He's Back...

After many many months (okay, so it was over a year) of writer's block, my husband has decided to resurrect his original blog! If you would like to check it out: http://jjeb.blogspot.com/ He has been writing some interesting spiritual thoughts. I also want to say that I would have loved to insert a little link there, but I don't know how to do that...so if you want to tell me how, I thank you. -Priscilla

I sold it on ebay!

So one of Jeb and my favorite hobbies is to sell things on Ebay and Craigslist. We go to garage sales and scout things out to buy that we can turn around and sell for a little extra cash. We have also sold so many random little do-dads that have just sat in boxes in our closet for years. It amazes me sometimes that people actually want this stuff...but I am also very pleased and it tickles my funny bone when we do sell some useless piece of junk. It also makes me feel good to get rid of all of the material items that seem to clutter our house and our life.

We made 5x what we paid for this lovely poster of a man called horse...it's crazy that people actually want this!

However, in the midst of this fun little hobby, people have grow to think that we are so money-hungry that we will sell anything ever given to us just for some quick cash. That just is not true. We keep things that mean a lot to us or things that are valuable or that are important to the family or that were given to us by special people. We only sell useless, unwanted items. Trust me...and you should try it to, because it is fun to make a small profit off of the stuff that you would otherwise be donating to Goodwill!

We doubled our money on this italian tea cart repro!

Family Ties

So there has been some big family news. This has been all excitement for Jeb and I! Rachel and Stephen are now engaged! He surprised her at her birthday party and popped the question in front of all of us! They are planning a wedding for some time in July!
My brother Jason and his wife Jen are pregnant and Liam will have another cousin to play with sometime in March! This isn't the greatest pic of them, but it was the most recent, from just a few weeks ago at the Mariners-A's game...the Mariner's were down 3-9, but came back in the 7th inning (after we left to go home) to win 10-9. I can not believe that we left early at probably one of the Mariner's best comebacks in the past few years! Oh well....

Abs Diet

So we are on this "diet" but I don't really want to call it that, because I eat more than I do when I'm not dieting...just food that's better for me. I feel great, Jeb feels great. It is really fun to try to be healthy together. I like knowing that there's someone else out there trying to improve their health along with me. Basically, if you have never heard about it, you eat 6 times a day (that's a lot) and you work out 5 times a week for 30 minutes each day. I like this plan because i can manage it. I like it because i still get to eat cheese and meat and bread and even icecream now and again. and I like it because i can still go to a restaurant and find things that are okay to eat. I am not writing this because i think you should go on this particular diet, I am just writing this because i like it and I feel like it has a lot of "moderation" to it, which is what I believe in. I am also writing this because i feel like I need to update our blog. so there you go...

And the best perks of this abs diet is once a week for one meal, the guy tells you to blow it. he gives you permission to eat as much of whatever you want for one meal. this is my incentive meal to do good throughout the week and i look forward to it every week so that i can pile my plate full of fried gnasty food and icecream sundaes and grease just so that i can feel sick afterwards and look forward to it again the next week. i like food!

A peek inside our travels...

"Jebcito" was extremely popular at camp. Everyone loved him so much and everybody called him Jebcito - (Little Jeb or Jeb Jr.) He had a lot of fun and was a really good camper! I hope he can have many more international experiences as he grows up!

A nice way to end every night - with fun stories of the days happenings and some worship to God. Latin Lovers...
Latin Dogs...

This picture doesn't represent how scary this dog or all the other latin dogs are. Let's just say that I would never want to be on the same side of the fence as any of these mad dogs because they bark and growl like they would tear you to pieces!

Crazy Ecuadorian Driving...
Shopping at the market...
The best souvenirs (Ecuador futbol jerseys)...
Rachel & I at the "supermaxi"...

The viewpoint over Quito...It was a beautiful trip had by all!

Nothing like a good whipping

They played a lot of games at the camp in Ecuador that we would easily get sued for here in the states. This particular game was actually very funny to watch and let me also say that I was very relieved to have to watch Liam so that I wasn't able to play games such as this one.

The object of this particular game was for two people to clasp hands (london bridge style) and have one person just stand in the middle. Then they would yell out "switch" and either the person in the middle, the two people with clasped hands, or everyone would have to run to make a different set of clasped hands with a person in the middle. The catch is that there were several people running around with belts and if you didn't make a new "unit" fast enough, you got whipped.

Jeb was sort of a cheater at most of these games, here he couldn't find anyone to make a unit with, so he was hiding from the belt people. After this picture, they all chased him down and whipped him. The look on someone's face when they were getting whipped...below
Belt in action... A lot of people ended up with welts from getting whipped, but they all had fun. If only we could play games like this in America...

We are home! Ecuador was beautiful, wonderful, inspiring, encouraging, and faith-building. The camp was fabulous. The Ecuadorians did a great job with the camp. One thing that really impressed me was that some of the kids rode a bus for 12 hours to get there. That is dedication to get to church camp. The other thing that was awesome about this camp was that a majority of the kids that were there were not from church. I am so glad that they were there and were able to hear about Jesus.

I am so inspired by the tutores (counselors) at the camp. I loved to watch them work with the teens and run the camp. Because of our inability to speak Spanish fluently, it was through these people that we could see the words of faith being passed down to the teens. I believe that God brought us there to see His good work being done through others in a different language...and it was humbling and empowering at the same time to know that I as an individual wasn't significant because I couldn't even speak the same language, but I believe it was powerful because we were so united as a group of Christians regardless of language and words, our faith was one and the same. That was the beauty of this trip.