Memorial Day Weekend

I think we attended every Pro Dallas sports game possible this weekend. Golf, soccer and baseball...too bad the Mavs aren't still playing or we'd have had to make it to a basketball game too.

On Saturday we went to the Byron Nelson with mom and dad thanks to free tickets from dad's work. The weather was perfect and the food was complimentary since we were in a villa so we weren't complaining! Towards the end of the day we went to the 17th hole to watch the last few groups come through. It ended up being more entertaining than we bargained for. Upon arriving to the hole, we heard cheers but no one was putting or hitting so we weren't sure what was going on until dad overheard a fellow fan explain the situation. Apparently the fans had decided that on the 17th hole they would make bets about which caddy would step onto the green first. As the caddies made their way from the tee box to the green, cheers would erupt from all sides of the hole for whichever caddy was in first place. At first the caddies ignored the cheers and stepped onto the green as they would have any other day. Then one of the caddies decided to play along. He was approaching the green and the cheers were getting louder but instead of stepping on the green, he walked on the edge all the way around until another caddy made it to the green, which of course riled up the crowd even more. Everyone was very pleased to see a caddy play along. Preston said he wished a caddy would just take off and run towards the green. We had decided at this point to head back to the villa to get something to eat but wanted to watch the caddies step onto the green before we left so we hung around for one more group. Again, the caddies headed towards the green from the tee box and seemed to be ignoring the crowds' cheers until all of a sudden one of the caddies starting jogging...then the caddy next to him started jogging too and the crowd went wild. Well there was one more caddy that had been lagging behind and he decided he was going to join the race as well but instead of jogging as his competitors had done, he dropped his golf clubs and took off in a full sprint towards the green. You should have seen the crowd. You would've thought we were watching the 400 meter dash at the Olympics. I don't even remember which caddy won, but it might have been the best entertainment I've ever seen at a golf tournament.

This was our view from the villa at the Byron

Because of the possibility of rain, the tournament ended early but that was ok because it gave us time to recover for the soccer game we ended up attending Saturday night. One of our friends from college, Mike, has a friend from high school, also named Mike, who plays pro soccer for the San Jose Earthquakes. He got us complimentary tickets to the FC Dallas vs. LA Galaxy game in Frisco so we went with a group of Preston's guy friends from college. It rained a little but was pretty entertaining...especially the section of fans who were beating drums and tossing confetti in all directions. I wish soccer was more popular in the U.S. Its fun to watch soccer fans and I bet its even more fun to be one. I have no pictures from this game because it was a little too drizzly and wet to whip out the camera.

Today me, Preston and Cameron went to the Rangers vs. Yankees game at the Ballpark in Arlington (which, by the way, is right next door to the new Dallas Cowboy stadium). The Rangers lost horribly but we had great seats and I finally got some sun so it was a great kick start to the summer. Plus we got great pictures of the new football stadium.

Dad's company's seats

Our view
Dot race...we were cheering for blue. He got second

Derek Jeter maybe? I don't know.

Dallas Cowboy stadium in all its glory. Beautiful.

And that concludes our sports-filled Memorial Day weekend!

How we met and fell in love

I have been thinking for a long time that I need to write down my memories of how Preston and I met, how we started dating, how we got engaged, etc. so that I will have them somewhere to refer to forever. I have already noticed that as the years go by, I start forgetting detail by detail the most important moments of our lives. So this post is how we met and how I fell in love. I can't really speak for Preston. This is how I remember it. After having read this post to him he has decided to write his own post because he remembers things differently.

Warning: don't read this if you can't handle the love. It's extremely mushy and I'm almost embarrassed to publish it, but it's a long post so I'm hoping most people won't even make it to the mushy part before falling asleep on their keyboards.

