Parker is Here!

I know a lot of people in Scott's family wanted to see a picture of Parker Robertson - our newest nephew. He finally came home on Dec. 24 and I get to see him on Dec. 29! (thanks, mom, for the airline ticket!) He's adorable - looks so much like Peyton did when he was born - I can't wait to see him!

Scott and I are having a special date to the Melting Pot tomorrow night and REALLY looking forward to it. For Christmas, Connie and Clark got me a cook book filled with Melting Pot recipes and I've been browsing it for the past 2 days - it's definitely gotten by taste buds going for our big night tomorrow. We have our last service on Sunday morning and head to Costa Rica next Saturday (8 days from today) - it's been a good, long 3 months. We are ready to go "home" and set up our new home. :) I hope to post some pictures of our new place in Costa Rica within a week of being there. We'll have internet in our house, so I'll be able to keep up much easier!

Hello from Missouri

We've been on home assignment for 2 months and 1 day officially. It's been crazy, but a good time as well. We have a huge praise - we found a daycare that the kids can go to during the days in December. It is one of Candy's neighbors and she takes care of 7 children ages 2-5. We took Sydney and Elijah over there this morning and they were THRILLED to be with other kids and new toys. It will help Scott and I a ton to have some time to ourselves and get some of our work done during the day.

We found out that our house in Guatemala was packed up last week - we are praying that all the stuff made it into a box! :) We thought that we would have our stuff when we got to Costa Rica on Jan. 3, but found out that because of the holidays, they aren't shipping the stuff until the first week of January. So, now we are praying that it get there before the kids start school in February. Just kidding (hopefully) - they say it should only take 5-7 days once it leaves Guatemala. We'll see if that is the case.

We have a service tonight in Drexel, MO and one on Friday night in Bonner Springs and 2 on Sunday (in Lawrence and Gardner). We are definitely finding ways to keep ourselves busy - today we went to the Seminary and spoke with a missiology class. I'm healing up well from the hernia surgery that I had last Monday - not taking any more pain medicine and sleeping much better now. Still can't lay on my stomach, but hopefully that changes by next week.

I don't have lots of recent pictures of the kids, but here are a few from October.
Oh - the kids have noticed a lot of cemeteries as we've been traveling, and we've explained that that is were dead people are buried. Now, they always point out to us when we go past a cemetery with lots of head stones. Last week, we went to a Christmas tree farm to pick out a Christmas tree with Candy. Sydney looked at me and said "There's a lot of dead people here, mommy" - it cracked me up. She thought that the lines of Christmas trees were like headstones. Oh the thoughts of 3 year olds...

hey - if you want to see a REALLY cool video - check out the video bar. It's worth the 2 minute investment of time.

quick pictures!

Hey - I haven't kept up with my end of the bargain in updating the blog, I know. I have a ton of pictures to upload, and about 5 minutes to do it in. Some of the pictures are from Scott's birthday last week. We celebrated with homemade apple pie (I did pretty good, if I say so myself) and we bought him a new Guatemala soccer jersey, and tickets to the Guatemala/USA soccer game on Aug. 20. Elijah went with him to the game, and is sporting his new jersey as well.


Green faces - Sydney and Elijah "painted" their faces with green marker the day of the soccer game. It was a dry erase marker, so we scrubbed as much as we could, and then had to wait about 24 hours for the rest to wear off. Sydney looked like a little martian. It was a parenting moment when you know you shouldn't laugh, but you just can't help yourself. Since we laughed (after being upset for about 10 minutes) I expect to see marker on both of their faces in the near future.


What i want to be when I grow up - Sydney and Elijah went to school last friday dressed as what they want to be. sydney wants to be a painter (for now) and elijah a police officer. The funny part for Elijah - he was all dressed, and as he was coming down the stairs he said "Mom, if I'm a police man, where is my mustache?" - I laughed and told him we could make a mustache - so check out his upper lip. Apparently all police officers in his life have a mustache. (I just realized I haven't transferred these pictures to my computer. they will come shortly.)

Lastly - please pray for us. We have 4 weeks left in Guate. Emotions are starting to run high as goodbye are being said and stuff is being sold. We also have TONS of work starting us in the face everyday. I'll have to send you a picture of what our house looks like soon - we've sold almost everywhere that we have to sit. We are down to the Chiefs chair & 2 foldable garden chairs. It's kinda sad, but at least we've recouped some of our money on the stuff before we leave... :)

We found a School in Costa Rica!

