First day of school

Joshua and Joel had their first day of school for this fall, September 5. They were quite excited to be seeing their friends. I'm not sure how much was excitement over returning to school, though.

A room with a view

An evening photo from our house looking at Chimborazo.

Colorado Springs

After a very quick two weeks in BC, Canada, I flew on to Colorado Springs for some meetings there.

One of the things we did as a group of techies, was to go to the top of Pike's Peak via the Cog Railway. That was a neat experience as it was a pretty steep climb, in one place a 26 percent slope.

Being on top afforded us an incredible view as can be attested to by these photos.

The artist

Joshua is turning out to be quite the artist. It doesn't really matter much the medium, he can draw, paint, mold and act.
We bought him a book on drawing the other day and he has been working his way through it.
Here are a couple of the results.

Views of central Quito

Here are a couple of photos I took while we were looking for a shop in central Quito.

Can you recognise what Ecuadorian dish this is?

This is a dish which is very popular in Ecuador, but only during a certain time period. It is very laborious to prepare and depending on if you have it with fish, can REALLY STINK up the house. I know, we (read Marlene) prepared the fish (Bacalou) when the extended family made this dish one year.

Leave a comment. I'll post the name of the dish a bit later.

Joel learns to ride his bike

Joel began asking us to go to the park this week so he could ride his bike. Yesterday he started practicing in our patio which is quite small. But it gave him enough courage that yesterday when we went to HCJB, he started riding a little by himself.
Today we went to the park and he was determined to ride his bike. With very little assistance, he started riding his bike around the trails in the park.
For the next 2 hours I was chasing him around the park!

Mother's day

Joshua needed to take a photo to school to make a card for Mom. We took this photo spur-of-the-moment and it is one of the nicest photos we have of the two of them!

Hockey day in Ecuador

Another missionary family gave us some hockey sticks and a couple of pucks and the boys promptly put them to good use. They enjoy playing hockey, Joshua more so than Joel.

The electronics techie

Joel built this circuit by himself by following the instruction book that came with the set. I only helped him to locate two pieces and to show him that the plus and minus needed to go in the correct direction, and he did the rest.

A circuit which it seems had as its central theme, to make an extremely annoying whistle and show some lights.

Propaganda

Joel was chosen to be one of the "faces" of ANAN, the school the boys attend.

It was a bit of a surprise to walk up to the school and see Joel's face looking down on us! We had signed the authroization form, but still we didn't know which photo they would use nor how exactly they were going to use it.

Joshua in sports

Joshua is the goalie for Los Tigres Blancos (the White Tigers), the soccer team for his class. He chose to be the goalie rather than be a forward (although with his speed and reflexes, he'd make a good forward).

Today they were playing a match so we popped over to see him play. He did very good and his team won the game 2-1.