Preston and I actually don't remember when we met. (See what I mean about forgetting!?) We know we met at a basketball game but my memory of the encounter is certainly a false memory because of how many times we have tried to remember it. This is what I know to be true. It was a GSP team 1 game in Bennett Gym at ACU and I came to watch the game with my friend Candice Wood. During the game I guess we were talking about who was playing on the team and I told her I knew everyone except Preston and one other guy. She said she would introduce me to both of them after them game. That's where the memory gets a little fuzzy. I don't specifically remember meeting Preston but we know Candice had to have introduced us at that game because my next memory of us was at another basketball game a few days later. At our second encounter I was sitting on the floor in the double gyms at ACU about to watch another basketball game and Preston came and sat beside me. I remember this clearly because I was sure he thought I was cute since he decided to sit by me. I also remember him holding a basketball in his hand. After that encounter we became great friends during the rest of the semester. We went to Austin with a group of guys, had a Valentine's party with all our friends, talked about our crushes and who we were going to ask to formal. We carried our friendship over into the summer and while I worked at Pine Cove and he would call me on the weekends to talk. In the Fall I headed to Oxford and we would talk occasionally over email but not often (Facebook was brand new at this point). When I came back to Abilene in the Spring I distinctly remember being very excited to see Preston. I drove from Dallas to Abilene before school ended for Christmas break just so I could see all my friends again. Then over break Preston drove up by himself to Dallas and spent New Years with me and my family. I look back at that now and think it was little suspicious that he'd drive all the way to Dallas, but I know that at the time I did not have a crush on him yet because of this memory...

Lo and behold I was at another one of Preston's basketball games and while watching him play I remember thinking "I am attracted to him!" Must have been his sweet basketball skills. Either that or the fact that he'd gotten rid of that silly haircut he'd had since he was in second grade. Anyway, I pretty much dismissed the thought until our friends started pestering us about whether or not we liked each other since we were hanging out together all the time. So sometime mid-January 2006 I finally decided that maybe we needed to have a DTR just to clear the air. One night while Preston was at my house in Abilene, I asked him what he told people when they asked if we were dating. He said he just told them we were friends and then asked me what I told them. I said I told them the same thing and that I just wanted to be sure. At this point I believe I had hoped he'd have a different response but I guess for him the timing wasn't right. I wasn't real sure I wanted to be in a dating relationship with him either so I was pretty content to remain a friend. We ended up all going to Austin again that year but this time I stayed at Preston's house. This is when I met Jeff and Malena for the first time.

By the time Sing Song time came around I had decided that I was going to take Preston to my formal. Formal wasn't for another couple months so I made up my mind that I would not ask Preston until after Sing Song was over. I didn't want to look desperate and I definitely didn't want him to think I liked him because at this point I was still in denial. Preston was co-director that year and spent many nights at my house going over the lyrics, music and choreography for their show. Sing Song ended up always being a hard weekend for me because our club never won. That year we were Cleopatra and we lost but Preston had won and I was super excited for him. Unfortunately I had a huge research paper due the Tuesday after Sing Song for the hardest class I took in college, so the weekend was not a great one for me. Sunday night, the day after Sing Song, Preston was at my house and we were just hanging out in my room and I knew I needed to ask him to formal. Now that Sing Song was over, I knew formal would be on everyone's minds. Before I could ask, Preston got a call from one of his friends to come over to her house. When he hung up the phone he said he'd go and then come right back and that they just wanted him to come over to watch a video of the show from the night before. I said I'd just work on my paper while he was gone. As soon as he walked out the door I got a funny feeling. The girl who's house he was going to was a house of girls in a different club from the one I was in. Furthermore, their formal was going to be the same weekend as ours this particular year and though I'd thrown a fit about it, Kojies had not changed their minds on moving the date. I finally decided to ask my roommate what I should do. I walked into Amanda's room and told her where had Preston had gone. "You don't think he's going to get asked to formal do you?" She said there was no way. The girl I thought would ask him had a boyfriend. She was sure of it.
"But," she said, "if you're worried about it just call him and tell him to come back." I was worried but I felt stupid calling so I just decided I'd text him. As I did my phone rang. It was Preston. I answered and he said he was on his way back. "What did they want?" I asked him. "They just wanted to show me the Saturday performance of Sing Song," he said, "oh and I got asked to formal." My heart dropped. I didn't know what to say. Preston says I hung up on him but I didn't. I know I didn't because I remember scrambling to try to think of how I needed to respond. I finally just said something short like "ok see you in a sec," and then hung up. I ran to Amanda's room, frantic, and told her the news. Preston was going to be back in less than a minute and I was panicking. She came to my room and tried to help me figure out what I was going to say but Preston was there before we could figure it out. She left us alone, awkwardly sidestepping Preston on her way out...he knew something was up. I think he even said something like "what's with her?" but I didn't respond. I didn't know what to say. Then he asked, "So what have you been doing while I was gone?" To which I responded, "Working on my research paper...and trying to figure out how I was going to ask you to formal." He was shocked, of course, and felt terrible but it was too late. There was nothing either of us could do. We awkwardly sat there for the next hour trying to figure out what to do until he left. I was angry at him for not assuming I was going to ask him and knew my anger was misdirected but I couldn't help it. I was hurt. He didn't understand why it was such a big deal. I could ask someone else. The problem was that I didn't want to ask anyone else. There was no one else I could think of that I wanted to take.