Hey guys - I just got back from a trip to Costa Rica, and Scott and I had the opportunity to visit 2 schools for the kids. We liked both of them, but there was one that really stuck out to both of us. Without even talking about pros/cons, we just asked each other if we had a gut feeling on either of them. We both said that we liked the Methodist school - and the decision was made. We talked with administration at "Colegio Metodista" for about an hour, and are REALLY excited to enroll the kids for next year. Their website is www.metodista.ed.cr if you want to check it out (it's in spanish, but it has some pictures you might want to see)

Sydney will start their Pre-kindergarten program and Elijah will be in there "preparatoria" program. They both will have school days that start at 7:15AM and end at 12:30PM. The first half of their day will be in Spanish and the second half of their day will be in English. This is the part that we really liked - it's preparing our kids as bi-cultural kids. They will study certain subjects in each language - not just study the language itself. They are a school that goes all the way through high school, if we choose to keep the kids there that long. The "Prepa" area (where our kids are) is separate from the elementary, which is separate from High School.

They also offer extracurricular activities in the afternoon after school, until 2;30PM. They have a soccer program that we will consider putting Elijah in (he's been DYING to play soccer for the past year). They mentioned a ballet class that Sydney would probably like, but we'll have to play it by ear - if she's really old enough to stay at school that long.

Here is a picture of the soccer field and a typical "prepa" classroom.


We also got to check out our future house on the campus of SENDAS in San José, Costa Rica. It's on the seminary campus, so it's RIGHT next door to lots of other missionaries. We've been told we will be in house 39, but with our experience, we aren't banking on it until our stuff is officially moved in. :) We did take advantage of looking inside it while we were on campus - it's not near as big as our house here in Guate (which is good for me - I hate cleaning!), but it is 4 rooms with a decent kitchen/dining room and 2 living room areas. A big plus to the homes there, is that they all have screened in back porches - so that is another area that we can use as "living" area. we also will have a decent backyard - the kids (and me) are already vying for a dog when we move - we'll see what we can work out. Elijah and Sydney are thrilled that there is a playplace right outside our front door - they plan on spending lots of time there. :) The website for SENDAS is www.sendas.ws if you want to see some pictures of the campus (again, it's in Spanish)



Please pray that our residency process moves along. Thanks Connie, for being the messenger in all of the formal applications to the Costa Rican embassy in the States. We'd be sunk without you. Scott comes home on Sunday night - he's been gone since July 9 - the kids are really ready to spend some time with him. Please pray for his safety, as he has a bus ride from Costa Rica to Tegucigalpa, Honduras (about 20 hours) and then has to drive a mini-van from Honduras to Guatemala (another 12 hours). He's going to be exhausted.

Love to you all.

Family Day at School

On Saturday, the kids participated in Family Day at school. I took some video that I will try to upload this week, so that you can see their "dances/songs" that they participated in. They had a lot of fun playing games as well. I've uploaded all the pictures to Kodak Gallery - if I missed your address with the invite to browse them, let me know, and I'll send the link. Here are a few pictures.

Faces painted at Family Day Elijah and his teacher, Mis Vanesa
Sydney and her teacher, Mis Sara

We've also started our time with Youth in Mission. They arrived on June 1st, and we've been running ever since. When you think about us, please pray for our health. Scott is running like crazy, with lots of trips, and to get sick doesn't really fit into our schedule. We have a group of 11 this year - 5 from Mexico and 6 from the States. They are a great group - ready to tackle anything. We are trying to enjoy our last few months in Guatemala as we are with them, so a few of our tourism activities include some of our favorite places (like Lake Atitlán) :)
The YIM group last Sunday

Scott and I also celebrated 8 years of marriage last week. We got away for a nice dinner at our favorite fondue restaurant - a couple of the Youth in Mission girls babysat for us. Scott surprised me with 3 dozen gerbera daisies and I got him the KU championship DVD. It's been a long time since we've both gotten each other a gift for the occasion.

Celebrating 8 years at Casa del Fondue!

Gerbs - My FAVORITE!

Lots of love to our dads - we hope that you had a great Father's Day. We are celebrating tomorrow night in our house, when Scott's back home. We are going to order pizza, and we made a butterfinger dessert. We think he'll like our plans... ;) Love, hugs and kisses to all.

em

PS - just for a change of pace, check out the video bar - Human Japanese Tetris is currently one of our favorites.

