Ele Chegou!

My sweet Brazilian friend had her baby boy on Monday via C-Section. Vinicius was born at 9am and weighing in at 3.5 kilos. Praise the Lord for his safe arrival. Rosileni is well and recuperating and Edivanio and the girls are filled with excitement over the new family member.

Just to fill you in: Edivanio works at Fiel with Rick and they are our next door neighbors. Rosi is my dearest friend and is always serving others around her. Their girls are like big sisters to James. We miss them very much.

Congratulations friends! The Lord is good!

Okay, I'm Back...........Finally!

Thanks for your patience dear friends. We have been traveling for what seems like a month now. Here are some of the places we have visited lately:

Raleigh, NC

Greenville, SC

Nashville, TN

Washington D.C.

Culpepper, VA

Roanoke, VA

So now we are back in Melbourne, FL settling into a routine again.
Enjoy the photos.

My sister Carol and Lilah at the 1st annual Garcia Fall Festival. A fun time for all!

The weather was wonderfully cold in Raleigh and we enjoyed bundling up. (Something we don't get to do too often.)

We then headed to Nashville for a short visit to our home church. I was able to have lunch with two college friends Stacey and Hannah during our two day visit.Love you Tia Hannah. Will you come visit me in Brazil next year?

After church Sunday, we had lunch with my German friend Maike and her beautiful family. Two weeks ago, she officially became an American citizen. Hooray for Maike! Such good news.

James had a blast playing with Maike's children. Rick captured James in mid-air while Sara watched on.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend my 10 year high school reunion. It was a real treat to see all of my favorite girlfriends from my childhood. Even after all this time, we have managed to keep in touch on a regular basis. I sure do love these gals!

I was so excited to show off my wonderful hubby to all my friends. He's the best, God was so good to me! I couldn't help but feel proud.

Here is a photo of my friends and the children at the reunion picnic. My friend Heather is holding Lilah. (She has 3 beauties of her own.) Notice James wanting to break loose. There is something about turning 3 years old and not wanting to pose for photos any more. He is just too busy to stop for the camera. Anyone with kids have this same problem? Ugh!

My dad, a.k.a Papa, is about to referee a soccer game. We brought the kids to watch him and the game. James loved it!

Papa and Lilah sharing a happy moment.

Not sure if you can notice Lilah's face or not. She is giving me the most darling smile. I sure love this girl!

James had so much fun playing soccer with his daddy on the sidelines. Notice his first pair of cleats, he is so proud of them.

Both with silly faces.....James and cousin Alli- she is just 3 months older than him. So nice to have cousins close in age.

Beautiful girls Lilah and cousin Alli. Love that smile!

With matching pajamas too!

Thanks to Aunt JJ for capturing this beautiful smile.

Still Kickin'

Yes, my dear friends...............it has been a while! So much has happened. We are back in the states for a couple months to travel and speak at churches, visit family, and spend the holidays with them. Here are some photos from Halloween. Buzz Lightyear to the rescue! Little Miss Muffet and her spider!

James' cousin Sarah was such a big help taking him from door to door. Those driveways were steep and hard to push a double stroller up them. Thanks Sarah! The ride home James' loot!

More pictures to come of James' 3rd birthday party, our pastor's conference, our visit with my sister in Raleigh and my 10 year highschool reunion.

Spring Bike Ride

On Saturday, James participated in the annual First Day of Spring Bike Ride that his preschool puts on. The children decorated their bikes with a spring theme. Here James is showing off his tricycle. The course that the school chose was, in my opinion, difficult for the small children to cycle. At one point the road descended and the parents had to coast their kids down the hill. And of course, we had to push them back up the hill on the way back. Let's just say I got my workout in this weekend.James had such a wonderful time. He got a medal for his participation. James also won a trophy for the cutest decorated bike. He was so proud of himself; he even asked to sleep with his medal and trophy that night.

Lilah slept through the entire bike ride. Special thanks to my friend Debra for pushing Lilah. There was no way that I could have pushed both of them up that hill!

My Apologies

Well, let's just say I got in trouble yesterday by several family members who were upset that I didn't include any photos of Lilah in my post. So, to appease them.........................

Week in Review

Life has kept us busy. Last week the FIEL ministry (faithful in Portuguese) participated in Brazil's Christian Booksellers convention in Sao Paulo. This is our third year at the event. We think it is extremely important for us to have a presence there as Brazil is being saturated by the prosperity movement. So FIEL makes available books and materials with sound doctrine. Overall, it was an encouraging week with many new contacts made.

I have been preparing for James' 3rd Birthday party- VeggieTale theme. (Os VeggieTais in Portuguese) It is relatively new here and has just entered on Brazilian TV. At the convention last week, Rick and I met the lady that owns the licensing rights for VeggieTales South America. Rick spoke with her for a considerable amount of time and she mentioned something about Rick designing products for her. Exciting and a nice complement, but not the reason we came to Brazil.

The FIEL team is gearing up for our annual Pastor's conference which will take place the first week of October. We are expecting over one thousand in attendance. Please pray that the Lord will use this event to edify the lives and ministry of these pastors and everyone involved. I will post more about this as it nears.

We are going to Sao Paulo on Friday to apply for an American passport for Lilah. We have already applied and have received her Brazilian one. It's adorable. I think often how fortunate my children are growing up bilingual and living in two different countries. They will have a better understanding of the world and an appreciation and respect for other cultures.

We had a little photo shoot with James at our neighborhood park. Because there were so many distractions it took forever for him to look at the camera longer than just a quick glance. Finally, the ice cream man wheeled his cart behind Rick with the camera and aided us in getting this award-winning smile. And of course, to show our gratitude we bought some ice cream!

As we were stuck in traffic on the way to Sao Paulo, several ambulance and police cars kept passing us by. We soon figured out that the commotion was caused by this man in a red shirt wanting to end his life. Rick grabbed his camera and took these photos. Unfortunately,this is somewhat a common occurrence here. It is sad to see such desperate people................if only they had Jesus in their lives.

We don't know what happened to this man.

We were thankful that James was asleep through this. This is something I didn't want to have to explain.

More on Lilah

Mommy and her favorite little girl.

Special thanks to our friend Joanne for bringing down Lilah's baby bedding while on a business trip to Sao Paulo. We love it- thanks!

We decided to keep the color of our former guest room as it would cost a small fortune to replace the red with a pastel. (Not to mention the labor with all the coats needed!) So we were able to find this bedding set with red already in it. Lilah is happy with it too!

A photo of Lilah's books (formerly James') and baby toys that she will one day enjoy.

Lilah hanging out with her crib buddies.

The Hug. The Kiss.

The Smiles.

Plane show

Some of you may not know that we live across the valley from Embraer, a huge factory that makes passenger jets for Delta, Continental, and American Airlines and many others. I bet many of you have flown on these jets not knowing they were made right here in our backyard in Brazil. Last Sunday, happened to be Family day/Open house at Embraer. We knew of this not because of the several Embraer employees that go to our church but because of the loud air demonstration happening outside our apartment window. What an incredible sight to see 3 huge passenger jets flying low in formation! It seemed as if we could just reach up and touch them from our balcony. And the roar was exciting too! James was screaming with delight! (check out the clip) I only wish our photos could have been better..........