More pics anyone?

Mom showing off her Valentines Day flowers.  As we were leaving the church on Valentines Day a couple of our young women came running toward us with this little bunch of flowers one of them had picked off a near-by bush and presented them to Mom.  A little of gesture of love that makes all the hassle and hard work worth the effort.  We celebrated the day with pan negro and jugo (local dark bread and juice). 

  
These three kids came by one day in their horse-drawn cart as I was standing out on our front balcony and asked if I wanted them to pick up our garbage which was in a container in front of our apartment building.  There was no request for payment or anything -- they were just interested in whatever might be of value in our garbage.  So I said sure, and asked them to take the garbage that was laying on the other side of street too, which they readily agreed to do.  After they were done they were ready to go but I told them to wait a minute and went and filled up a little zip-lock bag of spare change and dropped it down to one of them.  I asked them to pose with their loot so I could take a picture of them and then they went on their way rejoicing.  An example of the stark poverty and harsh conditions some kids grow up under. 

    

Elder and Hermana McCoy with Hermana Rosa Pinto -- an absolute sweetheart and our dedicated Relief Society President.  We took some goodies over to her house for her birthday.

A horse-drawn cart "fresh" produce vendor cruising by our apartment.  Even produce that we buy in the grocery stores down here has to be thoroughly inspected and washed before consumption.  Still pretty pre-modern in many respects here in sunny Saenz Pena Argentina. 

   

A shot of a yard maintenance man using the universal tool -- a machete -- to cut the neighbor's "lawn".  Almost everyone uses a weed-eater -- we've seen two lawn mowers down here and they were both electric.  Mom's beside herself not being able to ride around on her lawn mower cutting trails out in the woods.  (ha ha)

Well, that should do it for now.  Sure do love and miss you all.  Mas mas tarde.

XOS,
Dad
   

Latest happenings

OK, let's see if our refurbished little computer is up to the task of posting a few new photos but first, gotta say thanks for the latest contibutions.  Looks like Emma's got more hair than her daddy already!!  (I can see it now, we're going to have a bunch of hairless sons -- heck, they're practically there already.)  She is so cute with those big blue eyes and little fountain hairdo.  And we can't wait to meet the newest addition -- Jett -- what a beautiful little boy.  Sure glad everything went OK and he and mom are doing so well.  It's at these times that we realize how much we're missing -- we've already missed out on two blessings and now a third, along with baptisms and birthdays, etc.  And we thought we were so tough.  Finally, thank you Darek for posting that picture of you guys doing the sock hop thing.  I actually went to sock hops when I was in Jr high school -- living in southern CA at the time.  And don't know if y'all know it, but my first car was a '57 Chev Belair two-door hardtop which I bought in 1968 after my mission for $500.  If you're interested some time there's a picture of it in the family slides (disc one 1968-72).  I drove it down to BYU and dated Mom in that car -- what a kick.  She was so impressed, she agreed to marry me the following year (May 29, 1969).   
Now for a few pics -- hopefully.

 

This is the Longhi family who all sang a special musical number in Sacrament meeting one Sunday recently.  No big deal until I mention the fact that the father of that family has been inactive for 20 years and this was a way to get him back to Church.  He loved it and I think is about ready to be re-baptized.  What great people.

Well, the photo up-load isn't working worth a darn so I'll try again later.  In the meantime, thought I'd share an experience.  We came out of this grocery store the other day with a load of groceries and this little steet urchin comes running up and wants to sell us some bread.  So we say no thanks, we just bought a bunch of bread -- besides we never buy and eat stuff sold on the street.  Meanwhile we're looking for a taxi to take us home.  So this little guy tells us that there aren't any taxis because there was a wreck a couple days earlier and a taxi driver was killed and all the other taxi drivers were at the funeral.  But, he says, if he can find us a taxi somehow, would we buy some bread from him.  So I relented and he hails a taxi somewhere down the street.  We pay him his inflated price for the bread and get in the taxi.  On the way home I'm talking to what I thought might be one of only a few taxi drivers on duty and when I ask him if there'd been an accident in which a taxi driver was killed, he says no he hadn't heard anything, but he would've heard if it had happened.  So I recounted the story we'd been told by our little friend and he just laughed saying that he'd just made it all up.  Guess our little street hustler figured he had to come up with something to get us to buy his bread one way or another.  Pretty creative, but made me feel even more sorry for the kid -- he's become a pretty skilled hustler at an early age and is headed for a life of scraping along the bottom.  I'm going to look for him though next time we go to that store and have a little chat with him -- who knows maybe we can actually get through to him and point him in another direction. 

