The Past 10 Weeks of Being Okies

~posted by Roma

We have lived in northeast Oklahoma for almost 10 weeks now. I don’t know about the rest of my family, but I know I have days when I still miss Texas so badly. I’m having a lot of fun here in OK, making friends and making great memories already. But sometimes I have days where it would be amazing to wake up in my old bedroom, and look out the window to see an incredible Texas sunrise peeking up from behind the pecan trees. To go to our old church on Sunday, and hug people because you know them. To see familiar faces and sights. But we serve a great God who has provided for all our needs. Our Dad, Bianca, and Ben all have jobs now and all three of them work for Christians. Ruby and I are learning really well how to drive cars. Josiah has a basketball game coming up soon. And on and on.

This is a blog post that will go over all the fun highlights we’ve had here the past 10 weeks and what we’ve done. Enjoy!

So, I should start with some pictures of the moving process…

This van looked really familiar to us. It may look familiar to you too. The van that had just moved us 32 months prior (from MI to TX) was now moving us again! The funny part is they could never bring it up our narrow driveway so they always needed a shuttle. These guys worked hard! 

Great place to play hide and go seek!

Lots of neighbors and people from church came over to say goodbye, bring us Starbucks, give us gift baskets, or take away our basketball hoop. J (We didn’t need it.) I took some last TX sunset pictures that were gorgeous, and wrote about this whole journey in my journal.

The next morning we had cereal but no milk, so I ate cereal with vanilla ice cream. J The boys took one car full of stuff, Ruby and Bianca took one car full of stuff and the two dogs in the back, and Mom and I took one car full of stuff and the tranquilized, terrified cats. I took a video with my camera of us driving away. Ben was in New Mexico hiking 100+ miles with the Boy Scouts at Philmont, so he missed the whole moving process!

And then in just 3.5 or so hours, we were there!

The house is beautiful. It has a lodge/cabin/dark lodge-y kind of feel, with 10 acres, a pond, and woods with a small trail going through them. (The dogs were--and still are-- having the time of their lives!) The front porch is really wide and has been a great place for morning devotions. The driveway is super steep and crazy to bike or roller race down. We live on a big hill, so going down the hill is amazing and going up is a physical challenge.

One thing we’ve had to adjust to is all of us kids having our bedrooms on the first floor. (Except Bianca, who is on the loft on the second floor.) But now the boys and Ruby and I share a Jack & Jill bath attached to our rooms which has been nice! There are pros and cons about every house, but overall, we really like it here! We have pretty much unpacked every box now and cleaned up, so come visit us! J

Alright, some fun things we’ve done here the past 10 weeks…

…Found a Christian soda fountain and a job for Bianca on the same day….

…Visited with missionary friends that we’ve known for a whole decade now…

Bianca got a visit from her man J and we celebrated his birthday. We went tubing down the Illinois River one day, had a picnic by the river, went out to dinner, and explored the town. I’m thinking it’s about time to go on another photo shoot in this cute town soon!

Josiah’s got this. He doesn’t need help. J

We’ve been trying different restaurants, going for evening walks, visiting coffee shops, and more. There are a lot of festivals that go on here, with lots of activities. So after we ate we enjoyed the different tents set up outside—one tent had knives, so the boys were drawn to that tent right away. J

Just beyond the tents, two guys were playing  with fire—literally!

We look forward to the other festivals that our different towns here in Okie will have in the future!

Lots of families from our new church have so graciously invited us to their homes, or to different restaurants with them to eat lunch together after church! That has really helped us get to know the families better and we’ve enjoyed the fellowship so much! This home above is the R family’s home. Mr. R is a deacon at our church and while Mom and Dad were enjoying talking to them, Ruby and I talked with their grown-up son S and his wife M for probably an hour, about different hobbies, Lord of the Rings, and more!

Then there was that one time we went with our youth group to watch the movie “War Room.” If you have not seen this film yet, it is a MUST SEE.

Ruby and I went camping in our front yard one night; then a couple days later we started school, which hasn’t been bad so far. I enjoy doing and learning new things and so far it’s not crazy or hectic--it’s pretty relaxing. We also went back to the Illinois River a few weeks ago for a church picnic! We used our Youth Pastor’s canoes and kayaks, went swimming, and had hot dogs, homemade chips, and oatmeal cream pies. Bianca and Ben were at a college conference in TX, but the rest of us enjoyed that picnic! Recently, Ruby and I went to a girl’s pajama party with our youth group girls and we had fun doing that too!