The second he shut the door to my room I started sobbing. I ended up crying myself to sleep that night and when I woke up the next morning I was crying again. I had never, not ever, cried over someone like that. That's when I knew I'd been fooling myself.

That day was the first day of lectureship. My grandparents were in town and my granny called me that morning to ask if I wanted to go to lunch with her, my granddad and some of my friends. I said I did but that I had to attend a lecture beforehand. I also told Granny what had happened and her advice was to tell Preston he just needed to tell that other girl he couldn't go with her because he had decided to go with me, but of course I wasn't about to give Preston an ultimatum because at this point I was still trying to play it cool. Ironically I ended up going to the same lecture that Granny and Granddad had decided to attend...as well as Preston. After the lecture I was standing next to Granny when Preston walked up. Granny asked him if he wanted to go to lunch with us too but he took one look at me and knew that wasn't a good idea. I was still pretty devastated and still making an attempt to hide it.

So after Sing Song weekend things between me and Preston were very different. I had attempted to play down the devastation I felt but I could tell Preston wasn't buying it. We were both pretty busy with officer elections and I don't really remember much of what we did in between Sing Song and Spring Break. I do remember hoping he would at least ask me to his formal. He knew now that I had wanted to ask him but it had been weeks and he hadn't asked me. Finally, the Friday before Spring Break we were on our way to my house from chapel and he asked me. I was ecstatic but tried to be cool so he wouldn't freak out. When I got to my house I finally told Robin that I was absolutely 100% sure that I liked Preston more than just a friend and I was going to have to spend Spring Break trying to get over him because the last thing I wanted was to lose him as my friend because of a silly crush. Over the course of the day we would text each other pretty consistently...I'd say at least once an hour. I decided I was not going to text or call him over Spring Break at all. If he texted me I would respond, but I would not initiate a conversation.

You have no idea how hard it was for me to refrain from texting Preston. Wednesday of Spring Break I was doing my quiet time and praying that God would help me get over Preston and give me a sign about what I needed to do when I got a text message in the middle of my prayer. It was Preston. He asked how I was doing. We chatted back and forth and both decided we were going to go back to Abilene early from Spring Break. I think we ended up going back Thursday night. That weekend is one of the most fun weekends I had at ACU. One night it POURED rain and we went to IHOP with a bunch of our friends and it ended up being a blast.

Upon my return to Abilene I had brought with me a hammock from my parents' house that had just been sitting in our garage. I asked Preston if he would hang it in the backyard of my Abilene house and he agreed. The next weekend he hung the hammock and we ended up lounging in it and talking for about 3 hours Sunday night. Monday night we did the same but stayed up even later. On Tuesday I decided I couldn't handle it anymore. I wasn't going to spend another night talking for hours upon hours with Preston in the hammock if we were just going to be friends. It was toying with my emotions and I was seriously confused. I had almost made up my mind to tell him the night before but couldn't muster up enough courage to say anything. It wasn't until one of our friends said something to me at an intramural soccer game that finally gave me the courage. Mike and I were standing on the sidelines of a GSP game and Mike asked the usual question: "So are you and Preston just friends or what?" I said yes we were just friends. Then Mike asked if I was sure. I said yes I was sure...why would he ask if I was sure. He said, "Well I always ask Preston the same question at our officer meetings and normally he gives the same answer but last night at our meeting I ask him and he said he wasn't sure anymore." This was the first time I ever had any evidence that Preston either knew I liked him or knew he liked me. I was willing to take the risk that it was the latter after my conversation with Mike. Now on to the good part...finally...

