A couple of members of our school got baptized the other night. Did I mention it was outside? And it was about fifty degrees out? Or that the water still had ice in it? Anyway, it was a beautiful spot. The snow just added a bit of glitter. The three getting baptized were literally thrown into the water, and the third was dropped. I don't think any of them will ever forget that experience.
One if the students is from Hong Kong, and she is teaching me Mandarin. I'm excited about this because it's a language I've always wanted to learn. It's very complex, and I only know a few phrases so far, but I have five years to learn (it's also for high school credit). I don't think I'll be learning any characters anytime soon.
Faith and Lydia have a new friend named Ellie. She's a native American that does Origami, and Faith and Lydia have figured this out. Now every evening before dinner, poor Ellie is stuck making paper elephants, swans, and baskets. She finally told them to go find her a pink elephant, but Faith and Lydia figured it out after a few days. Little girls, you gotta love 'em.

On Saturday, the DTS team reached out to some homeless. We fed them pizza and gave out clothes. These are people who live in a tent, even in the cold, with little babies who don’t get enough to eat. Most of them live on a “homeless site”, where they are given a free place to pitch their tent. A few of them found out that the government is evicting them from their site. They don’t have anywhere to go if they get evicted. Please keep our homeless neighbors in prayer. I’m looking forward to doing some other things like this every Saturday for the next two months.
Ah! Warm weather is amazing! It’s almost seventy degrees here in Colorado, and it feels so good! However, it’s supposed to snow this weekend. With all this weather change, I wonder how they keep their plants alive.
As I said before, if you ever have any questions about what we’re doing here in Colorado, write a comment and ask.

Random Ramblings

Here in Colorado, the weather is quite mysterious. On Monday, it was freezing cold and snowing (I went for a run). On Tuesday, it was really warm and we didn't need shirts (Rachel and I took the kids to the movies). Yesterday, it was cold again and raining, and now today, it's sunny out and looks warm, but it's chilly.

Our days look like this: in the morning Mom and Dad go to the base, while we (meaning my siblings and Rachel and me) stay home and do school and clean the house. Then we join the DTS students at the base for lunch, and while they go back to class we take the kids to the library or some other fun activity. Then we head back to the base and hang out until dinner, after which we leave for home. Kind of a chaotic schedule, but everyone is adjusting.

On Sunday afternoon we went for a hike in the mountains with one of the staff of YWAM as our guide. It was about a two mile hike, and as we got higher, instead of getting colder, we got warmer. After traveling back down the mountain, nine of us crammed into an eight passenger SUV. At least the view out the windows was beautiful, even if I couldn't feel my feet. :)

This has been Random Ramblings of a homeschooler, thanks for reading.

Lydia

My sister Lydia is not enjoying having Rachel be in charge. The other day Rachel was sitting across the room when Lydia tripped and fell. Lydia said, "Rachel made me fall, sissy!" with tears running down her face.
Then Lydia goes: "I don't like you, I don't want you in this family, so can I have some gum?"
So now Rachel has been rejected from the family, blamed for everything, called stupid, mean, and Frito, all in a week.
Lydia also has nicknames for several people in DTS. We have Lord Fluffy, Little Turtle, Lollipop, My Friend, and Jungle Tim. She also confuses two names and came up with Hellie.
Three year olds, you gotta love 'em, right? Don't worry, Rachel doesn't take anything personally. At least as she gets older she will hopefully be a very sweet person.

We're in Colorado, safe and sound. We are staying with one of the staff members, and we have the entire downstairs of her house, which includes three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living space. We were really blessed in that area. Today is the first day of DTS. It's going well so far, but Lydia is having a hard time with being separate from Mom.
Driving from New Mexico from Colorado, our trailer popped a tire. We unhooked the trailer, drove to a town, and got a new tire. Dad was getting discouraged when it took a couple of hours to start to put the tire back on the trailer. Finally a man who worked on trailers for a living stopped, and he had everything Dad needed to fix the tire. I believe the man was sent by God-it's not everyday a really nice man who works with trailers for a living pulls over, has all the tools needed, and gives up an hour and a half of his time to help complete strangers. We were delayed four hours, but we're all here safe and sound, the trailer made it with all of our stuff, and we're jumping in to learning more about the Lord.

Pictures of the Trip

Here are the pictures I promised everyone, including some of the Alamo.

Greetings from Texas! We're finally down south where it's warm. Traveling with my family is quite interesting. When we entered Kentucky, Lydia said "Are we in Chuck E Cheese?" Lydia also was glued to me the first day, wanting to sit with me the whole time. But the second day, she "didn't like me" anymore. Does that make sense to anyone?
Tomorrow we get to go see the Alamo. I'm pretty excited. So our sightseeing begins! There hasn't been much to see until now, except for the swamp and alligators in Louisiana. We actually camped right next to the swamp and heard the alligators barking. It was awesome!
Hopefully I will have pictures up soon, especially of the Alamo. We only have internet when we stay in hotels.
Please remember to pray for my mom. She has a fever. We are hoping she'll be okay to go sightseeing tomorrow. Thanks!