Weekend pictures

As you can see, Sterling had a big weekend. He was able to play with his friend Cade. Cade is about 3 years older than Sterling but he's great with Sterling. Sterling was also able to dance with his mom, which is pretty special; plus he was able to try Jamba Juice, which is an all fruit smoothie place. It's a signature California style drink, and it's pretty good.

Cool Sterling

We took this last night when we were walking on Hollywood Blvd. We put these on Sterling and he actually liked them! :) I think he thought he looked pretty cool. He cried when we put them back on the cart!

Exploring Los Angeles

This is Sterling and Luke playing on our porch one morning. We've realized that Sterling can fit through the little spaces between the bars of the gates, so we have to watch him closely or he'll end up on the neighbor's porch! We all like sitting out there and enjoying the fresh morning air (as fresh as is possible in downtown LA).

We have sliding door closets in our house and Sterling thinks it is so much fun to open and close them constantly, as well as take things out and try them on. So here he is in one of his favorite things- Luke's basketball shoes. Cute!

We got to go to the ocean on Saturday and Sterling loved it! We all did actually, but we weren't sure what STering would think. At first he cried when the waves hit him because it was SOOO cold, but then he got used to it and never wanted to leave. We went to Zuma beach, which was about 45 min from our house, but Santa Monica beach is only about 20 minutes away also.

The other morning we wondered why Sterling was being so quiet, so we peaked out and saw him reading his books all by himself! He was talking and laughing and it was really cute. He was being so good!

Last night we went to Hollywood Blvd with our teammates, Jay and Caitlin. This picture is in front of Grauman's Chinese theater, where all the stars put their hand and foot prints. (And this is where they talk about going in "That thing You do!") It was pretty fun. And a little peice of trivia for Zack- Did you know that Gene Autry is the ONLY person on the walk of fame that has a star for all five categories of radio, TV, movies, records, and directing? He was pretty amazing evidently! They even have a whole museum out here for him!

Our Apartment in CA

We have settled nicely into our apartment here in Los Angeles-- we live in the downtown area, pretty close to West Hollywood. Our apartment is nice, it's really small, but perfect for what we need. We live in between the hispanic area and the asian area, so there is very little English spoken anywhere! We have a pool on the top of our roof (yeah!) and from there on a clear day we can see the "Hollywood" sign up on the hills. We have two kind of not pretty couches :) that someone gave us, which aren't my favorite, but they were free. And Sterling's bed is in the dining room area between the kitchen and the living room. We are all doing well and liking everything so far- we've joked that we're going to be going through culture shock as much living here as we did living in Bangkok- it's so different from Indiana! Love you all.

Getting Ready to Leave

Well, Sterling and I getting ready to leave in the morning, so I wanted to do one more post before we move to CA because I don't know about getting the internet there. Luke just arrived last night and he's starting to get unpacked and settled in. These pictures are from this last week. We got to see Nathan and Jayme Rector, and the picture is of Sterling with their daughter Cameryn. The other pictures are from swimming on Sunday, petting the goats at the fair, and playing cards at the fair. We've been having fun, and now we're looking forward to our next adventure in California!

Fair Week 2007

These are just some random pictures from the Putnam County Fair, the highlight of my family's summer! Sterling has gotten lots of close up encounters with the cows and he loves it. He has been petting the goats and running around everywhere. One of the pictures is my sisters showing their cows, another is my dad and Sterling in their flannel shirts together, another is me and Kara reluctantly posing for a picture and this first picture is Luke and Sterling enjoying an ear of corn from the garden together.

More Colorado

Here are a few more pictures of Colorado. We got to spend time with Luke's aunt Francie and uncle Rosy and Sterling loved getting to climb and hike with them. He had a blast. The next picture is Sterling with some of the friends he met at MTI. They were so nice to Sterling even though he was a lot younger than him. The bottom picture is our entire Tokyo team and we all got to be together for training, which was awesome! We are so excited about working with this amazing group of people.

Grandma and Grandpa Chase and Farming

These pictures are from when Steve and Linda came to visit us (before we left for Colorado). The internet was so slow out there, I could only get a couple of pics at a time, so I'm going to try to catch up now that we have a week of the internet here at the church. The pictures were taken at the park, where Sterling had so much fun playing. The other pictures are from different times he was out on the farm, just having fun. The little red overalls used to be my brother Kyle's! The dog that Sterling is with is named Spike, and they are good friends. Sterling feeds him rocks and grass and flowers, and Spike is pretty good natured about it all :)

Sterling; 16 months

Here's another photo of Sterling we got.

