So, we are starting to fall into a routine now that Mishell is home with us. We sat down and made a morning schedule yesterday. It involves an hour of school each morning (heaven help me, I was never cut out for home schooling), cleaning jobs daily (Hallie and Mishell each have a bathroom, Jace has the garbages, Devin and I have the kitchen and the floors and Flor's job is to stay out of the way). After cleaning time, we have an hour of play time, then lunch, then an outing.
Today we walked to find our church for tomorrow. The church is rather close by and took us about 20 minutes to get there. We then had lunch out (Gus!) and then walked to the market from yesterday for some celery for chicken noodle soup for dinner. We then walked home the long way. We have a lot of downhills to get anywhere and a lot of uphills to get home. It's good for us, right? The kids did pretty well and there was only minor complaining. We have also instituted a point system for behavior since we have a lot of togetherness this next little while. When the child has 20 points, they can pick their reward, such as an outing with mom and dad, extra ipad time, etc. We can take away points too, which unfortunately, we had to do liberally today.
After we got home from our long walk, we made all the kids take a nap. It was much needed. I think we have just had so much going on this week and a lot of newness and a lot of fun things. Falling into a routine added to the fact that the kids are over tired and over stimulated meant we had some behavioral stuff today, mostly with Jace, but a little bit with everyone. Mishell got in trouble for the first time today after she pushed Flor. I hope she just feels like she is one of us as we aren't treating her any different than the other kids. She is a part of the family, which means she gets chores and she also gets discipline when it is warranted. After she pushed Flor, I just said "Mishell, no! We don't do that." That was enough. She looked pretty scared (I am fairly scary). I then made her apologize to Flor and give her a hug and that was that. Nothing too major, but I think she was a little scared that I got after her.
I am noticing that Mishell is hesitant to try speaking English. We are talking more in English to her and prompting her to repeat words after us while pointing out objects. She only rarely will try the word; the rest of the time she just says nothing or says "I don't understand" in Spanish. I could see how this could get frustrating fast, but we are not pushing her too much so far. She has had enough changes in the past week. I am sure she will start to understand more soon and hopefully will feel confident enough to start trying English words.
Back to the day. I get so easily side-tracked, now don't I? After naps, the kids played games for a bit while I made dinner and Devin folded and put away laundry. After dinner, we took a taxi to the old airport where we met my dad and Sharon, who are here to visit us for a few days! They just got done with a tour of Peru with a tour group and stopped until Tuesday when they will return to the US. The Quito airport recently moved out about an hour outside of town. They took a bus to the old airport, where we met them. The old airport is now turning into a park/fair ground type deal. I don't know if they regularly have stuff going on there, but tonight there was some sort of festival with music, rides, and food booths. It looked quite fun. We will have to go back there another time. Kind of fun to have festivities out on the old runways. It is kind of sad to not have the planes fly overhead all the time like they used to last time. It was always a little scary, but cool as the planes would come down right between all the huge buildings in the middle of town and land at the airport right in the middle of everything. It totally makes sense why they moved it. :0
I have a whopping three pictures from today. Whoo hoo. Do forgive the boring post today! Things are moving along and we are still praying for a pronto court date. That will be the next big step in the process.
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| Chicken at Gus! This is a cheap, cheap place with fairly good food. And walking distance from our house! yay. |
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| The old airport. While we waited for grandma and grandpa, we went to check out what was going on. That bright light in the back is a ferris wheel. Fun place! |
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| Welcome Grandma and Grandpa! We are excited to have them visit us in Ecuador. |
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