Mexico Mission Trip 2007

Lyneil wasn't kidding when she said that she had some trouble downloading in Paris. I finally got some of the pictures to work...(Above: This is dad at the church building in Jimenez with Ashlin. She is the youngest of the preacher's daughters. She is 6 months old and cute as a button.)

Karl and the men worked on building a gate for the church. Karl and Sheradon did all of the welding. The gate looks great!

Karl and I after church on Sunday evening in Jimenez.

The men that worked on the gate. At this point, we are packed up and ready to head out of town to return home. I will post more pics later.

We had a awesome trip. It seems that it gets better and better every year. I think it is all in the perspective of the beholder. The mountains were beautiful and the workers were plentiful. Pam and mom and kitchen crew did an outstanding job with every meal and Amy and Jorge pulled off a yet-again fantastic VBS.

Micah Fry, Chad Graves, Karl and Jorge pulled together and orgainized our devos for us every evening. They were the best that I can remember. Our mission for the week (that has continued): I will please God today more than yesterday. I can't say that everyday I have been able to pull this one forward, but it is in my head and I am striving to make things better for serving Him more today than I did yesterday. This is one hard mission. Remember, it takes 21 days to make or break a habit. Join us if you dare....

Which one will it be?

Over the 4th of July holiday, my wonderful sister-in-law and her husband were kind enough to pick us up from the airport and transfer us to Paris. We decided that since we have been a family for FOUR years now, it was time to do some fun pictures. My plan was for us to meet up with our cousin Paige who owns Paige Pearson Photography but I could not get my stuff together and therefore we are saving her for a later date! But, being bound and determined we were going to have our pictures made, like it or not, we did. Karl and I took our camera home and had some other cousins come out and take some pictures of us. Now, my goal is to have some of them framed. I need help deciding which ones will be framed for now. Hopefully, we will make this an event that I can update more often than FOUR years...but for now....

(All of these will need to have some work done on them to touch them up. So, before I pay someone to do just that, let me know which ones we should work with! Thanks for your help!!)

All four of us. Sherry (Karl's sister), Chad, Andrea and Karl

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What's in your envelope?

We don't want to know what's in your wallet but we do know many people that want to know what's in our envelope. I am included in the bunch of anxious ones. Karl and I were able to hear, see and take home pictures of our growing baby. We will be at 20 weeks this Thursday, July 12th!! We are so excited.

Karl wants to be the one in the delivery room to tell me the gender of our baby. So, we have decided that we will not find out until then. Others in our family are not being that patient, so we requested the sonogram tech to find out if possible and place it in an envelope. She was so good. She never gave any hints and this is what she handed us at the end of our time together...The good thing is that she left us with 15 pictures to take home (not counting the one in the envelope). So here are a few. She did some 3 and even 4D pictures/frames. Overall, it was as cool as an experience that I can say that I have had in a long time! Loved every minute of it. Karl was glued to the monitor the whole time. Except when she was getting her gender pictures done and his eyes were glued to mine. He knew that if I had the chance I was going to look, so he watched me like a hawk!

Fun times today. Here are a few pictures.

Look at those fat lips...I think that this kid is going to look a lot like Karl.

After seeing all of the neat pictures and movements from the 3D screen, the 2D pictures don't look as much fun. But, here is a full body shot of Baby K. This one was a bit of a mover. We had a little trouble getting some of the measurements because of all of the moving around.

This is one of Karl's favorite pictures. Baby K is giving us a thumbs up. We have a true Aggie on our hands! Gig 'Em Baby K! WHOOP!!

Was your 4th a blast?

We traveled to Paris for the 4th of July. This is holiday is just as much a favorite in the Rick Zant family as Christmas. It is very important to be with family and while we are together, we have fun. Sometimes we tend to tear things up, but we always have FUN!

My in-laws were able to join us this year and Karl and I were very thankful for that. Here is Sherry and Chad drying off a little before going into the house. Mom is so good. The house is never off limits and always open to whomever should be passing through.

Karl and Travis had the bright idea to play in the mud with the 4-wheelers. Needless to say, Travis flung a lot more mud on Karl showing his moves. Karl was able to strike luck every now and then and Travis ended up with mud on himself as well! We gave them each a toothbrush and told them we wanted them spotless....Good thing they had a waterhose!

Zach decided to play it clean. He took Braxton round and around. Braxton loved it. They got wet here and there when someone was able to sneak upon them with a five gallon bucket of water. Micah and Jennifer: Water dousing culprits. They made sure that anyone that came outside got wet, at least once. Jennifer brought her brother and his wife along this year and Jacob and Amber were fuel to our fire…Great addition!

