The Birthday Girl!

Audrey turned 7 this week!! I can't believe how fast the years fly by! She is, as always, our creative and independent girl. She loves to make crafts and is most often found cutting, gluing, coloring or painting a creation. She has also developed a recent interest in music and loves to listen to her own playlist on our Alexa. She choreographs dances too which are really fun. For years one of her best talents has been making friends with anyone, anywhere. She only gets better and better at this talent! She makes sure we all have a lot of fun and she always has a plan.

This year she wanted a Moana party. She planned it, helped set it up and make the food. It turned out really fun!

As per birthday tradition, Audrey woke up to find her room filled with balloons!

Her grandmas sent cards in the mail!

The kids did a really great assembly line to make "crab" sandwiches for the party. They were ham and cheese on croissants.

Not my best cake result ever but Audrey loved it so it counts!

Of course Moana would have a swimming party!

Happy birthday to youuuu!

Years ago when we lived in Wisconsin, Mitchell came up with the idea of doing hobbies with each of the kids on the "off" birthdays. He determined that the "off" birthdays are 7, 11 and 15. Of course, 8, 12 and 16 are milestone birthdays. It is amazing how fast the time sails on by! Audrey has turned 7 so it was her turn to choose a hobby to pursue with her dad. About a month ago they began brainstorming ideas. She came up with at least 30 ideas! Some included bird watching, camping, building models, doing hair and nails etc. It was fun to hear her ideas and her rationale as she had to eliminate some. She finally settled on COOKING. What a great hobby! Mitchell downloaded an ecourse for kids. There are beginning, intermediate and advanced levels with quite a few learning modules. They completed their first module yesterday which was: spreading with a dull knife. They invited Redick and Reid to join them in spreading peanut butter on celery to make ants on a log, then spread butter on toast. They are hoping to learn and practice a lot over the next year. Their capstone project and goal will be to throw a dinner party for Audrey's friends and make all of the food!

Footnote about Nicaragua living: Thursday evening a main water supply pipe for our sector broke. Some time in the evening our water went out and soon after that our reserve tank ran out too. We had plenty of drinking water though. We were without water all day Friday and all day Saturday! ....can I tell you how badly I wanted a shower??!?! It was awful! Not to mention the dirty dishes that piled up and the floor that really needed a mopping! Saturday morning we received the news that during the repair of the pipe, a valve broke and they were going to have to order the repair part from out of the country! Thankfully, they must have found the part because late Saturday afternoon our water came back on! Sunday afternoon we had a big awesome thunder storm! Sometimes the thunder is so loud that it sounds like the earth will tear apart! The rolls of thunder last forever and the loud cracks just interrupt the constant rolling. It's awesome! Right as the storm was starting on Sunday our power went out. Haha! We were grateful when it came back at 9:30pm so we could sleep more comfortably with the fans on. It's always an adventure here!