Costa Rica Info

Hey guys - I think we've told all of you by now that we are headed to Costa Rica (CR) next year. We've been told that the date that we need to arrive in Costa Rica is January 5th. SO - that means that we will need to have our whole house packed up before we leave for home assignment in October. They will ship our stuff (which supposedly will only take 1 week to arrive in CR) in the end of December. I've been looking up some embassy stuff for Costa Rica, because we need to start our residency process, and during the course of it, I found this info - thought it might be of interest to some of you (Costa Rica at a Glance). If it's not of interest, here are some pictures for you :)

Sydney's bedhead on Saturday morning

Fun with stickers - enough said.

Retreat in El Salvador

We had an awesome time in El Salvador last weekend - the kids LOVED the pools! They practically lived in them in the down time that we had. Every morning was filled with workshops/dynamics on team building and every evening we had a service with guest preacher Dr. Bill Selvidge. In the afternoons, we were pool babies. They had a HUGE pool with lots of shallow areas where the kids were really comfortable playing. In fact, Elijah even went underwater and started swimming! We were shocked! He loved it. Sydney wasn't so fond of being underwater, but floating on top was perfect for her. It was an all-inclusive resort, so we felt like we ate every 2 hours - snacks and sodas ran freely, you just had to show them your wrist band. Here are a few pictures...









Isn't this a hilarious picture? It was taken candidly
by another missionary. Who knows what Elijah was
up to?

We are packing up our suitcases tonight for our Florida/Indiana trip. The kids are really excited to be seeing so many relatives in the coming days. Please keep sydney in your prayers - she was diagnosed with mono on Monday, and has been battling some pretty high fevers for the past 4 days. Pray that the Lord takes the fevers completely away, and that he continues to guard her from other infections - with mono, she's more apt to catch something, since her immune system in compromised. Can't wait to see lots of you soon! We love you!

Random Picture Time

Just wanted to put up a quick post, because there are a few pictures of the kids that I wanted you to see. We leave for El Salvador today, for a missionary retreat, so I'm sure when we get back, I'll have more to post.


This is a picture of the kids last Sunday morning - they are both getting HUGE! Can't wait 'til you all can see them. I think Elijah is in a growth spurt - yesterday, we went to Burger King for lunch, and he ate 1 1/2 cheeseburgers...already walking in his father's steps! :)
This was space day at school. I didn't have a lot of time to create a "space helmet" so I covered their firefighter hats with foil. Sydney was confused all day - she didn't know if she was an astronaut or a firefighter!
About 2 weeks ago, we sold some stuff in a huge garage sale. While I was there, the people next to me had some little girl clothes that they were selling. This little sailor dress caught my eye - it was only Q10 ($1.25) - I thought it was a good purchase, every little girl needs a sailor dress at least once in her life. This picture was taken with my mom in mind - I knew she would love it.
This is a picture of the kids with their straight "excellent" report cards. Sydney looks hilarious in this picture - that's what happens with a shirt that too long, hair that's not combed and a funny "smile". As you can see, Elijah is just ECSTATIC that he's gotten perfect marks.

Well, we'll post some pictures and probably an album when we get back from El Salvador. Hope that you all have a GREAT day. Looking forward to seeing some of you in a few days! :)

Sydney's Singing Again

Just wanted to add a post, so that you all could check out Sydney's latest performance - singing Apple Red Happiness. It's on the video bar to the left of the screen - obviously click on the picture of Sydney, not the other kids... :)

Just a little bit of daily life

As you all can see, Sydney's been dressing herself lately! About a month ago, we started cutting out afternoon naps for the kids, and instituting 1 hour of afternoon "rest". The rest is more for me, than the kids on my afternoons! Anyway, both of the kids are confined to their bedroom until the alarm clock beeps, and they've found quite a few interesting things to do with their new found "alone time". About a week ago, Sydney came out of the room wearing this wonderful outfit (don't forget to notice the mismatched sandals) - I asked her why she put on 2 swimsuits, and she said it was because she was Jasmine, from Disney's Aladdin. I didn't ask any more. :) This will definitely be a picture she hates when she gets older...
This is just a funny picture of Elijah - we were at a birthday party that was outdoors, and by the time he was done drinking his drink, and collecting dirt on his upper lip, it looked like he had the beginning of a mustache. We laughed so much - I took the picture, so Elijah could see himself. He thought he looked cool. Basketball has become a favorite past-time in our home. You can see that Scott plays pure defense with Elijah - although, when Elijah's shooting, Scott doesn't block him (yet). Elijah's passion for the sport has been sparked because of our avid interest in the NCAA tournament this year, and we are SUPER excited to watch the Jayhawks in the final game tonight. Scott returns from Mexico this evening at 6:30PM, and the game starts at 7:20PM our time - we hope that he makes all of his flight connections and comes in on-time (if not early!), so that we can see the whole thing. Rock Chalk Jayhawk.

