She's come undone

She found a mountain that was far too high, and when she found out that she couldn't fly, mama it was too late!

Seth pictures and 4-year-old pneumatology

Seth is changing every week.  He is smiling more, and beginning to laugh at us.  Last night I was wrapping gifts and singing Creedence Clearwater, and he started laughing at me.  It's better than throwing a tomato.  Here are some pictures from the past month.  It's hard to get him to smile on cue...

Seth is a chick magnet, just like his old man was at his age...  The other day I was rocking Seth to sleep and Abby wanted to sing 'Father I adore you' to him.  She sang in the sweetest voice, and it brought a tear to my eye.  She had troubles on the third stanza, however.  She sang 'Father I adore you, Jesus I adore you, 'sparagus I adore you'...  Close, but heretical none the less.  I will not recant.  Here I stand; I can do no other.  God help me.  Amen.

Time to update...

To all my avid readers, sorry I have slacked off.  I have been busy doing very important things each day.  Now I am taking a day to relax and let the important stuff slide.  Since I last wrote, we have had lots of fun.  Christmas begins in September in the Philippines, but we are just now getting into the spirit of things.  It can be difficult to have the Christmas cheer over here; we are away from our loved ones, we don't have any snow, and we are bombarded by requests for gifts and money :).  There is one thing that brings back the joy... making cookies!  The girls recently frosted a bunch of sugar cookies, and I promptly ate them for dinner.  

So, we made another batch.  This time, our friends Mylene and Yannah came over to help, and Olivia took her shirt off.  She actually got more sprinkles in her mouth than she did on the cookies.  I think that batch is almost gone too...

Tomorrow is Christmas day, and we have way more gifts than we need.  I will try to post pictures within the next 60 days!  Here's a recent picture of the three kids.  Notice how the girls are not kicking, punching, pinching, screaming, or even pulling hair.  It is truly a Merry Christmas.

Finally, I thought Olivia deserved to have a picture of her own after the Abby post.  Here she is being a good mommy to Elmo.

Girls' day out

My parents were just here for 6 weeks, and it was really great to have them.  One day Abby went out with Michele and Grandma for a girls' day out.  Just a few pictures, because they are so cute!  Abby is growing up fast...

They went to an outdoor shopping center not far from where we live.

And got pampered!  (No, missionaries don't do this everyday.  Just Monday, Wednesday and Friday)

Then, because she was such a good girl...

And the car ride home.  Thanks for a fun day, Grandma!

Birthday, birthday, birthday for you

Abby turned the big 4 on Sunday.  She's such a big girl now!  She's adjusting to life without her nuk (pacifier).  We told her she had to lose it when she turned 4.  Don't want her getting beaten up on the playground...  the first night she screamed, "I don't want to be four!  Three is better!"  Anyway on Sunday we had a little party, but not many kids.  Most missionary families are away because it is fall break at the MK school.  We had a few folks over for ice cream and cake.  Michele and my mom did a bang-up job on Strawberry Shortcake.  I did the eyes...  

My parents brought over gifts from everyone at home.  Abby had a blast.  She and Olivia are enjoying the Fisher Price karaoke machine that puts them on the tv screen.  Olivia got so whipped up during presents that she took off running full speed, and didn't stop until she hit the cement wall.  Totally hilarious from where I was sitting...

A week before we celebrated Yannah's 11th birthday.  I will have to write about Yannah and Mylene sometime, but Mylene is Michele's friend who watches our girls a few hours each week.

Baby Seth got his BCG shot today.  he has grown to 22.5 inches and 9 pounds.  Doing very well.  Here he is in a little outfit Val sent us.  Thanks Val (and Josh. I know Josh probably picked it out...)

Baby Seth is here!