So hopefully that kind of sums up EVERYTHING. Any questions? Just kidding. J

Daddy and Bianca's Birthday

~Posted by Roma

(Before I start this post, some good news for our readers: our family has finally moved from Texas to Oklahoma, and are reunited with my Dad after 9 long months! J Things are going very well, and we are getting settled in to yet another new home and new adventure. We will do a post about that move soon!)

The last two birthdays of the year are my Dad’s and Bianca’s! Their birthdays are only a little over a week apart! So, back in July, we celebrated Dad and Bianca. We decided to combine Dad’s birthday and the 4^th of July together. So, we not only had traditional birthday cake and gifts, but we also set off fireworks and had friends from church over. (This was all while we still lived in TX) One very special thing we did for Dad this year, was creating a binder full of letters from us, family, distant relatives, friends, co-workers, pastors, and mentors. There were quite a few letters! Then I decorated the binder and Mom put it all together and we presented it to my Dad on his special day! He appreciated it so much since we had done the same thing for Mom a few years ago. The Reverend that married my parents even wrote a letter! J

In addition to the binder, we made a “Blessings of Mark” framed picture.

 We had a fun time with family and friends and Mom’s famous double chocolate ring cake and really enjoyed the day. (And now that we live in OK it has been so nice seeing Dad every night!!)

Then came Bianca’s birthday. We celebrated that everywhere! We celebrated it in Ohio, in our home in northern Texas, in Dallas Texas…so we celebrated around 3 times. J First, Mom had decided we needed to take a spontaneous trip to Ohio to surprise the family, since we hadn’t seen them in so long. Of course we were thrilled to do this and it was so hard to keep it a secret! (My Mom’s parents knew we were coming but her younger brother and his wife and two boys did not know at all.) I recorded a video of us walking into the kitchen where our Uncle J, Aunt C, and cousins E and J were sitting, and it was epic! J We had a wonderful visit! Besides doing a lot of catching up, visiting other distant relatives, going to the movies, swimming, etc., Bianca enjoyed birthday peach cobbler and ice cream, and presents.

Bianca with Uncle J and Aunt C in front of Cracker Barrel on a Sunday afternoon.

Our Mom just loved getting to see her brother again—and he loved seeing her! Here are the two of them at our cousin E’s baseball game one day.

When we returned safely from Ohio, our home-away-from home brothers K and O came over one day so we could celebrate Bianca’s birthday…again! We had a yummy dinner and ended it all with Carrot cake, German chocolate cake, ice cream, and more gifts. (We can’t celebrate enough. J)

Bianca with her favorite OLDER brothers. J

But the celebrating wasn’t over yet. We had to take Bianca on a surprise birthday trip, of course! So we piled in the minivan one day and found ourselves at…the Cowgirl Museum in the Dallas/Fort Worth area! It was the coolest museum! They showed a lot of short videos, displayed cowgirl clothes, guns, had a station where you could sit on a fake horse and watch yourself ride a “bucking horse” on the screen in front of you, and of course, there were plenty of exhibits on the history of cowgirls. We enjoyed going to a pretty unique museum for a change. Pictures were not allowed, so we got pictures of the outside. J

Then after eating a snack at Taco Cabana, we drove over to our next surprise. And boy, were we surprised! We pulled into the driveway of the H family’s house!!! We haven’t known the H family for very long, but Bianca and Ben had met their oldest son through a college gathering and they are just the sweetest, Christian homeschooled family with five kids just like us! (More like teen/young adult kids.) We spent the evening with them. They made us the most delicious meal; the fellowship was wonderful; the cake, the 10 different flavors of ice cream (YES!!); the gift basket they lovingly put together for Bianca; the rose bush they gave us to take to OK—it was such an awesome evening! We 10 kids probably enjoyed the game of Capture the Flag outside the most. Girls against boys. And the girls WON!

All of us kids posing with the H kids before we all got sweaty playing.

We ended Bianca’s sweet birthday celebration by going on a photo shoot with this guy right here being one of the photographers.

This is Jessie. Bianca recently announced on her blog that she is being courted by this godly young man. Go to her blog here for the details. I snuck this picture of them and really like it. I’ve been a pretty sneaky chaperone for the last few months haha!

Bianca

So, there you have it. No more birthdays until 2016! J There were so many great pictures of Bianca, and Jessie did a great job, but I’m going to run out of room here. Now, for a blog post about MOVING from TX to OKIE……

Have a blessed day!

