when it's nice and sunny and warm outside.  It's fun to go on a stroller ride and see lots of neat things. 

When we do things like that, I get really tired and sometimes I have to go to bed early so I can catch up on some sleep.  Other nights, I stay up and watch the Stanley Cup Playoffs with daddy.

Easter!

Easter was a busy time for us this year; we got to celebrate Joy's birthday on Saturday, and we had a bunch of missionary friends over on Sunday after the church service for a good old fashioned pot luck dinner. We had a 12 pound honey/pineapple glazed ham (of which I am still reaping benefits), mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, cheesy macaroni, salad, and three desserts! We had fun talking and laughing together, playing games, and coloring easter eggs.



Joy's birthday was fun too, although many things didn't really go as planned. I took her to a little town about 25 miles from here so she could go shopping. It was a really nice day so it felt great to be outside, but after looking in several different shops, nothing really tickled her fancy. So we came back home and one of our friends offered to babysit for the evening. Joy wanted to go to a restaurant that we like to go to for special occasions; they have a great salad bar and awesome rotisserie chicken. The only problem was that we had limited time to sit down and eat because she also wanted to see a movie. So we decided to just get the salad bar, but then we had to wait for utensils because they were so busy they ran out of clean ones. Then we had to wait for a long time to get our check, and by the time we got over to the movie theater, it was starting. But we figured we could miss the first few minutes and it would be ok, so we paid for our tickets and ran up to the theater just in time for the manager to come walking out saying the show was canceled because only a few people showed up. Oh no! We did get our money back and a pair of free tickets to come back some other time, but we were still a little disappointed. Instead, we walked the streets for a little while and found a nice little coffee shop where Joy got a slice of cheesecake and we shared it on the terrace. All in all, she had a good day, and her next birthday will be a lot more interesting I'm sure, as we celebrate it in Congo!

Our French is still coming along; I'm just about finished with my second semester. After that, I will participate in a conversation course where no new grammar is introduced, and we just practice...well, conversation, and speaking/understanding too. It will be a good two months of building a solid vocabulary and practicing what we've already learned. The time is going by fast now, and before we know it, we'll be on our way back to southern California.

A certain little girl is also growing up really fast! I realized the other day that she doesn't really fit in my arms anymore. She's learning so much! We've started her on some baby food, so far just peas and squash. She hasn't really got the whole "open mouth, close mouth, swallow" thing down yet, so what she does is more like this: "open mouth slightly, push contents back out onto chin and surrounding area, collect contents with hands, mash vigorously on tray, lick contents from fingers, repeat." She hasn't figured out the crawling thing yet, but she can stand all by herself and very soon she will be completely mobile!



We hope you were able to make some great memories during this wonderful holiday too, as we celebrated His death, burial, and triumphant resurrection!