The day after we got back from the Galapagos, my parents had transfers starting, with a dinner of the missionaries leaving and then the next day a dinner with the new missionaries that had just arrived. We helped them decorate their house for Christmas, which was good because we didn't get to do much Christmas decorating at our house!
Lucy did not like touching the tree. She would grimace every time she touched it.
These two pictures may be my favorites of these two ever:
The boys LOVED this park down the street from my parents' house: Parque Suecia. It didn't even have playground equipment, but it did have a pond that they loved throwing things into. They wanted to go there every single day.
We helped my mom get ready for the transfers dinner and then got to meet all the missionaries who were leaving the next day.
I was so excited to see them all sing the mission song :)
They looked so cute sleeping by each other every night.
The next day was Tommy's birthday, so we had a nice breakfast to celebrate, and we planned a fun outing to the Equator!
There are actually two Equator museums--one is the official Ecuadorian one, and it's actually built a few hundred yards off of the actual equator. Hahaha! But in their defense, they built it in the seventies before GPS, so it only came to light that it wasn't the true equator when GPS became a thing, and then someone went and promptly built a museum on the actual equator.
First we went to the actual equator, which is much more rinky-dink but where they show you some little science experiments about how things are different right on the equator.
Dane balanced an egg on a nail and was so proud of himself. (Tommy did it too, but on the tip instead of on its side, haha.)
Then we went to the bigger, fake equator museum, to get some good pictures.
And we went up to the top of the monument to look out.
We had all the missionaries sing to Tommy that night at that transfer dinner.
The big 3-3.
Lucy started sitting up while we were there!
Grandma taught Dane how to play chess and he beat her! I'm going to have to play with him some more here.
We went to the transfer meeting where the new missionaries meet their companions and it was super fun. Everyone was so excited and there was so much energy in the air.
My mom took us to this market near their house where you can buy all sorts of food and fruits.
The next day we went to visit the mission office to see where the magic happens. My dad is usually only there about one day a week, because he's traveling a lot of the rest of the time, but it was fun to see. They had a huge stack of boxes of Book of Mormons that the kids climbed on.
Graham couldn't be in the picture because he was busy on the phone. Haha.
There's a KFC near their house with a "Chicky Park" inside it, and the boys were super excited to play at it, but Graham got stuck at the top and was terrified of the slide and refused to come down. He just stayed up there and cried until Tommy came to rescue him.
In trying to get Graham to nap every day we had to lay down with him. Don't be fooled, he was not napping here.
Dane trying to teach Graham how to play chess.
We brought some magnet tiles for them to play with and they were a huge hit!
We spent a lot of time trying to get Lucy to crawl.
We had a delayed Thanksgiving dinner with them, since we were in the Galapagos over Thanksgiving. My mom and I made a turkey, rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and green bean casserole. A pretty traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Ecuador!
Dane really liked these parks with exercise equipment.
Lucy also got her first haircut while we were there! She really needed it to even out the sides and the back of her head. She had rubbed a lot of it off in the middle and the sides were so long. Look at this.
This is how it looked before:
And then after! Much more even and it looked so cute and less ratty. What a cutie. She's so big to be getting her first haircut!
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