Just wanted to take a few minutes to update you all on our "daily" life. We've been praying for Oma and Grandpa Duecker - they've both had heart related surgeries in this past week, and we are so happy to hear that they are both recovering well. We are looking forward to our time in Florida and Indy in May - it's gonna be here in no time!

Time for Swimming!

It's March, which means that we have our swimming pool out, and our brackets filled in. Elijah and Sydney have been off school since Friday - so we've had quite a bit of time to fill up the wading pool and splash around. We've been enjoying our summer temperatures of 85 for the past few days.


Scott's been traveling with our Regional Director and our General Superintendent for the past week, and surprised us last night by coming home a day early! It was awesome to have him home, and the kids were SO surprised when they woke up this morning, and daddy came out of the bedroom! He leaves again on Saturday for another week in El Salvador and Honduras.

We've all officially filled out our brackets - Elijah and Sydney even filled theirs out. Elijah has KU winning the whole thing, and Sydney put her faith in Villanova (she can't even pronounce it, but that's who she wanted!) We have tomorrow and Friday as vacation days from work, so we are excited to watch the first rounds together. We've invited a few friends over to watch with us tomorrow afternoon - we are going to order Dominoes pizza (they have 2x1 on thursdays) and glue ourselves to college basketball.

I know it's been awhile since I've had a funny Elijah saying, but here's one for you all:
"Sydney, you better sit down and eat your cereal before it gets massagy" (instead of soggy)

Happy Easter to everybody!

PS - by the way, I changed the video bar - it's a classic. The first "box" is the original posting, but the second "box" is the funniest (I think)

Subscription Help

I figured out the subscription link...

1. click on the "Subscribe to the Armstrongs" link in the upper Left corner
2. it will take you to a screen that has you choose which format you want to receive the subscription in (Yahoo, AOL, etc.)
3. Choose one of these (I chose Yahoo, because that is what we use)
4. it will take you to a page that says "add to My Yahoo" - instead of clicking on this box, look at the bottom right hand corner. Here is where it has the option of having an e-mail sent to you when there are major changes (updates) to the blog.
5. Hope this clears it up - sorry it was so hard to figure out.

Sydney's 3!

I posted Sydney's birthday pictures to Ofoto, but I wanted to just put a few on the blog for those of you that didn't want to sit and look at 45 pictures! We had so much fun, and felt like we celebrated all day!

We went to her pre-school at 9AM and celebrated with her Cinderella Piñata and homemade cupcakes. She said that it was a lot of fun - it was so much easier for me to have her "party" at her school for 1/2 hour, instead of inviting lots of 3 year olds to the house for a 2 hour party. It was also the first time that Scott and I got to meet her classmates. Of course, we sang Happy Birthday to her (in English, so it was more like "oppy bear day to jew") (Elijah sings the english with a spanish accent perfectly - it's hilarious)

At lunch time, we let her open her presents and have the afternoon to play with them. She loved them all and is looking forward to spending her birthday money from Nana this weekend. Who knows what she'll come back with!

For dinner, we let her pick out what restaurant she wanted to go to, and she chose Pizza Hut. She ate 2 pieces of cheese pizza and shared a "Hut Sundae" with mom. She had lots of fun playing in the playplace with Elijah as well. Needless to say, after a full day of "Sydney celebration", Elijah wants to know how many more days until his birthday (3 months, for those of you that are wondering as well)

Even though it doesn't have to do with Sydney's birthday, I want to take the opportunity to say Happy Valentines Day to everyone. We love you all and are excited to see most if not all of you this fall (or sooner, for the Indy people!) when we are on home assignment. Have a SUPER day.

emily

Subscribe to the Blog

Hey Family! I just figured out how to add a link to this blog to "subscribe to this blog" - check it out in the upper left hand corner (there are no bells and whistles - it's just a plain text link). PLEASE sign up to get the subscription - then every time I update, you will get an e-mail from feedburner, instead of me. Add the website so that the notification doesn't go to your SPAM. Here are a few pictures of the kids, while we are here. :)