We were sitting in the hammock after the soccer games that night, talking as we had been for the past two nights and we were on about our second or third hour when the wind began to pick up and the thunder started rolling in the distance. Preston said it was probably time for us to go in but I said we should wait. So we sat there for a couple more minutes until I finally asked him, "Preston, are we still friends?" He asked what I meant by that. I said, "Well, are we still JUST friends?" He said, "I...don't know." So we sat there for several awkward seconds until I finally broke the silence, "Because I can't do this anymore," I said. "I can't stay up all hours of the night talking to you and laying in the hammock with you if we're just going to be friends. It's confusing me." I thought that was a safe response. I didn't necessarily admit my feelings for him but I also wanted to know how he felt. I thought if worse came to worse perhaps we could still maintain a friendship. Preston answered with "Well, here's the thing..." and basically went into an entire spiel about how he'd had his heart broken before and didn't want to ruin our friendship and certainly didn't want to rush into anything especially if it was going to end in heartache for either of us...yada yada yada. The whole time I'm thinking, "This idiot just wants to be friends," and when he ended he said, "And, well, I've already made up my mind what I want to do." I was a little annoyed at this point and completely assuming he was about to pull the friend card so my response was a little short: "So?!..." And that's when it happened. Preston kissed me. Seconds later it started raining. We were kissing in the rain (this is the mushy part I was talking about) and it was the most fairytale moment I've ever had in my life. I am not a mushy person, I promise, I hate mush, but when it comes to this story I can't help myself. It was perfect.

We announced our togetherness the next day and most reactions were "Well it's about time." I guess we were the only two people in the entire school who didn't know it was coming. As far as formal went, as soon as Preston's date to Siggie formal found out we were official she told him she would take someone else to her formal. I felt terrible because she had to find a new date the week before and it really was bad timing on our part. I decided not to drop my date to my formal because he was a good friend and had done me a huge favor by agreeing to take me in the first place BUT it ended up working out perfect because our formal was in Abilene but our group of friends had decided to retreat to Austin for the weekend since we weren't getting an out-of-town formal. My date couldn't go to Austin for the weekend so Preston ended up being my date to Austin! We stayed at my grandparent's timeshare at Barton Creek and on Saturday night Preston and I were on the balcony talking when he said, "I think I love you." I told him I thought I loved him too. He also told me he wouldn't have made the decision to date me if he wasn't "all in". At the time I assumed "all in" meant he was going to stay committed to the relationship. He later explained to me that he meant he was sure he wanted to marry me the night he knew he wanted to date me. We'd been dating for 3 days when Preston told me he loved me and wanted to marry me.

Preston says he will be posting his version of the same story soon. He remembers a few things differently than I do. Hey, there's two sides to every story and I want a record of both! My next post will be about our engagement...Preston and I might try to write that one together.

Your Wife is Hot

your wife is hot!

better get your AC fixed

That was on a billboard for an air conditioning company I saw today and I just thought it was hilarious. I would call them in a second to come fix my air conditioning if it was broken.

In other news, I learned this week that I have 20/15 vision! Before this week I had no idea what my vision was, much less what having 20/20 vision even meant (aside from the fact that it's perfect vision) and now I know both! I have never been to an eye doctor because I have never needed to so the only vision tests I've done have been either in elementary school or at the DMV. My good friend Amanda Steffins is in chiropractor school and tested my vision when I came in for a check up the other day. By the way, if you are in need of a good adjustment in the Dallas area PLEASE let me know! Amanda needs 50 adjustments before she can graduate in August and she's also getting married at the end of the summer so the sooner she can finish adjusting, the more time she can spend working on the wedding!