Birthdays!

~Posted by Roma

Well, hello again, blog readers! As Bianca mentioned in her post, things have been a bit crazy J. Our Texas home is back on the market (after we thought we had sold it) and just recently, we bought a new home in Oklahoma. We’re hoping to be packing boxes and moving very soon now! It’s a bittersweet feeling…continue to pray for us.

The first half of the year is filled with birthdays in our family, so I thought that I would give you a very brief sum-up of the first couple…my Mom and Josiah’s birthdays! It might be hard to keep this blog post short, but I’ll do the best I can!

Mom’s birthday was actually all the way back in January. I wanted to really surprise her and do something that she would always remember. So, I asked her parents (whom we affectionately call “Bio” and “Bia” ) to fly down to Texas for her birthday. They flew down, all the way from Ohio! (They are the best!) Bianca pretended to go to work but instead picked them up at the airport in Dallas, and an hour later they came walking into the kitchen. My Mom was so surprised she started sobbing. J Then my Dad came from Oklahoma later that weekend to join us for her celebration. We had turtle cake, went out to restaurants more than one night in a row; laughed, fellowshipped, Bio sang Psalm 121 to her in Spanish, our adopted brothers K and O came to see her as well… it was a wonderful week to celebrate our Mommy!

My Mom and her Mom playing a board game called: ‘Ticket to Ride’ back in January.

We kids did what we do every year and tiptoed down the stairs very early in the morning on her birthday, to make Mom breakfast in bed. This year it was crepes--one with a cream cheese filling and another with Nutella in it.

Mom opening presents with the whole family!

March rolled around, and…Josiah’s birthday! Believe it or not, Texas had an ice storm that day! Our plans changed, since we couldn’t leave the house, so instead, all seven of us went outside and had an awesome snowball fight! Afterward, we played board games, popped popcorn and made hot chocolate, watched movies, ate chocolate birthday cake, and Josiah opened gifts. It was a more simple celebration, and because of the bad weather, we postponed his birthday trip until April…

Out in the snow on Josiah’s b-day. It. Was. Cold.

And here he is—birthday boy opening presents.

April came around fast and Mom and Dad took us on a surprise birthday trip for Josiah! We all piled up in the minivan and ended up at…the Perot Science Museum in Dallas! There were four different floors to explore, with plenty of wonderful information on astronomy, biology, geology, the human body, life, hands-on things to do, and a 3D movie about the deep sea challenger!

Ben standing in the Perot Science Museum looking over Dallas during Josiah’s birthday trip.

After enjoying the Perot Museum, we went to Papasitos cantina for dinner. They came out and sang for Josiah and gave him ice cream and a sombrero. J

Josiah at the Mexican restaurant, being, well, himself. Happy Birthday, buddy!

So, we’ve been keeping ourselves busy celebrating more birthdays, doing fun things, and spending a few more precious weeks with our Texan friends before many good-byes will have to be said. But Lord willing, we will be moving soon and finally making that transition after waiting for so long…

All for now!

Long Overdue Update

Yes, we are still alive! I can’t believe it has been so many months since we updated. That definitely falls on me as the main moderator of this blog. So I owe all of you an apology! Rather than make excuses about why I haven’t updated, I will give you an update on each of us. Then perhaps you’ll understand why we haven’t had many opportunities to post these days.;-) (I’ll give you a hint: we’re living a day-to-day adventure basically, and we never quite know what the next day will bring.)

Mark—Back in November, Dad started working his new job in Oklahoma. We have had a lot of drama involved with attempting to sell our house here in Texas. That drama has involved switching agencies, the District Attorney’s office, and other legal wrangles. Dad has been enjoying his new job, but wishes we could all live together. He had a surgery done on his torn meniscus in February, and unfortunately looks like he will need to have it done again. He is working on cleaning up our new home in the central/eastern part of Oklahoma so that we can hopefully all move in at the end of July.

Betsy—Mom has been a trooper the past seven months! She has continued to work to homeschool the four younger kids. It has taken a lot of patience on her part to deal with the frequent interruptions to show our home and still maintain a sense of order around here. It also takes a lot to keep up with 5 kids single-handedly!