Seth David Clinton entered the world a couple weeks early on September 30, 2008.  He weighed in at a whopping 7 and a half pounds, and measured a staggering 19.68 inches in length.  I'm exaggerating the whopping and staggering.  But he does have 10 fingers and toes, one nose, and 2 ears.  Yes!  He was born a heathen gentile, but all that changed the next day.  He is now a son of Abraham.  I am one of them, and so are you... We got Michele and Seth out of the hospital after 2 nights; not bad.  The nurse said Michele was the most 'able' post-cesarean patient she'd ever seen.  Michele was sitting up, walking, and mowing the lawn within 24 hours.  Abby and Olivia were ecstatic to meet their new brother, and Olivia was excited to 'pet' him.  It was better than when I brought home turtles!  Anyway, here are a couple of pics.  We can't figure out who he looks like yet... 

By the way, before I forget- have a merry Christmas!  A little early for that, you say?  Not really.  I heard Christmas carols in the mall on September 7.  We do things a little early here in the Philippines.  By the time December 25 rolls around, pray that I don't strangle someone with a string of lights...

Ode to Daniel

I am devoting this post to my friend on the mission field named Daniel Bucher.  I think he is the only one who reads this, anyway...

Ode to Daniel, not Dan.

He doesn't eat with his hands.

He has many fans.

He lives in a van (down by the river).

He is not very tan.

Baguio Pictures

Two weeks ago we loaded up the car and headed for the mountains to get a little break.  It was nice to get up above the timber line, where temps are in the 70's by day and low 60's at night. It felt so good to wear long pants and sweats for a change!  This was our last little get-away before baby boy comes.  The girls had a ball cooking hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire, looking at the beautiful flowers, butterflies and bugs, and playing on the playground.  Mom and Dad were excited to find summer sausage and corned beef hash in the grocery store!  We basically ate, sat by the fire, and ate more.  Very nice...

Vacations can wear you out, so we did this when we got back into town...

The night I became a man...

This actually took place back in July, but I just got the pictures to share with you.  When I was speaking at the youth camp, the camp director went out and bought me a balut (bah-loot).  You may have seen these on Fear Factor.  It's a fertilized duck egg, just days from it's due date.  By fertilized I mean it's not an egg with a yoke and a white.  It has a duck in it.  A duck with feathers and a beak and a skull and claws.  And a big hard yellow blob that it's attached to.  I've lived in the Philippines for nearly a fourth of my life now, and I had thus far managed to escape eating one of these things.  It's kind of a rite of passage for missionaries, or a test of manhood.  My dad has eaten buckets of balut, but I was scared stiff.  Well, my time came in front of about 50 jr high school students.  Joe Mauk, the camp director, and another counselor are pictured helping me get through the process.  You start by cracking open the tip of the egg.  Then you drink out the fluid.  This part has always scared me, but so far so good.  It tasted like chicken soup.  Then you peel away the shell and go to town.  It was horrifying.  You can almost see my gag reflex in the pictures...  

Sorry about the red eye.  It took me over 20 minutes from start to finish.  Now I'm a man... or a true missionary.  Eating the balut was a little like my marathon.  A long, difficult, scary, painful experience which I now brag about as if it were nothing.  Ha!  I'm the man!

No Air...

Tell me how I'm post to breave wid no air.  We have a pretty cool view of Manila from our condo.  We live up in the hills, and we can typically see for miles.  This morning I got up early to jog, and I couldn't see Manila at all.  I could see maybe a mile, and then greyish-brown haze.  Gross.  I felt like I was breathing dirty jell-o when I was running.  So last week we found out that Abby is basically allergic to the air here.  She has had an increasing cough for a month, so Michele took her to the Doctor.  Doctor put her on Claritin and she will probably take a steroid this week.  It kind of bums us out that our decision to live in the Philippines has side effects on our little girl.  The doctor said this is pretty common, like hay fever, but it still stinks.  Her little pink body is growing up and getting bumps, bruises, and issues.  :(

On a more better note, let me tell you about Efraim Calopez.  (EF-rah-eem) is one of our feeding program kids at Tanza.  He's a favorite because he's one of the cutest kids I've seen anywhere.  If I'm around long enough, I want to put this kid through Bible school and make him a Filipino pastor.  Efraim's english is excellent; as good as most adults here, and he just turned 6!  At night before bed he asks his mom to teach him English!  Last week I thought of giving him a couple of literacy books we have laying around.  They are full of kids' stories like Dr Suess, etc.  I figured he'd enjoy practicing with them, so I threw them in the car.  The next few times that I was at Tanza, I forgot to give them to him.  So yesterday I remembered, and handed him the books.  He was all smiles and thanked me profusely.  Come to find out, it was his 6th birthday and I had no idea!  How cool.  Did the Lord tell me to give him those books, and cause me to forget until his birthday so that it would make a lasting impression on him, causing him to grow up desiring to serve the Lord because of the generosity of that American missionary so many years before?  I doubt it!  But it made my day.  Here's the little turkey...

