Yay!

It's official! My dad is coming down to live in Quito and work at Alliance Academy for a year. It's been a long process for him, trying to figure out where the Lord will be able to use him the most. He had a couple of options in the states as well, but we are excited to see what is in store for him here. We have been blessed to be able to see our family a lot in the last 2 1/2 years while we have been here in Quito. My dad Rick will wear many hats in working at the school... dorm kid mentor and authority (he will be living in the dorm at school), teaching Bible classes to teachers for CEU credit with ACSI, educating teachers about a couple of pieces of software that aren't really being used to their full potential, and helping out Josh here and there in the computer department... AND being a great dad and papa to his kids. Full plate! We know he will do just awesome here. He will likely be with us on the weekends, which will be a blast :)

Beautiful Bella on Mother's Day. The best gift ever. :)

Pico y Placa

This last week was the first week of Pico y Placa, a law that prohibits cars with certain license plate numbers from driving at certain times on certain days. The stated reasoning is to allow for better traffic flow (however, there are those who believe it's purely a political move) For, us we can't drive on Fridays from 7-9:30 am and 4 - 7:30pm. If we do and get caught, the consequence is $80 and our car confiscated for one day... the fines/confiscation times go up with each offense.

So, Josh and Jess get to school pretty early on Fridays, and we come home right away when school gets out. It could be worse - in Bogota, Colombia, where they have done this for years, there are two days with pico y placa :)

So... is it working? This was on front page of Wednesday's El Comercio newspaper... you tell me!

Crime

Two families in the AAI community had their homes robbed yesterday in the area we moved from in October. We dropped off our friend Sarah Brown at her home in that same area yesterday afternoon, and this is what we saw parked across her street. While crime is very high here, this was a first for us!

Here we go...

Well, I have never thought of myself as someone who is great in corresponding with people :) We have been in Ecuador for over 2 years now, and all the while, I have be awful at being consistent in updates and such. So, we'll give this a go... Hopefully this will help you see our lives more clearly and more often :)

Joy