Plus three!

Last week we spent 8 days taking care of 3 precious children ages 6, 4, and 2. Their parents headed to the states for a conference. First Love is in the process of starting a Children's Home and this conference gave great information to help start the home.

Here are a couple of high lights from our week.

Rylee has studied French braiding on American Girl's hair from the internet and has taught herself how to french braid. It's pretty impressive!
And no we did NOT let Seth get his nails painted. I think he just liked looking at all of the fun colors :)
After french braiding the girls hair, she french braided her own! Even more impressive if you ask me :)
If the kids ate all their dinner, they got dessert...usually ice cream from the store here at the condos :) But this time was from Jollibee...which is like the McDonalds of the Philippines.

Coffee Anyone?

One of my many jobs these days is helping out at the coffee shop at Rylee's school once a week. It has been a lot of fun to learn how to make different drinks!

Vanguard is Faith Academy's mascot.

A New Friend

This morning we woke up to this little kitty right outside our back door. The girls, Hannah and Rylee, were so excited! And Lily was even more excited! However, we decided to move the cat down to the pool area...maybe then it will find a different happy home :)

In the Teens!

Rylee is officially a teenager now! She turned 13 February 8. To celebrate, I took Rylee to the Shangri la hotel to spend the night. Chris, and our new good friend Lindsay, joined us for dinner at Shangri la's wonderful seafood buffet. Rylee's actual birthday was during Outdoor Ed, so we celebrated early, since Rylee would be gone. After spending the night at the hotel, Rylee and I came home on Saturday and Rylee planned our day. We cooked, opened gifts and played cards. I think Rylee had a great day!

Laying out at Shangri la's beautiful pool :)
Lobster dinner!
Rylee had Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough frosted Brownies for dessert.

Jomar's Excitement

After Jomar's experience so far at the dentist, I expected him to be completely terrified about going back to the dentist. His last visit was to have a tooth pulled that had caused a horrible infection in his mouth. Well, unfortunately, he still needs a lot of work and needs to go back to the dentist a few more time because he has so many cavities.

So this Tuesday, I picked up him and Pauline to go to the dentist. Jomar's first words to me were, "Tita Carol! Tita Carol! Thank you!" I said, "You're welcome Jomar, do you know we are going to the dentist today?" He said, "YES!"

We arrived at the dentist and Pauline went first. At this point, I still wasn't sure if Jomar understood he had more work to be done, and the work was filling cavities. Pauline was scared and didn't let Dr. Diane do much, but we began with cleaning and Pauline will need to go back quite a few more times to get use to being there to let Dr. Diane work on her. She has many cavities and a broken off tooth that needs to be pulled.

After Pauline was finished, we had to go back to the waiting room before Jomar could go. I was talking to Pauline and after what seemed like 2 minutes, Jomar was not with me. I went back to the dental chair room and asked Dr. Diane, "Did Jomar come back here?" She said, "Yes, he is in the dental chair already. He's excited!" We were both surprised!

As you can see, Jomar is in the chair, happy and holding Dr. Diane's mirror so he can watch everything she does to clean his mouth, drill a cavity and fill it. What a precious boy he is!


Since Pauline was so scared, Dr. Diane let Pauline watch Jomar's cavity filling and explained to her everything she was doing. We are hoping Pauline will let work be done in her mouth this coming week as both Jomar and Pauline go back to the dentist.
Pauline helped hold Dr. Diane's tools as they worked. :)

God's Word

Chris and Eddie were able to give away Filipino bibles to the kids in prison. They handed out 29 bible so far. They gave to all of the kids and the social workers. Thank you to all of you who helped raise money for us to buy the bibles!

Bravery

This Tuesday, I took Joan back to the dentist for her last check up. She is cavity free now and doesn't need to go back for about 4 months. Yay Joan!
Jomar also went to the dentist with us to have a tooth pulled. Last week, his cheek started to swell with infection from a bad tooth. Dentist Diane saw him last Thursday to prescribe an antibiotic for him. Without the antibiotic to kill the infection before the pulling, the novocaine wouldn't work to kill the pain.

I was very nervous about this appointment. With Jomar's physically abusive background, he tends to be a quiet child and I was afraid if he felt pain he wouldn't say anything and shut down on us. He was very brave! And Dentist Diane was wonderful. She talked to Jomar the whole time and told him what she was doing and told him if he felt any pain to raise his hand. After the tooth was out, Jomar sat with me for a few minutes and then squatted against the wall and wouldn't talk to us or look at us for about 5 minutes. Then he quickly emotionally came back to us, picked a toy out of Dentist Diane's toy box and I took him to McDonald's for ice cream. I praise the Lord for protecting this boy and for providing a great Dentist to take care of him.