Well, that's all for now.  Sure love you all and appreciate your love and support as we serve so far from home.  This has been an incredible experience and we can definitely see the Lord's hand in our affairs. 

XOS,
Dad

 
 
 

Meet Jett

Well so the little dude is almost 2 weeks already and doing just great. He's a super easy baby, just eats and sleeps. And just so cute which i didn't think would happen since Brynn is freakin adorable but we have cute babies. Have to make up for my crappy deliveries somehow i guess.Plus i haven't had to experience the whole weight of being home by myself since Dal had a week off and then Erin's been here. I'm sure it'll get a little crazy once everyone's gone since Brynn is attached to me at all times seems like. We pierced her ears on V-day and it's SO cute. It was Dal's idea and she did NOT like it one bit but it's just too dang cute. 

Marschell came for a couple days too so we hung out and went to the mall and had our nice little photo session as you can see below. It was fun. And well yep, things are just going. Weird to have 2 babies but so far so good. I plan on being home-bound for quite a long time. Alrighty then, we'll have to skype so you can meet him sometime. Love you both, hope all is well. xos!

CAUTION

CAUTION:  Please ignore comment 1 to "Grease Lighting" -- Wed, Feb 13.  I don't know who accessed our blog but it's obviously not anybody we want to have anything to do with.  More later.
XOS,
Dad 

He's HERE!!!

So the little dude's name ended up being Jett McKay (we had a running poll going at the hospital for all the nurses to vote on) and so that's what we went with. Things started out the same as with Brynn- i was induced with a balloon catheter and then put on pitocin only these contractions were SO much worse and an epidural was asked for a lot sooner this time altho i still had to wait another hour after i wanted it b/c the doc was giving one to another lady. Talk about torture! By Sat. afternoon i was progressing very nicely and then it was to the point where i was supposed to start pushing which is weird when you can't feel anything and it seems like you're about to poop yourself ( i know you want details!). 

Pushed for almost 2 hours but his head just wasn't dropping so the next option was for the doc to use a suction thing on his head while i still pushed but still nothing. By this time my epidural is wearing off and it was NOT comfortable. So back to the OR where things went the same again. Didn't even cry when he came out, he's so tough already. He weighed 6 lbs. 14 oz. and 20.5 in. long so he's real skinny and "tall." I got another infection which meant he had to be put on antibiotics as well so they took him to poke and prod on but the nurses said he never made a peep.

Yeah so we're home now, both doing well. Brynn doesn't know what to think but she gives some nice kisses (open-mouthed) to the little guy. It's weird to have 2 babies and they're EXACTLY alike, it's crazy. Brynn seems huge now but has learned some new tricks....she waves and claps and shakes her head "no" to every question you ask which is pretty hilarious. Dal has all week off so we're just getting used to all this but it's super fun and newborns are so easy. Maybe i'll say differently once he goes back and all my help leaves. Welp you're invited to the blessing of course but no pressure to come! :) Hope all is well and things are enjoyable. Love you both, xos!

Grease Lighting

We hopped socks.

We Have Hair!!!!

Due to the awesome bow at the top of her head I think it's safe to say this girl finally has some hair. It's thin and wispy like her Dad's but it's starting to grow. She still won't walk on her own but she cruises all over the place - especially up and down the stairs (about gives me a heart attack but she loves it). Her bottom two teeth give her the cutest grin around. She is a very happy and social baby. When daddy comes home she gets so excited (and so do I). 

Love and miss you both!

 These pics are at Aunt Amy's house (some kind of souvenir from a trip)....her daddy is such a bad influence on her.

Mas fotos

Guess I still have a few things to learn about taking pictures in the shade but here's Mom with a couple of our young women whom we'd taken school shopping, and then bought them ice-cream cones at one of the many sidewalk cafes here in town.  They basically had nothing in the way of notebooks, paper, pencils, pens, etc. so we helped out with some of that.  By way of introduction, there's Ailen (near right) 15 and Lili 13 -- both good girls who come from strong families -- and they're just like teenage girls everywhere, but live under what we would consider sub-poverty level conditions.

Here's Hna McCoy teaching music (piano) lessons to one of our youth -- there's a little group who, so far, are pretty motivated to learn despite not having a piano or keyboard at home to practice on.  The first song Mom taught them? -- "I am a child of God".

Here's a shot of our branch holiday fiesta -- we had over 100 people show up -- wish they'd all come on Sunday.  The man on the right is a member of the high council assigned to serve as my first counselor -- there are a lot who do double duty  All those at the table with him are his family -- great people -- the Fagunde's (originally from Europe).

