A loose tooth!

Well, tonight we discovered Corrie's first loose tooth. If you could have seen the pride and delight on her face and heard the giggle as she experienced the phenomenon! She has anticipated this event for some time, and now at six years, two months, and five days...a wiggler. Take a good look at this smile for it will soon be changing. For the grandmas, it is her lower left central, and actually her lower right central is moving slightly, too. Daddy was a little shocked at the turn of events, and realized that he simply wasn't prepared for holes in her smile and grown up teeth! But he'll probably have a couple of weeks to get used to the idea.

Roasting Marshmallows

Corrie and Ransom have been lamenting for months the fact that we do not have a firelplace - mainly because they want to roast marshmallows. Corrie decided to take matters into her own hands and made her own fire. Here's a picture of the kids roasting their marshmallows in the middle of the living room.

Little House on the Prairie

Lately, Corrie has been begging to watch Little House on the Prairie pretty much every day. She likes to turn off all the lights, make popcorn, and move the couch so that we can sit in the "Jackson Movie Theater." We bought Season 1 while we were in the States and we are half way through. Even Brian is starting to find a place in his heart for that buck-toothed girl.

Corrie Story #4

I was stopped from entering the kitchen one morning by a little girl anxiously explaining that she had learned her lesson and she would never do it again. My curiosity piqued, I inquired of the circumstances of the lesson learned while easing my way into the kitchen. Corrie went back to cleaning her mess and told of how she had decided to try peanut-buttering her toast BEFORE she put it in the toaster!

Easter

The week's rain paused for a beautiful, sunny Easter. We met a group from the school for a sunrise service (at 7 AM no less! You've got to love Spain.) and breakfast. The hill we were to scale being too muddy, we climbed the stairs to the dry and warm third floor of the school to watch the sunrise behind glass. We spent the hour singing resurrection hymns and with individuals sharing verses or praises. Our "shy" 6 year old stood up among the first of the volunteers and read a song she had written for Easter:
"Glory to the Lord
Glory to the Lord
Glory to the Lo-o-ord
You are the greatest
I love You
Thank You for Easter
Thank You that you were bo-orn
Thank You for everything
You are wonderful, Lord"
Later that afternoon, we had the Nichols (the family we "church" with) over to our house for an Italian Easter dinner. Corrie did an encore of her song for us, this time with the drum (it was written to be a drum song!) Here's a pic. We had a couple visiting the school with us as well. We hope you had a pleasant Easter, too. =)

Sevilla

Here are some of the sights from Sevilla.

The Torre de Oro:

The Plaza de Espana:

The Cathedral:

The Bullring (with a lovely head in front):

The Alcázar (with a not-so-lovely crowd in front):

and its gardens:

The Guadalquivir River:

La Giralda Tower:

And Sara picked up a hot date (below) using her come hither look (above) for flamenco night.

The Pepecar

For Andrea's Spring break, we decided to do a little traveling, since Sara was leaving for home half way through the break. That means Brian worked up the nerve to rent a car and attempt driving in Spain. Remember that all of his life-experience in driving a stick shift adds up to about 2 hours. So we rented the "Pepecar." If you rent a car from pepecar.com, it is a lot cheaper than other places because they put advertisements on the car. I think the average Spaniard would feel too silly to rent a Pepecar, but since we are already the weird Americans, we figured we would save the money. We hoped that at least everyone would understand Brian's bad driving maneuvers if they could see at a glance that we were tourists. Fortunatley our Pepecar didn't look like the Pepecar pictured above. Here's the one we got:

Nothing takes you out of your comort zone like renting a car (in broken Spanish) that you can barely drive, to go to a place you have never been, which is 6 hours away, with a car full (I cannot emphasis the word "full" enough) of innocent loved ones, with funky road signs, lots of pedestrians, and a Pepecar sign on your doors. But, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," and needless to say, we survived.

Ransom's Birthday

Ransom's 4th birthday was on March 28th. He requested a "bull" birthday, so that's what he got. Now that he is four, he has changed his favorite color to red, his favorite number to four, and has decided that on his next birthday he is going to be ten.

Corrie wore her hair in "horns" for the event.

Say "bull!"