This may or may not become a series…depends on if the trend continues!
Jackson busted his lip 2 nights ago  w

(evidently he needed his nose wiped before his photo shoot)

Then while I was at the Embassy health fair today and he was with the babysitter he got a cut on his cheek from falling into a drawer.

I came home to find him with this big patch of white cream…I thought maybe he had gotten into his diaper cream but Isnely told me he got a huge gash so she thought cream might be a good remedy. So odd.

sin crema

“Mom. STOP taking my picture!!!! Don’t you have anything better to do?!”

We are officially beyond the baby days…Jackson is a toddler!!!   sniff  sniff

It is amazing to watch him learn and grow but it goes WAY TOO FAST!

Always living on the edge!

Ready for “school” with his snack bag ready!

looking quite calm and serious! he is actually VERY active and quite the comic!

Jackson is loving reading these days! He gets these magazine’s from Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Ryan each month. Their is a story each month about a family in the back of the book. During the election one arrived and featured an African American family.  We taught Jackson that the mom’s name is Oprah and the boys name  is Obama.  A few weeks ago he saw the yahoo homepage and there was an African American basketball players picture. Jackson pointed and yelled “Bama!!”.  Not sure if that is good or bad.

It has been a fun 19 months!! Not boring to say the least!

All of you that keep up with our blog well know about Jackson’s cancer scare last May. Thousands of people prayed for Jackson. And for us. God was so gracious to save our little boy! Anyhow, my dear friend Annie forwarded me an email from her friend that had been praying for Jackson. She was recently on vacation on Captiva Island and met an interesting couple. The woman was a pediatric oncologist surgeon and her husband was a former player for the 49ers. After Annie’s friend shared the amazing story of Jackson (since she knew the surgeon might be interested) the surgeon told her that she in fact was Jackson’s surgeon. Wow!!! She  remembered Jackson because his case had been so rare. She is one of about 100 specialists in the world in rhabdomyosarcoma. If you ever need someone to operate on your child with a tumor call this lady! She is the best.

Because we live abroad the “small world concept” doesn’t always amaze me like it does others….until now. Wow.

We also wanted to share an article my dad wrote after the time at MD Anderson. It was published recently in an online magazine for the Christian and Missionary Alliance.  Here is the story.

It’s been a while since I (Seth) have posted, mainly because so much of my Colombian stories are work-related, and probably shouldn’t be shared.  But I do have a few quick stories from the past month or so that I thought I’d share.

We were watching American Idol through our slingbox last week and right after the show was over it went into a new show (at least for us) called Lie to Me.  We were slightly intrigued because the commercials were talking about a murder at a diplomat’s wedding and something to do with an ambassador.  (Since we’ve been to a diplomat’s wedding, we quickly realized that the story was overdramatized.)  Anyway, the opening scene showed a hispanic man shooting another one in the chest.  Then in the corner the location of the murder popped up.  Cali, Columbia.  The only thing is that Colombia isn’t spelled Columbia.  It’s a common mistake, but it was especially embarrassing we thought because here is a show on Fox and they don’t know how to spell the name of the country.  I told my co-workers the next day, and we all got a good laught out of it.

The nice thing about living in Colombia is Valentine’s Day.  Mainly because the “holiday” hasn’t caught on here yet.  I remember last year we were driving to a restaurant for VD and at the stoplight there was a guy selling roses.  I bought some for Kristen thinking I was being all romantic.  And then I told Kristen how cool I thought it was that they actually were selling roses on VD.  Then Kristen reminded me that they always sell roses at stoplights and it had nothing to do with VD.  Which brings me to why VD is nice in Colombia.  One, it’s super easy to get a reservation for VD since no one else is wanting one.  Two, roses are super cheap.  On any given day, you can get a dozen for like 3 bucks.  And Kristen said she’s seen a truck that drives around selling 2 dozen for 75 cents!!!  Remember, all the flowers you buy from your local florist come from Colombia.  Three, there are no Hallmark cards in Colombia, so you don’t get ripped off buying those.  Instead, you can write something on your own…from the heart.

The traffic here can be horrendous.  The other day we were driving 3 miles each way.  It took us 45 minutes to get there and 45 minutes to get back.  Unbelievable.  They’ve tried reducing some of the traffic by institutuing “pico y placa” which means that if your license plate ends in a certain digit, you can’t drive on that day.  Up until a month ago, “pico y placa” was just from 6-9 AM and 4-7 PM.  But they are doing major construction around town starting in a couple of weeks, so “pico y placa” is now extended to 6 AM until 8 PM.  Thankfully as diplomats with diplomatic license plates, we aren’t affected.  But I will say, we haven’t seen a dramatic decrease in traffic despite these new rules.

A few weeks ago, a bomb went off at a Blockbuster about 7 or 8 blocks from our house.  We have friends who live about 1/2 block from the explosion.  And my boss was at that exact Blockbuster only 45 minutes before.  Thankfully, no Americans were hurt, although 2 people did die.  Needless to say, things were quite tense around here for several days following the explosion.  The next night, Kristen and I heard three explosions, and immediately called the embassy.  Turns out they were only fireworks.  Which led us to think that fireworks should be banned for at least 48 hours after a bomb goes off.

And the biggest highlight of all.  McDonald’s is looking at building a restaurant at the embassy in the coming months.  I am quite pumped, although Kristen has said I’m going to have a monthly quota on Big Macs.  Before we got married, I average meat on a bun at least 3 times a week (Justin can attest to that).  We are now down to about once a month.  McDonald’s won’t be as good as Whataburger coming, but with only about 7 months remaining, it’ll suffice.