Well, don't know how much more I can post at this point -- our computer is getting slower and s-l-o-w-e-r.  So I'll say adios for now (that's castellano for good-bye for now for all you gringos).
Love ya all lots,
Dad    
  


 

Summer-time in the city

I remember a rock tune that went something like: "Summer-time in the city, back of my neck gettin' hot and gritty..."  That's kinda how it is down here, although today it's actually pretty pleasant -- not too hot and a nice little breeze blowing.  The other day however, it was a whopping 47 degrees (Centigrade) or for you north-Americans 115 degrees Fahrenheit!!  Thank goodness for "Appendix A" of the missionary handbook that allows us as senior missionaries to adjust our schedule somewhat.  But before we get too far along here, want to thank those who've recently posted on the blog -- thx Shars -- Brynn is too cute in her cougar outfit, Darek for the "biblioteca" shot -- Kennedy looks so studious, and Marschell for all the pics of the holidays and CA trip -- brings back memories of some other CA trips in years past.  So how 'bout a few pics of our own -- assuming I can get it to work right.

Here's a shot of our branch -- the Obrero Branch on a typical Sunday, although attendance was down a little that day.  Great people -- trying to live the gospel under pretty challenging circumstances. 

 
 
A shot of Hermana McCoy with a couple of English-speaking sister missionaries -- sent here by our interim Argentine mission president -- very thoughtful and appreciated.

 
I hesitate to post this, but the cupcakes the sisters made were so tasty I could hardly contain myself.

Well, I tried to post a couple more pics but I guess the little engine that could is all worn out for one day -- apparently it can only handle a few at a time.  I'll try again later.  In the meantime, sure do love you.  Thanks for all your prayers in our behalf.  We pray for all of you every day too. 
XOS,
Dad

Holidays/Vacation

This must be a record or something!  Another post in about a month's time!

Lots of pictures because I think it's more interesting to look at than read long text : )

 

 

 

New Year's Eve and we're making birthday cupcakes

(well Shar made 'em, I just put a silver tray out :)

 

 

Not sure what Spencer's puzzled about but it's

fascinating apparently!

 

 

Happy Birthday Sharla and Heidi!!

If you look close enough you'll see the S and H frosted

on their cupcakes.  Shar's idea, I think?  Looks like Shar

needs more than one though!

 

 

Ok, so the Kitty clock was given to Heidi and the Dog

 clock to Shar from Gpa and Gma.  The amusing part is that

they actually made cat and dog noises as the alarm sound.

Who thinks of these things?!

 

Just thought you'd want a cute pic of

one of your grandkids : )

 

And another one!  She just needed her

zebra print pacifier, instead, to be complete.

 

 

I guess I needed a new set of knives, thanks to

Gpa and Gma.  Guess I better not get angry!  Haha.

 

 

 

 

 

Palm Springs Road Trip

 

Here's a pic of an Indian owned canyon near Palm Springs

and this is part of what the canyon looked like.  Pretty

cool huh?

 

 

The beginning of our hike after a potty break.  The

Indians were nice enough to hide the porta potties behind

a fence.  Makes it somewhat classy!

 

 

Nothing like driving 1300 miles for a nice

family pic in nature.

 

 

All the kids hanging out for a rest.

 

 

The lovely ladies of our group!  Me and the girls with

our neighbor and friend Jennifer Hollandsworth.

 

 

The dudes of the group!  Tom Hollandsworth, Paul,

Mitchell Hollandsworth, and our boys.

 

 

This was a cool 'elephant trunk' palm tree.  It's crazy

how this thing grew like that!

 

 

More cool scenery.

 

 

Your cute grandkids.  Well maybe they're

getting too old to be 'cute' but definitely good-

looking anyway!

 

 

Here's inside the condo we stayed at and it was 'the boys'

night to make dinner.  Thus, the pizza but they made a

fancy salad with pears and roasted walnuts and cranberries : )

 

 

The girls were funny together in the pool.  They made

up a syncronized swimming routine that they performed

for everyone.  It was awesome!

 

It looks more like that party train people do at dances

but they're actually trying to wrestle each other : )

 

This makes me laugh because it reminds me

of the huge round glasses Erin and I had in Jr.

High.  Karli looks way happier in them than

I ever did!!  Maybe becasue she'd never have

to really wear them.

 

 

 

We also got to see Jason and Brooke's family on our way home and that was a lot of fun!  Unfortunately all the pics I took on my phone were stinking blurry : (  Should've used the better camera.  Dang it.  Whelp, that's it folks!  This still took about two hours and now I need to get ready to go to school!  At least on Fridays it's only lab and it starts at noon : )   Love you guys, thank you for serving a mission and be looking for my package! 

 

 

Love,

Marschell