Chad (my brother-in-law), Andy, Micah, Michael (Amy's brother-in-law) and the hottest man alive...Karl

These were some of the water toting boys that kept everyone soaked. We played a friendly game water balloon toss and then a couple of games of capture the flag (water balloon style) but these boys didn’t think that people were getting wet enough. And, just because you are wet, doesn’t save you from being dumped on again. You need to have eyes in the back of your head for this day. You are not safe unless you are in the house! Zach and David won the water balloon toss...Don't they look so excited!

After a hard day of eating, playing and running for the love of dry pants, we all cleaned up, changed clothes and headed north to go to church. It is always fun to go home to church. I love the song leading, the people that are there everytime and the smiles from everyone. There is no place like home! After church, we all ventured south again and waited for dark so we could get started on the fireworks.

(Left) - The Beck clan. Neither one of the

boys made it through the whole show, but the mom and dad were able to enjoy the most of it!

Amy and Jorge after a long day of fun! This was there 3rd anniversary (July 3rd).


At the end of the night, we had a blast, ate way too much and laughed uncontrollable. Some tore up dad's yard, most wasted a lot of water and all had more fun than should be free. Thanks to all who made this occasion what it is and to mom and dad for putting up with all of the people; big and small and for showing us what family is all about.

Does this look like a man that just had his whole place torn upside down? He is so good. I love my mom and dad!

And the Winner IS....

FARM THEME FUN!

While I can't tell you what it will look like, I can tell you that it won't be as goofy as this:

But more detailed than this:

The tractor will NOT be red and it won't be this busy...

I can only guarentee that the tractor will have some kind of emblem like so...

This is the little bit of information that I do know and now we have a plan...Thank you all for your imput! We'll post actual pictures when he decides just exactly what will come out of that brain of his.

Trading Mural Idea Spaces

Karl and I have been thinking about what mural we want to do for the baby’s room and we are not agreeing on much. We need more ideas. Do you have any suggestions? We thought about a few things. Either vote on one of them or throw out a completely different mural idea.

Farm Scene
Kites
Big fun animals
Teddy bears
Ducks

Remember, we are not going to find out the sex of our baby, so we have to keep it non-gender specific! This whole non-gender thing is harder than I thought it would be. It is also difficult to find yellow and green in the stores. We are going to stick with it though. Karl is much stronger than I am…

If you have any ideas, we’re all open!

Bridges of Madison County and a Wii bit of fun!

Mom, dad, Amy and Jorge all flew in for Memorial Day weekend and we had a blast. When I say we I mean Wii! Karl and I; after searching for two weeks found a Wii. The plan was to have it hooked up and ready to go when Amy and Jorge got here because playing games with Amy…well, it entertaining!

Micah and Jennifer located one for us in Paris and sent it with mom and dad. The day that Amy and Jorge flew in (Thursday) I made one final call just to check out the chances of there being one in the Newton Wal-Mart and I struck gold. So, Friday morning we introduced the Wii system to the Beck, Perez, and McDonald household. It was as fun as you can imagine. We played all weekend. Lyneil is great at tennis. She will kick your tail. Amy looks like a windmill the whole time while playing tennis, according to dad. Mom is fun to watch bowl as well as Amy. We had a blast!
During the middle of the day on Saturday, while the little boys were napping, Jorge, Amy, Karl and I went to explore. Jorge drove us to Winterset, Iowa and we got to see the birthplace of John Wayne and all 5 bridges. Karl had it all mapped out for us and there was no back-tracking. I must say, once you’ve seen one bridge, you’ve literally seen them all five. The John Wayne birthplace was neat…sort of. Papa is a big fan of JW, so we went by for him. We got to walk through his house he grew up in for the first 7 years of his life and we also got to go to the gift shop. Last Saturday was the 100th Birthday of “The Duke”. I thought of Papa the whole time and we got him some souvenirs.
Then on to see more and more bridges…..We saw bridge after bridge after bridge, while Karl read the stats and history on each one. While in Winterset, JW home town, also home of the one of the bridges, Karl found a sign that told about a rock tower. So, we took the tour in car mode and found it. It was probably the neatest thing we saw that day. By the way, the bridge in the Winterset Park was the neatest bridge in my mind.

Here are some pictures of the four of us checking all the bridges out!

Hope you enjoy them as much as Wii did!!