Bianca—I have had a very challenging school year. I struggled to keep up with my classes last fall while I battled a 6-week illness (sinusitis followed by the flu and lots of misdiagnosis and issues with medicines along the way.) I worked as the assistant to our new student/college pastor from November until May. That was a stretching but very beneficial working experience. I was able to catch up on school, and now am only 3 credits away from being a junior. I spent 10 days in Ecuador in May, and 8 days in Guatemala with my family in June, doing missions work. In July, I will start working part-time at a local soda fountain. My dog Tex—a blue mountain cur that I acquired back in December--has kept me very busy with the various scrapes he gets into. Generally, he finds a skunk once a month.

I’ve had another big event this past year. ;-D You can read all about my courtship over here!

Ben—Ben worked very hard this fall and spring to wrap up his Eagle Scout project (landscaping several areas at our church.) Thankfully he completed the project before Texas turned into a swamp! Many people came to celebrate his Eagle Scout Court of Honor with us despite the monsoon-type rains we had that day. He is still finishing up his high school math and chemistry, and should graduate at the end of this year. He has been very busy keeping up house maintenance.

Rubia—Ruby has continued to be diligent with her school work this year! She has been a great help with taking care of our growing menagerie of pets (plus a few neighbor dogs that need a little TLC.) She is faithful to run with Roma and work out three times a week. She also keeps our refrigerator free of spoiled food so that those of us with poorer senses of smell don’t accidentally eat something bad. ;-P Rubia was ecstatic to go on a mission trip to Guatemala for the first time this year.

Roma—Roma continues to keep us all focused on the bright side of life. She has been very helpful and positive over the past several months. Like Ruby, she has been diligent in her school work, but also finds time to make treats in the kitchen for the rest of us to enjoy. She has been the most interested in continuing to blog, and you may see her start to take over some things here in the future as my life continues to get busier. ;-) Roma loved going back to Guatemala this year! She also went on a missions road trip through several large cities in Texas over Spring Break, along with Rubia, Ben, and me.

Josiah—Josiah has been busy this school year! He gets the majority of Mom’s homeschooling time since the older kids are mostly independent. He has also been hard at work in Tae Kwon Do. He may be able to test for his first brown belt before the summer is over! He has absolutely flown through the belt levels and receives lots of praise from his instructor. He had a blast on his first missions trip (our trip to Guatemala in June.) This week, he is enjoying sports camp at our church!

So there’s a small update on the family! Hopefully we’ll be able to post a bit more frequently here over the summer. Thank y’all for sticking with us during this busy season of our lives!

Okie House Hunting

~Posted by Roma

 

Thank you all for your prayers ever since our family posted the Big Changes blog post. I’m excited to tell you that my Dad found a job in Pryor, Oklahoma, only a few hours from our home here in TX! Praise the Lord! He has already started his new job at American Castings and it’s going great. Please pray that our home in TX will sell quickly!

 

Recently, when church was over, our family piled into the minivan and drove up to OK for a few nights to do some house hunting. Dad drove us past the plant the night we got there. It was big, and really cool! We checked into the hotel and settled in for the night.

 

The next day was house hunting day. We toured through three houses, and drove past another one, and have kept tabs on realtor.com ever since the trip!J I try to look on the bright side of things, but I’ll admit it was draining for all 7 of us because we didn’t quite find what we were looking for. The first house, which we nicknamed “the Bob House”(because it reminds us of someone’s house back in Michigan) is a possibility, but we still want to look for more options. Dad will also be looking for a church, shopping, entertainment, activities, etc. There’s a lot to think about!

 

When we got back home, we had tons of funny “Okie stories” to share with our youth group. J There were a lot of funny things about Oklahoma—like a pizza place called: “Sam and Ella’s” pizza, which if you say it all together fast, sounds like the bacteria! “We are never eating there, kids.” My Mom was saying in the car. J A realtor from there told us, “Well, I heard someone died there--but it’s still good!” This is just one of the many crazy stories we have. Bianca even got to enjoy riding in the realtor’s Mid-Life-Crisis-bright-yellow-“ain’t misbeehavin’-jeep!!

 

I’m going to miss TX. badly, and still don’t really want to leave, but…I heard we won’t be too far from the Voice of the Martyrs headquarters! Yay! I can see future volunteering opportunities there. J

 

All for now!

 

P.S-After our house-hunting trip, we watched Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! We loved it! Haha! The movie even takes place right where we might live!

2012: An Epic Year

~Posted by Ben

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I was going to post today. At the very last minute--with my sister needing the post--I still couldn’t think of what I wanted to do. So I started looking through pictures, particularly pictures from 2012. I’ve always called 2012 the “twelve month rollercoaster.” For some odd reason, more events and more change in our family took place in 2012 than in any other years of our lives. I could tell you all about it, but instead I will take you through that year chronologically and show you just what took place in our lives during that busy year.



