Day #15: Our day in pictures

Today was a very good day in El Paso! We began our day worshiping over at Sunshine Community Church. Jesse is their main techie there and runs the sound board and lights during the service. This is our third time worshiping with folk from this church, and it is always a blessing to us. After church, we ate a great big dinner over at a Chinese buffet and then it was time to play!

The little kiddos wanted to play over at the playground, so we got some of our sand toys out and hiked on over. Emma was enjoying the day to the full and it was so much fun to interact with her. I asked her a bunch of questions about her friends and schools and her favorite things. She told me a cute story about one day at school when she and her good friend, Monica, were heading outside for recess. It was a cold day and Monica had forgotten to bring her jacket. So Emma told her to put one of her arms inside Emma's warm coat and Emma would put one of her own arms in the other side and they could just wear ONE coat together! "It was okay, Grandma, because we are just little kids. It wouldn't work very well for grownups." I enjoyed trying to imagine this scene with Emma and her friend Monica wearing one jacket outside for recess.

We always meet lots of other children while in El Paso, and I've grown to really enjoy that. Today, we met twin two-year-olds: Brodie and Nolan ~ as well as their three-year-old sister, Rylee Shae. We also played with an eight-year-old girl, Mileena, who was really delightful. And Christopher and Matthew introduced me to a friend by the name of Bryson.

Look at the static electricity in Matthew's hair!

Christopher was tumbling all over this playground equipment ... up and down ... inside out practically.

The El Paso International Airport is directly across the street from this playground. So every few minutes, planes were coming and going ... something I always enjoy seeing.

We brought Matthew's bug jar along and we were on a mission ~ to catch us just a little beetle kind of bug that we could examine and play with for the afternoon. After the bug encounter I'd had this morning over at the Annex, I was glad to be outside in the great outdoors where bugs belong ... and we were looking for just a tiny little bug.

So the hunt was on, and everyone got involved in it. I'm not kidding. You'd think we were looking for buried treasure out there. So serious.

It's still winter here in El Paso and there certainly wasn't an abundance of little bugs to be found today. Everyone did their best to hunt one down, though ... digging and exploring around the entire playground. Emma finally found a teensy tiny spider that we put inside the bug jar and then we passed it around for the kids to play with. The top of the jar is a magnifying glass, so it makes it kind of fun. The spider's life didn't last long, though, with all of those little kiddos passing the jar around, putting rocks and grass and tiny sticks inside (so that the spider had something to play with) ... the spider was finally crushed to death by a falling rock (I think) ... and later, the 3 little roly poly bugs we put inside the jar were killed with Matthew running full speed ahead back to the house to show Jes and Di his cool bugs.

This is Matthew and Mileena ...

And Matthew and I having a cuddle ...

And Matthew talking endlessly to himself while "steering the ship" ...

Emma and I took a ride down the slide together like a train ...

Later in the day, we did sticker pictures at the dining room table ... this is Matthew showing us his stickers he got for his early birthday. He was very kind to share them with Emma and Chris. We combined his stickers with some foam stickers and made some great pictures today.

Jesse has a field assignment for the next little while. We're hoping he is able to return back to the base before we finish up our stay here on Thursday night. Tomorrow we have some rain in the forecast, so we're not sure about our plans. I'll try to post some more pictures tomorrow night.