WE'RE BACK HOME!

Aundrea, Joshua, and Italia (our grandchildren) dressed in Otavalanean costumes.

The final Stages of House Construction in Ecuador

Hi All,

It is Monday morning, Betsy's Birthday (Date) It happened 27 years ago today. We have the apartment clean. We are waiting for the laundry to finish and then will go to the store to purchase this weeks groceries. I have a few minutes so I thought I would finish the house across the way.

Here we are in July of 2007, It is about 7 months after serious construction began. See the pictures in the previous blog addition to see the beginning stages of construction. Here the Second story walls are up. The stairs to the area below the house are constructed. Some of the railing that is all cement is in.

Now in August or September timeframe they are adding more walls and railing.

The rains begin in December. So in late November they covered the windows with plastic and put on a steel roof. The ceiling joists are steel and covered with what looks like to be a metal tile roof. Also see that people are now living in the second floor. They originally had more windows on this floor but at the last minute they closed them up with blocks and painted over them. The also reduced the size of the ones still existing.

At this point the railing in front is basically finished. Though you will see that about 6 months later they will add some more.

In May after the rains have finished they also decided to finish the windows. So we believe that now the inside of the house is basically complete though we have no way of knowing.

Here we are in July of 2008. 18 Months after serious construction began. We are now getting a railing to prevent the children from falling off the ledge. Note that the outside fence walls and the wall that of the stairs down below have been finished to cover the cinder block with a nice finish. I don't know if they will try to paint it but it sure looks much nicer than the unfinished cinder block.

Now the rest of the neighborhood is being constructed. There are 3 more homes going up outside of this picture. At about the same rate that this home went up. Though we cannot and probably ever get to see the front of this house because it is at the end of a locked street that is not paved but has a locked gate with a guard at the entrance, we could kind of see the front at a distance. The front was very pretty. The cement work was rounded and had quite a modern look to it.

I hope you have enjoyed this little project of mine to document the construction of someone else's home.

Love,

Dad

Things are finally getting somewhat normal! Its been quit the ride the past 4 weeks. But we are doing really good. Aundrea loves her new baby brother. She calls him brother, buddy and baby. She also thinks he is a doll. She will pick him up and carry him around. She weighs 22 pounds and he weighs 11. I am not sure how she does it. But she loves her little brother. Nelson Leland is doing good. He eats so much. He never goes more than 3 hours without eating. Its more like every 2 hours that he eats. This makes for rough nights, but once I wake up in the morning I am ok. Its the whole getting up that is really hard. We are really enjoying going to the park everyday to eat lunch. Josh and Aundrea are having to get use to standing in line. This is sometimes hard. Yesterday Josh kept trying to cut in line and finally gave up on that and went straight for the chocolate milk. They wouldnt give him any so he finally came back and waited in line. Poor kid.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Being the 15th of June, we thought we'd write 15 things we love about dad:
15. He's very tall.
14. He's good at taking pictures.
13. He grows a mean tomato. (mean meaning: good, tasty, big and juicy)
12. He can grow a thirty pound banana squash that hangs 6 feet in the air hooked to a vine.
11. He's the patriarch of our Shumway family.
10. He loves our mother.
9. He helps strengthen our testimony of our Saviour, by sharing his with us.
8. He's serving a faithful mission.
7. Family emails!
6. He loves ice cream, and bottled fruit, and homemade bread, and egg and milk toast, and cheese on peanut butter, and...the time I saw him washing down cheese on peanut butter on butter on a slice of homemade bread with a tall glass of buttermilk! I love it!
5. He loves us.
4. The way he cries when he's laughing really hard reading Pat McManus.
3. He cheers for the Cougars!
2. Father's blessings.
1. He's a great Dad!

We feel very fortunate to have you as our dad. We hope you have a fantastic day!

Love lots and lots!!
Steve and Betsy

p.s. Happy Father's Day to all of the other fathers in our family! Alan, Paul, Vincenzo, Spencer, Nelson.

Hi Family,

Well, I have been studying Spanish all day. I am not sure that I will have much to report because of it at the end of my mission other than I can communicate in poor Spanish. But no one will be able to say that I have not tried. I must study Spanish more hours than any other person alive. But right now my head is soggy with Spanish and so I have turned to our blog to read.

