what in the world are we doin' down here in Oklahoma??

I would imagine that many of you are confused by our schedule.  And for good reason!  We are in Michigan, then Indiana, then Missouri, then back to Indiana, then back to Missouri, then Indiana...etc etc etc.  And now...we are in Oklahoma?  Phew!  I feel bad for anyone who might be trying to keep track of us!

So I want to explain a bit more clearly (hopefully) what exactly we are doing in Oklahoma.

Most of you know that Nathan and I spent this past Spring semester at our Missionary Training Center in MO taking an intensive linguistics course.  That was in a classroom setting.  Well now, we are putting that whole semester of training into PRACTICE.  Here in Oklahoma, we are doing a Linguistics Practicum--on the Cherokee language!  

Basically, we are practicing what we will soon be doing for real.  When we move into an unreached people group in Papua New Guinea, we are going to learn their language--which has never ever ever been learned before, by any outsiders.  So we will have to learn it by living with them, doing countless sessions with language helpers...using all of our training to learn their language from scratch.  It will be no easy task!  But this practicum in Oklahoma will help us immensely!

Nathan and I are doing this practicum as a team.  We were assigned to a Cherokee language helper (a super sweet older lady--we are really enjoying getting to know her!)  Every day, we go to her house to do a two hour language session.  So far, we have been eliciting many words and phrases from her, writing them down phonetically, coming back to our "camp" and doing all kinds of processing with the data.  Things such as:  figuring out what sounds she is making, which vowels, whether or not the vowels are oral or nasal, lengthened or not--etc, etc.  Eventually we will also take all of our data that we get each day, and analyze the grammar and structure of the Cherokee language.  

We view this training as a privilege, one that we do NOT take lightly!  This will be such a help to us when we get to our tribe in PNG--and we want to put all that we can into it now.  Thank you for all of you who are praying for us, and thinking of us!

Nathan and our classmate/friend, Craig--listening intently to Cherokee words that Craig recorded from his language helper.

A very common sight late into the night.  Nathan listening to recordings from our language helper, entering them into the computer, and doing all kinds of stuff to the data that is super hard to explain :)

These late nights require big cups of coffee!!

We are so thankful and blessed to be able to do this training together.  The Linguistics training has turned us into true nerds--we can talk about Ling late into the night :)  And we know what each other is talking about!  Lol!  

We are also so thankful to have awesome friends/classmates who are helping us with our kids each day.  We don't take our kids to our language sessions (but today we actually did take them and it went really well!!)  But most days, we have classmates who babysit our kids, and we are so grateful.  We are all in this together!

During our time in Oklahoma we will attend the church that our language helper attends.  It is a Cherokee church--they do the service in English, but they do sing some Cherokee songs!  And many of the people who go there are Cherokee.  It is such a good experience for us and our kids!

I will have to do the next blogpost about how it is to live communally with 25 other people :)  We love our group!  But it is definitely a unique living situation!

settling in to our oklahoma home!

Our 8 weeks of living here in Oklahoma will certainly be interesting!  We arrived on Friday afternoon, and we were shown to our "room"--actually, instead of a room,  picture a boys dorm at church camp :) That is what our family is living in for the next 8 weeks!  Some of you may have seen this picture (when we first arrived) that I posted on Instagram on Friday:

Lots of bunk bed, huh??  Basically, we have a ton of beds but there wasn't much floor space!  Lol.  So anyway, thankfully I married a very handy and creative guy, and he has turned our family dorm into a great living space!  Here is a little tour:

of course, our kids quickly turned our room into their own personal playground :)  So many beds to jump on!  Praying for no broken bones!

With the help of some of our fellow classmates--aka, more creative dads--Nathan got our room looking good!!

Now, this is how our room looks when you walk in.  More floor space, and separated into different "spaces".  Such as...

a "pantry" :)

A Lego area (definitely a must with these kids!)...

A "fort" area...

A coloring area/homeschooling area!

This is our "junk drawer"--actually more of a "junk shelf" :)

The kids' "bedroom"--Nathan pushed four bunk beds together and the kids sleep in the four bottom bunks.  They all sleep with their heads in the middle--which is actually turning out to be a pretty hyper way for them to go to bed :)  We may have to rethink it!  They do gymnastics on the bars above their beds :)

in their beds...

Here is the door to our "bedroom".  The black curtain is our "door":

You can see the corner of our bed, Nathan's desk, and our "closet" :)

Our bathroom is great for the kids' teeth brushing!  

And we have 6 showers!  Also notice the bunk bed that we shoved in our shower room--haha!  One less bunk bed in our dorm!  We had to put them anywhere we could!

As you can see, it's a bit dusty around here :)  The kids have been using our van as a canvas!  They sure are creative!

Thanks for your prayers!  We are settled in and ready to dive into this Cherokee language.  I will post more about that next.  Love ya'll!  (can you tell we've been living in the South?) ;)

Family Vaca...#2

After we got back from Florida (with my family), we had one week to regroup and then we were off to our second family vaca!  This time, we went with Nathan's family--to Holden Beach, NC.  

The thing I love about Holden Beach is that it isn't very commercialized.  There aren't any hotels--just houses.  So Nathan's dad rented a house for a week and we all stayed in it.  Added bonus:  Nathan's brother Kyle flew in, and also Adam and Jenna from Mexico!  It was a great week.

We didn't have a pool at this place, which was fine because we just spent a ton of time at the ocean!  I will admit, I was a bit nervous that one of our kids would be attacked by a shark (because of the recent NC shark attacks!), but I tried to play it cool so they wouldn't be scared.  And praise the Lord, we survived the week!

We had a great time hanging out at the beach--next time we see an ocean, it will be in Papua New Guinea!!! 

 

goofy brother-in-laws :)  

We also played lots and lots of games!  I didn't take many pictures, but this was a favorite--Pictionary.  Also, Kaine and Grandpa Dave played countless games of Ticket to Ride!  (Thanks for lending it to us, Nick and Jess!)

Uncle Kyle was a good helper!

We went to the local ice cream/miniature golf place--that was a lot of fun!!

We did a little hat shopping for Papua New Guinea--what do ya think? :)

Nathan's cousin Scott and his wife Brooke live in NC.  It had been 10 years since we last saw them, and since then we have had a bunch of kids!  Four for each of us :)  So it was a huge blessing that Brooke was able to bring her 4 kids to visit us at the beach one day!  Our kids loved meeting their cousins--they got along so well!

Here's a group pic of all 8 kids.  Brooke, thanks for making the effort to come!  We are so thankful that you did!

A family picture--love these people!!!

After our vacation in NC, we packed up and headed to Atlanta!  We were headed for a Mueller Family Reunion.  Nathan's dad's family is pretty scattered all over, and I have hardly met any of them!  (And I have been in the family for 13 years!  That's pretty bad!)  So anyway, a reunion got planned at Nathan's Uncle Gary's and Aunt Cathy's house--it was the perfect place.  The most beautiful back yard and inground pool--for our kids, it was like a dream :)  

Me and Layla with Aunt Denise and cousin Heather

Nathan and his cousin, Christopher

Dave and his brother-in-law, Doug

Halle and Bailey (one of the kids who visited us at the ocean!  It was so awesome that our kids had already met and bonded with these kids!)

Brooke, me, and my sis-in-law Jenna...love these ladies!

A crazy beach ball game with the whole family :)

The whole group!

Whew.  That was a lot of pictures!  

Dad and Mom, thank you so much for the amazing vacation.  We appreciate all of it sooo much!  We are so thankful for all of the good memories--we love you guys so much!