Today I went to a wonderful little cafe called Juice Zone on Beltline Rd. The cafe provides healthy choices only, including wraps, paninis and smoothies. It's a little pricey but SO worth it if you're looking for a healthier option for lunch. I had the Spicy Chicken Panini and a Mango smoothie for $9. I definitely wouldn't recommend going there every day due to the expense but if you're in the mood for something healthy please go. They used to have a location on McKinney but it closed down so visit this one so it doesn't close down! I keep telling Preston we need to open a fast food restaurant that sells healthy food only and this is pretty close to it. It doesn't have a drive thru, it is more set up like a smoothie shop, but it'll work.

Last but certainly not least, I wanted to include in this post the birthday invitation my cousin Hunter sent out to all his friends this week for his 18th birthday party. I can't even explain how funny it is. If you don't know Hunter, this letter should explain his personality pretty well. You should also know that he is one of those people who is WAY too smart for high school but is failing all his classes. He could make millions one day. He's a genius. A few things you should know before you read this letter: Hunter's house has an atrium in the center of the house that is surrounded by windows and accessible through a single door. Kendra is Hunter's sister. Alex is his (and my) cousin. Parker is one of Hunter's friends in high school who can drive. I have no idea who Ryan Stremel is...maybe another one of Hunter's friends. You'll see why you need to know these things when you read the letter.

Here's the invitation/letter:

You (name of guest) Are invited to....

HHP2
(Hunter's Halo Party 2...he had one last year too)

But Hunta, where will it be? And when?

This is happening at my house, this Friday, May 22. We WERE going to have it on the 16th, but then Kendra decided to graduate college. Then, we were going to have it on the 15th, until Alex decided to be born.

Who's the DJ?

No, moron, we're playing Halo. That's just stupid, what you said. We're playing Halo 3 over my house's network, with 16 people and 4 Xboxes. For those of you who don't understand, that means that we'll all be playing the same match in the same house.

So who's gonna hook us up, man?
If you bring anything more incriminating than a Xbox 360 controller, I'll certainly be willing to "hook you up" with the freaking pavement. If you arrive drunk or high, or with alcohol or drugs or smoking objects, I'll lock you in the atrium and we'll make fun of you. If you want to do drugs, don't come to my party.

Can Parker give me a ride?
No.

Can I bring my girlfriend?
Go ahead, bring your dumb girl. We'll lock her in the atrium, too.

Hey, can I bring [insert uninvited guest's name here] to the party? He's really cool, I promise.
Can and Could are special kinds of words. This uninvited friend could come over to my house, I could introduce both of your faces to the pavement. You could get a life. (That's a no, for the obviously challenged.)

You may have noticed that I didn't invited any girls. That's because girls and Halo mix just about as well as Ryan Stremel and beating my high score in Bejeweled. Girls aren't good moral support for people who are playing Halo. Therefore, girls aren't ideal for a Halo party. I'm not gay. Seriously.

Even if you're invited, you can't invite or bring anyone else who wasn't invited.

If you have your own Xbox 360 controller, please bring it. We'll even label your name on it.

This isn't one of those "don't bring a present" parties. Just so you know.

Please send me your color, armor, race, icon, and controller settings before Friday so that I can set that up.

Hunter's mom tells me this is the "edited" version of his original invitation. She had to approve the letter before he sent it. This is about the 7th version he handed to her. My favorite part is the sentence about bringing presents to the party.

More Nicaragua pictures

These pictures tell a better story of my time in Nicaragua...

Triage

Taking blood pressure

VBS

sheep day

PharmacyStacy the Pharmacist

Carl writing labels for us...thanks Carl!

Writing labels for medicine

Thinking hard


The eyeglasses station

Medical station

Physical therapy station

Dentist station

Nicaragua

I tried to write a blog in Nicaragua several times but our Internet time was limited and unpredictable, not to mention the fact that the blogger website was in Spanish so it made things a little more complicated.

Several things have happened since I last blogged. First of all, our friends Aaron and Brittany Gauntt threw a Kentucky Derby Party last Saturday which was a blast despite the torrential rains and collapse of the Dallas Cowboy practice facility. I used this party to practice my baking skills and ended up making a Strawberry Trifle and Magnolia Bakery Red Velvet Cupcakes. In New York, those cupcakes were fantastic, the best I've ever had. The ones I made were overrated even though I followed that darn recipe to a T! I adapted them from a cake recipe so perhaps next time I will just make a cake and hope it turns out better. I ended up having to make two different icings because the first icing tasted like pure sugar (it was crunchy). The second icing was phenomenal...I will definitely be making it in the future. Here are a few pictures from the party and of my desserts.