Also wanted to point out that today is Ash Wednesday. Scott and I always made a pretty big deal out of it with our youth group in the United States, and I woke up thinking about Ashlynn today. Ashlynn was a 13 year old girl in our group, and when we had an Ash Wednesday service that she was a part of, she decided to give up candy for the Lenten season. One of her friends told her "Ashlynn, how can you give up candy? You eat it everyday all the time!" And Ashlynn, with all the simplicity in the world said "If Jesus can give up his life for me, I can give up candy for him for 40 days." Her simple words have stuck with me to this day, and I'm always challenged to give up something that means a lot to me - because Jesus gave up his life for me. Maybe this year you are challenged to observe Ash Wednesday and the Lenten season in a different or new light.

Hairdos, Backpacks and Argentina

Hello once again! We are finally back into the swing of life here in Guatemala, after what proved to be a VERY eventful January. SO, without further ado, let's get going.

I'm sure you noticed by the title of this blog that a new hairdo was in store for someone - that someone turned out to be Sydney a little over 3 1/2 weeks ago, on a Sunday morning. It was on that fateful Sunday morning that we battled our first case of lice since arriving in Guatemala. I was combing her hair, getting ready for Sunday church, and I found a culprit. She'd been itching her head for about a week (in fact, when my mom was here for Christmas, she mentioned something about maybe it being lice), but I had checked and never found anything. So I went downstairs and told Scott that Sydney and I would NOT be going to church that morning, and that he needed to go buy some lice shampoo. The instant that I told him that, he started itching his head - it's amazing the psychological nature of lice! I spent the morning combing through Sydney's hair, and just could not get rid of all the eggs, so a hair cut was necessary. Sufficed to say, I went through the "I'm such a bad mother" phase for about 4 or 5 days, when I figured that she'd probably had it for about 10 - 14 days before we found it. After battling for another few days, we decided that we REALLY needed to cut her hair, because we kept finding more eggs that we were missing. So, the day before our Argentina trip, I cut her hair with a razor, and left some hair up front, so we could at least pull it back in a barrette. Amazingly enough, I got TONS of compliments on her cute hair cut while we were in Argentina - if they only knew... :) So, for now the saga of lice in our home is over, and we hope to not to to battle again for quite a few years, if ever. (By the way, we have gotten her hair cut by a professional since we got back home, so it does look better now! All of these pictures are from our time in Argentina, when she had the "mom cut")

Our trip to Argentina was great, but we are exhausted. The schedule that we were keeping with the kids was ridiculous - they were going to bed around 10:30 PM and getting up in the morning at 8AM (and this was sleeping in - we would have had to wake them at 6:30AM, if we had gotten them to breakfast). The kids really enjoyed going out to ministry sites, and they got to help us with doing the Vacation Bible School - the material they used for the VBS is material that we produced here in our Region, so the kids already knew all the songs and motions. They really enjoyed being with the other kids. Elijah also helped up run sound - he loved pushing the buttons on the CD player. Maybe we have a future sound man in the family? Scott and I were used heavily for our ability to translate - highlights of translating for Scott would be translating for Steven Manley in a prayer breakfast, and highlights for me would be translating 3 times for Lona Vonpat, former Mrs. Idaho with a powerful testimony of how God saved her from abuse, alcohol and drugs. We were really glad to be a part of this trip with 6 other people from our region - many of whom said that they felt the Lord continuing to call them into mission service. It was such a unique opportunity to serve alongside our people in missions - we don't regret doing it for one minute.

Finally, it's back to school time. On Monday of this week, Elijah started Kindergarten at Soñadores and Sydney is in the 3 year old nursery class. Elijah had a rough first day, because he didn't know his teacher, but since then he's been doing great. Sydney has continued to cry when left, but we had victory this morning - she walked in and said goodbye without a tear in her eyes. It makes me feel good to know that they are making the transition yet again.

Well, this is quite a long post. Hope you enjoyed the information and some details of what going on in our family life. We are looking forward to Sydney's birthday in 2 weeks - I'm sure I'll post something again when that comes around. Have a great week.

PS - I added a video bar to our blogspot - if you need a quick pick-me-up laugh, click on the first YouTube video, and watch one of our favorite, guaranteed-to-laugh, videos.