I thought I would share with you a little bit about our hobby. In our apartment we have a window to the world of construction in Ecuador.

Right after we got here we took this picture from our apartment window which is on the third floor of our apartment building.

This is December 30 2006. You can see they are building the second floor of this house. We were told that the first floor had been there for a couple of years. All is cement and cinder block. They use no wood. There is a family moving into the open area below and you can see that they are supporting the mechanism to make the second floor with bamboo polls.

By February 2007, they had made this progress. You can see they are ready to pour the cement on the second floor and the family on the ground floor got tired of us watching them cook breakfast.

By April they had poured the second floor and taken down the bamboo poles. I wish the pictures were larger and you can see the detail of starting to put in some plumbing. You can also see they have been working on the first floor and and have put in the large windows. By the way this is the back of the house. We have yet to see the front of the house because the street to the house is dirt and closed off so we cannot walk down it. Also it is interesting to note the house is on the edge of steep hill and so the ground in front of the bamboo poles slopes off really fast.

It is now June 2007, we are 6 months into construction and they are making progress. The second floor has walls of cinder block and they are starting to construct the retaining walls to protect the house from the hill side sliping away and also stairs to the property below which they also apparently own.

This is really interesting. You can see they have made a porch with cement railing. Quite pretty actually. You can see that they are going to build a wall extending out from the fence going along the side of the house. The man is making the support post. He mixes the cement by hand on the ground below and fills a bucket with cement, climbs the ladder and dumps the cement into the wooden form. This will become a "support post".

Well it is getting late. Our really fast internet is taking forever to down load these photos and I still have a year to go. So I will send this now and add to it later. The house is still not finished after a year and a half but it is really looking nice. Soon after the above photo was taken we noticed the the family was moving into the partially finished part on the first floor.

More later.

San Fran

Last week we went to San Francisco for the JavaOne Conference. Steve went on Sunday to be there for the conference start on Monday. I met up with him on Wednesday night. Steve really enjoyed the conference. He learned a lot of new things and reviewed some things. We went swimming most nights and went to eat at the infamous Cheesecake Factory. Neither of us had been there before, and it was delicious. My favourite was how they made the food look all fancy on your plate. I’m not going to try to describe it, but trust me, it was cool. Of course, we got a piece of cheesecake that was delectable. While Steve was working hard at the conference on Thursday, I went to Chinatown with my friend, Nicole, his coworker’s wife. It was fun to look at the cool stuff they had. It was also fun to see all of the store owners faun over Nicole’s cute son. Friday, Steve’s coworkers and fam’s hung out in our room until they had to go to the airport. Steve then went to a few more sessions, and we went back to check out Chinatown again.
Saturday we checked out of our hotel and headed to a bike rental shop. It was fun to walk through Chinatown, yet another time. Since it was Saturday morning, all of the food markets were open, and we saw a truck full of pig carcases. I know that I eat ham and bacon and a lot of pig products, but it still is kind of a shock to see it before it’s cooked and in the deli. We also saw everyone standing in line to get the Chinese newspaper. It felt like a walk in a real Chinese town (I think…I’ve never really been ;)).
We got our bikes and started on the trail. It was a beginner course but it started out with a nice, steep hill. We could see the Golden Gate Bridge from the top, however, and we were excited to get to our goal. On the way we ran into a bunch of girlscouts. We’re not sure what they were there for, but there were a lot of them! Finally, we got to the bridge which led us over to the island, Sausalito. It’s a really nice place. We saw an exhibit of Dr. Seuss’ art. DId you know that he didn’t start out writing children’s literature? He really was an artist, but his paintings didn’t suit his time, so he wasn’t able to put them up in a gallery. Someone looked at it, though, and suggested he put it in children’s books. And now we have Dr. Seuss. I thought that was pretty cool.
We took the ferry back to Fisherman’s Wharf and the “mainland”. On the way, we passed Alcatraz. Then we explored all over Fisherman’s Wharf. We saw those guys that paint themselves and then look like maniquines. We ate lunch at the Boudin Deli. I guess it’s a pretty famous San Francisco Bakery. They make bread shaped into different animals. They are also famous for their sourdough bread bowls. For good reason they are delish!

