Shopping & Autumn Trek

We are in the throes of speaking at various churches about the work with the Agta as well as getting ready to head back to the Philippines in January. Today Steve and I spent the day shopping in a city a couple hours away, and we had a very successful trip. Steve needed some lightweight, durable convertible pants (the kind that zip into shorts) so that he could wear them on the motorcycle then zip them down to shorts in the village heat then back to pants once the mosquitoes come out, and I wanted some stickers for my scrapbooking (I know, a little trivial compared to the village pants!). Well, we found a 50% sale on all stickers at Hobby Lobby (yay!), and we found several options for pants at Bass Pro Shops (ranging in price from $20 - $180). Amazingly, he actually like the $20 ones best (though in fairness, he didn't even try on the $180 ones!) so we got two. Then we also discovered a close-out sale at the Bass Pro Outlet store where I bought FIVE good namebrand tanktops and ONE pair of shorts for $18! We also got a waterproof bag for bringing our camera/phones in the boat to the village and a miniature super-absorbent camping towel that fits in your pocket. The list of things we need is still long, but a successful day like today goes a long ways! :)

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and on to more interesting things...

On Saturday, Steve was in Louisiana at a ministry conference so the kids and I went on a 6 mile trek through the woods with my parents. Ended up being a LONG haul, and we were WASTED afterwards, but we had a great time.

Stopping for a Necco Wafer break

our picnic lunch - the kids proceeded to catch a small frog here which we (read: I) ended up carrying for like 14 miles

the first water we came to after lunch - also the F.R.V. - Frog Relocation Venue

as we were hiking, my dad started tellling the kids that he thought we might find some snowballs on the trail in a certain spot. While they were quite incredulous, since they haven't had much (any) experience with snow, they wanted so badly to believe it so they kept hunting for snowballs with him and firing questions at him about where they might find them. Well, while they were relocating the frog, my mom planted the snowballs (you know, those coconut covered white things?) along the trail. Wish you could have seen their smiles when they found them.

Zach liked the coconut cover best, Ben liked the cake inside so they swapped.

We were exhausted by the end of the day, but we made some great memories on a crisp fall day.