Around the house

Thought I'd share a few pictures from this weekend.  First of all, I'm not sure why we would invest in an easel, when we have a perfectly good floor to color on...

Abby has been fascinated with the idea of growing flowers, so we bought some seeds, pots, gloves, etc.  Abby and Olivia helped mommy plant the seeds, and we each have a pot on the back porch with our name on it.  Abby woke up this morning expecting to see flowers...

Tonight we watched a little 'Narnia' before bed.  Today at the mall I found a cool Aslan shirt for Abby, and she loved it.  Yes, it's a boys' shirt.  It was 50% off.  Missionary to the max...

Finally, we started getting the apartment ready for the new baby.  Finished painting the girls' room (it took about 10 months total) and put a bunk bed in.  Abby and Olivia are enjoying it so far, and are sleeping soundly as I type this.  It's a milestone for Olivia; her first night out of the crib...

Not the most riveting blog-post, but I got some sweet girls!

Food and stuff

Last week we received a huge shipment of donated food items from Indiana.  My missionary friend Daniel Bucher's dad operates a food bank, and he sent over a shipping container full of rice, beans, baby cereal, granola bars, spinach, and TVP.  Textured Vegetable Protein is a vegetarian meat substitute made from soy beans.  It's like crunchy granola, and you make meat out of it by adding water and spices.  So far we've faked out the kids at the feeding program a few times; they think it's pork.  I call it mystery meat.  

I am renting a storage closet in our condo building, to house all the food.  Yesterday morning I went in the closet to get some pasta, and I saw Ratatouille staring at me.  He was a pretty big one, too.  I declared war.  Mainly because I want to preserve the food for the children, but also because I wet my pants.  I am not a rat lover.  I went out and bought poison, glue traps, and a $20 electronic thing that messes with rodents' nervous systems.  I hope our neighbors don't have hamsters; this thing has a 200 yard range.  This morning, no sign of him and one of the glue traps is gone.  He probably ate it.

Last week we took Abby to 'Wall-E', the pixar movie.  She loved it.  She was the happiest girl in the world, sitting in the chair and watching the big screen.  I loved watching her as much as the movie.  Toward the end she decided she'd rather sit in the aisle, with her head against my arm.  Weird, but cute.  Like her old man.

Marathon Man

Well, my first marathon is behind me.  It was extremely painful, humbling, and terrible.  But, it's kind of like what Michele described after childbirth.  I'm already forgetting the pain that I went through... except for the lingering foot blisters.  Not much to report, other than the fact that I finished in 4:40.  Most of the senior citizen runners were already at the buffet breakfast by the time I finished.  But I finished.  That was my main goal.  If there's a next time, I can only improve on my time.  Here are some of the gruesome details that won't make the prayer letters...

Here I am at mile 16, getting passed by a woman, and my feet are about to pop.  I've got a pretty good smile considering the pain I'm in.

When I crossed the finish line, I blew kisses to the crowd... 

 

It was only at the taking of this photo that Michele pointed out to me that my nipples were bleeding.  Embarrassing!  That only happens to amateurs!

And here they are again, incase you like seeing them...

This next photo requires parental guidance.  4 and a half hours in wet socks.  The skin on my feet shifted all over the place, and is still recovering.  Note the nasty blisters on the side of my heel, and under my little toe.  Hungry?

Finally, I hobbled back to our hotel room and did this for a while:  

It took two days and six washings to eliminate the odor from under my arms.  I'm a man's man - like Rock Hudson!  Thanks for all your support, and for praying me through  this ordeal.  Next year I'm going to run 3 miles and try to raise $10,000 per mile.