By this time we were pretty worn, so we parked ourselves in some hotel lobby. It was nice to rest. We still had an hour or so, so we went to see the “crookedest street”.

On the map it was only a few blocks away. Little did we know that those blocks were straight up hills. We’re talking there was practically a cliff at the top! They had to have a mirror in the intersection at the top so that you could see if any cars were coming from “down under”. But that’s how they got the crookedest street. It had about 6 switchbacks in one block! It was quite a sight, and surprisingly very busy. We planned to take the cable car back to our hotel to complete the San Francisco experience, but unfortunately they were too full, so we started the trek back, and headed to the airport. It was a great day! Very exhausting, but very worth it.

Mi primer entrada

Hi Family, when I signed on to this blog it came up in Spanish. I am not sure why. I think that Blogger knows where the computer is and assumes (incorrectly) that my native tongue is Spanish. So for me all instructions and signs and notes etc are in Spanish. When it asked for the password I had to look the word up in the dictionary because I didn't know the word for password in Spanish.

Since all is in Spanish for me I signed on as El Padre I hope that this is okay for everyone. It was fun to read all the blogs posted so far. Well there is a sign below that says "Publicar Entrada". So I guess I will. I suppose one does not have to know Spanish to know what that says. Have a great week.

Love,
Dad

This is so fun! Here's the news from me....and Steve is doing well too.

I am still looking for a job, so it didn’t go as I had dreamed when I quit, but what can you do? I am working part-time “teaching” English to some Korean kids over Skype. I put teaching in parentheses b/c really I just chat with them and give them a few suggestions on improvement. They speak pretty well already. It’s fun talking to them each morning. One of the kids, who is about 12 years old, actually showed me how he could solve an Arubix (I don’t know how to spell it ) cube in about 1 minute. He wasn’t too impressed with himself, though, b/c his brother can do it in 25 seconds! haha When he was about half-way through, I commented on how fast he was and he says, “My brother would have it done by now!” So, it’s a fun job, and it’s a few hours a week.

I also started volunteering at the WIC clinic a few weeks ago. I’m learning all about breastfeeding. It’s really fascinating to me, and I like the people I work with. I do that another few hours a week.

The most exciting news, though, is that I got a new calling in my ward. I was called as the assistant Young Women’s camp director. After about a 10 year lapse I am going back to girl’s camp. I’m really excited and a little nervous. It will be different than the girl’s camps I went to growing up, with 7 or more girls just in my age group. So far we have 3 girls going, and I’m the only leader. Good thing we’re going with the stake! This morning we had a camp training where we learned to cook in dutch ovens. We made chicken fajitas and apple cobbler. Good times.

And that’s the update for now.

Ok so here are some pictures as I am trying to figure out how to use this thing!! You got a picture of Aundrea using her porta potty! Its great and I love it! The other picture is Nelson and Aundrea last week.

So I went to the Dr yesterday. I am dialated to a 3. So it will still be a couple of weeks before we have this baby! I keep asking him to come out but he wont. Its nice to see that your boys like the baby doll Amy! Our baby dolls arent treated so nice, but that is mostley Nelson who likes to kick it across the room. So I am wishing for the best!

Autumn

Well the kids are in bed and Spencer is gone on business and I have just a moment to see what all this blogging is about.

Today I was working on the computer and I looked down next to me and there was Zach and Rex pretending to sleep with our new baby doll. Yes, we have purchased our first doll! Last family home evening I did a lesson on new babies. We talked about all the preparation and things we need to do for new babies. We had a scavenger hunt for all the baby accessories that I had hidden. The boys had a great time. I used the new doll to show them how to wrap the baby in a blanket and how to hold the baby. I have felt that Rex has no idea of what is about to come so I thought a doll would help. The boys have carried the doll around and have taken good care of it. I am sure they will do just fine when the real one arrives.

Wow, I've never been blogged before. Not ever sure what I'm doing. So I'm just saying hi for now and hoping I'm doing it right.