Sterling at 16 months

We had a friend of ours, Bill Hill, do some family photos for us, and here is a cute one he got of Sterling.

Weekend in the Mountains

Once again, I had trouble getting pictures on here, so here are 2 out of many that I wanted to get on, but couldn't. We had a big weekend- we went to the zoo on saturday, then visited the Will Rogers memorial. The two pictures below are looking up at the memorial and us on top of it. On Sunday we drove a couple of hours west to visit luke's aunt and uncle, Francie and Rosy. We had a great visit, and Sterling even got to hike and be a mountain climber during the afternoon- he loved it!

MTI days

Well, for whatever reason, the pictures aren't showing up while I'm typing this, so I'm going to have to go by my memory on what all the pictures are :) The first one is Sterling and I with Caitlin Greer, one of our teammates. There is also a picture of Sterling with Owen Parsons (Nick and Rachel's son) and Andy Rodriguez, another member of our team. That picture is from when we went to the playground last Saturday morning. The picture of Luke and Sterling is at Garden of the Gods, and the last picture is Owen and Sterling getting into mischief together at the water fountain. They have proven to be accomplices in getting themselves in trouble constantly! :) Read below for more details! :)





We are having a great time here at MTI...Now that we have ALL had the flu and are over it! It was a miserable weekend for us as Sterling had it first, then me, then Luke. But we are better now and are having a much more enjoyable time :) Yesterday Luke's aunt Francie and friend Candy came to visit us and we went to the Garden of the God's together. There are pictures above; it is an area full of huge red rocks jutting out of the ground. It is truly amazing and beautiful. We have been learning a lot while we're hear-- today we did a simulation of being taken hostages so that we could work through stress and conflict. It was very interesting and challenging. We 've also talked about how it will be entering a new culture and how to manage the stress that it will bring. We've also talked about how to maintain spiritual vitality while we're on the field (without many other Christians around). Those are just some of the things we've dealt with; it is all going to be very helpful training for the field. In our free time we are getting to know our team better, playing games, getting coffee together and playing with all the kids. We miss you all, and hope this gives you a better idea of what we're doing here!

Well, it has been extremely difficult to get pictures on here because the internet is slow here. We have taken many pictures, but I'm only going to put this one up for now because it's already taken me so long to do this! Luke and STerling are down playing in our room waiting on me, so I have to do this quickly. We are doing well here, it's beautiful as you can tell. The training is really good, and sterling is adjusting fairly well to having to be in childcare from 8:30-4:00 during the week. We take him out a lot in the mornings and afternoons and let him run around outside. He just got sick last night in the middle of the night, which stinks because the flu is going around here, and we are all living in close quarters. He seems much better this morning. Hopefully i will be able to post more pictures soon, if I can figure out a better system than this! We love everyone and we miss you all!

Summer Time Activities

My mom bought Sterling a little blow up pool and he had a lot of fun in it--until the dog bit holes in it, unfortunately :( He didn't have his swim suit over at Grandma and Grandad's so he had to go in the buff- still okay for a little guy like him!

Sterling gets to go to all the fun events for the youth group- so here he is at the Jr. High swim party. He loves swimming, but still has no concept of the fact that he can't swim on his own. He would just jump in if we let him.

We have had 2 VBS's in the last two weeks. This picture was taken at the one here at GCC. We also went to Keokuk to do the one there, but unfortunately our camera broke this week and we weren't able to take any pictures of Sterling playing with his granny, papa tom, and his cousins. I was pretty sad about that, but hopefully aunt sara got a few good ones!

This is Sterling's most favorite place to be-- riding in the truck. He loves to sit on the fold down console in my dad's truck, he thinks he's really big stuff. He doesn't want anyone to hold on to him except my dad. The sad part is that my dad's truck just got in a wreck on Tuesday (the guy that works for him got in an accident) and Sterling can't take rides in it anymore.

Sterling made a MESS!

Sterling poured some oil all over himself and the shop floor. When we caught him he was already covered in it, and he was holding the funnel in one hand and rubbing the oil in with the other hand. We had a good laugh, then had to work at cleaning him up. Kacie wasn't around when this happened; Sterling was with his granddad Birt, uncle Kyle, and his dad. He enjoyed it and so did we.

Random pictures....

These are pictures from our last couple weeks: Sterling loves playing with all kinds of animals; he also loves to ride/drive the big tractors. We celebrated Kayla's high school graduation(Kacie's sister), and we also went to a wedding.