Ironically, the most busy year of our lives started off very uneventfully. Almost nothing major happened for the first 4 months. In mid-April our extended family went on a week-long Royal Caribbean Cruise.

Although we don’t have many pictures from after the cruise until July, several things happened. In May our Pastor announced that he was moving to Houston, Texas; I attended a week long leadership summit (National Youth Leadership Training or NYLT); our church did VBS; and we attended the funeral of my late great-uncle R. The above picture is our Haiti mission team. We were in Haiti from July 22-29. This was perhaps the most significant thing that happened during that summer. Our lives and perspectives of global poverty were absolutely transformed during the week we got to serve in Haiti.

I might also add that before our Haiti trip our family gathered in the living room for a very serious discussion. My dad announced that he was prayerfully considering leaving his 18 year career and pursuing an engineering job at a smaller company. At that time he was in job negotiations with companies in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas. But he was still undecided whether or not to leave his current job.



My Dad and I at the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado.

In late August, my Dad and I attended Vision Forum’s annual Father/Son retreat in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Many great memories were made during this special time with my Dad. I’m so grateful we had the opportunity to do this together!

In September my Dad officially accepted the job in Texas and resigned from his current job. He moved down here in mid October while the rest of us stayed in Michigan waiting for the house to sell.



Our home sold in 40 days! We were so grateful that it did not take too long.

Our stuff leading the way!

During our last days in Michigan, we got to see A LOT of people to say our last goodbyes. Here are some pictures:

Our “Framily” (Friends/family) the B’s.



Some more “Framily,” the M’s.

The Bright Lights group.

And so many more great friends…..

Our dear friends and fellow homeschoolers, the R’s.



Our friends from church, Mr. C and Mr. R.

Our wonderful youth director from church, Mr. K.



Our assistant youth director, Mr. J.

Our Worship Pastor, S.

And then early one morning……

All aboard!!!

And we’re off!

And so we embarked on a journey, and that journey would lead us….



Home.

Christmas 2012.

 

And so our journey came to an end, as 2012 was gone and 2013 had come. Not everything in 2012 was good; our grandparents' health continued to deteriorate until their deaths in January and February of the following year. Our church in Michigan went through some difficult times in the summer and spring. And as often happens in the course of life, we had to say goodbye to some friends and family who had been ushered into eternity. Overall, 2012 was a big year of change. But through it all, God was with us. The year 2012 is no doubt a year that will be remembered by our family forever. God taught us so many things, and we made so many long-lasting friendships. I wouldn’t ever take back one moment lived during that epic year of our lives!

Celebration and Goodbyes

~Sunday (December 1~

Last Sunday, our family celebrated a special milestone: living in Texas for one year! In some ways, the past year has flown by, and in others, it feels like we’ve lived in Texas forever! This has truly been one of the most blessed moves we’ve ever experienced. We could not be more thankful for all that God has done in our lives this past year!

Of course, we celebrated by starting our morning off with our church family. J We brought our grandparents to church with us, and afterwards, we went out to celebrate! We took them out to a restaurant that opened not long ago. It’s an Italian place, known for its wood-fired pizza. We had been there once before, and were excited about returning!

We were *starving* and knew it would be awhile before our entrees arrived. So Daddy made the wise move of ordering appetizers for us. J We enjoyed delicious pizza rolls (pictured above) and some *amazing* mussels!

Our group at the table. The atmosphere was delightful; the restaurant was decked out for Christmas, and we were seated at a table in front of the fireplace. J

Finally our lunches came! It was well worth the wait; I think we love this restaurant even more! Roma and I shared the Caprese pizza pictured above. It was delicious!

For dessert, some of us shared the s’more pizza. This is honestly one of the best desserts I’ve ever eaten!

We had to split in different directions and run some errands after we finished our lunch. We got home and relaxed for a little bit, and then Dad and I took a friend down to Dallas to visit his Mom who is in the hospital there. The rest of the family relaxed at home while our grandparents started packing up their things.

~Monday (December 2)~

Monday was the sad day that my Abuela and Abuelo left. L Our visit with them flew by so fast! We left right after lunch to drive them to the hotel near the airport (they had a really early flight the following morning.) Thankfully, saying goodbye wasn’t as difficult because we know we’re going to see them soon!!