Me and Preston in our hats

The girls with our Mint Juleps...a Kentucky Derby tradition I guess

That hat lasted about 5 minutes...but it was adorable!

The downpour

My cupcakes

My Strawberry Trifle

Preston and I both had to leave the party a little early. I had a wedding downtown and he had a friend's birthday party. The rain was relentless the entire trip downtown. In fact on my way home from the wedding at about 9:45pm nearly every car on the highway had their hazard lights on in order to see each other through the monsoon. It was my job to set up the reception before the wedding so you can imagine how difficult it was to try to cross the mini river that had accumulated in the parking lot while carrying an umbrella and boxes of linens and attempting to keep my nice dress dry. The reception was at a place called 7Senses which is a design studio downtown that the artist rents out for parties and weddings. It was definitely one of the more interesting sites I've been to and reminded me of an Alice in Wonderland/Magic Time Machine type decor. There were several different rooms with crazy decor. Of course, I had to take pictures because that description really doesn't capture how eclectic this place is. It would also be a fantastic location for a birthday or New Year's type party. Here are the pictures...



I left the wedding reception early so I could get to bed for my 6am flight the next morning. It thunderstormed the entire night. Normally I'm one to defend the storms but not when I'm getting ready to board an airplane. On our way to the airport in the morning Preston asked me to check the gate on my phone so we could figure out exactly where I needed to be. I tried but sometimes the Internet on my phone is slower in bad weather and it wasn't exactly cooperating. Too bad because when we finally checked in at the electronic check out counter, my 6am flight was now leaving at 3:30pm! At first I thought maybe I'd made a mistake or missed an email from Malena telling me my flight had been rescheduled so I rechecked-in several times until a Continental desk worker notified me that my 6am flight had been cancelled. She rescheduled me to flight out of Dallas at noon so that when I arrived in Houston I wouldn't miss my flight to Nicaragua which meant I'd arrive in Nicaragua around 8pm and would have to stay the night in Managua before heading to Jinotega in the morning. The rest of the team had already headed to Jinotega aside from one of the physical therapy doctors and his team of students so the PT doctor ended up meeting me at the airport and getting me a room in the hotel for the night since I was by myself.

I spent the first night by myself and was picked up in the morning by Harvey, a young Nicaraguan translator who works for the Mision para Cristo which is who we worked alongside and where we stayed the entire week in Nicaragua. We had a 2 hour drive from Managua to Jinotega (pronounced with an "h" sound, not a "j" sound) and he wouldn't let me sleep because he didn't want me to miss the scenery so we spent much of our time talking about the English and Spanish languages. At one point I asked him if he'd ever been to America and he said he had...illegally. Certainly funny hearing it from his point of view, especially with how touchy the subject of immigration is becoming in the U.S., particularly in Texas.

I got to the site of our clinic after our team had already begun for the day so I just had to jump right in to Pharmacy and learn the best I could. It was me, a girl named Kim who is a missionary in Nicaragua and the Pharmacist, Stacy. The way the clinic worked was the patients would stand in line outside and receive a form that they would fill out with their name and age. They would come inside and first go to triage where their vitals would be taken (as I understand it). Then they would see a doctor who would diagnose and treat them as they saw fit as well as write them a prescription that would then come to us. We would then fill the prescription and give them to a translator to give to the patient. Sounds easy right? Not at first. I'm no doctor and so names like Doxycilinum and Acetaminophen aren't exactly a part of my every day vocabulary. In fact, I have concluded that doctors intentionally write illegibly because they have no idea how to spell the prescriptions they fill. It's a little difficult to prescribe the correct medication when you can't tell the difference between Albuterol, a medicine for respiratory problems and Albendozal, a medicine for worms. It took a couple days but eventually I began to recognize the medicines and know where they were in the pharmacy, which helped everything go faster as the week went on. Unfortunately, reading the doctor's handwriting never got easier.

I need to also mention that there was a dentist and eyeglasses station the patients could visit as well. The patients waited in separate lines to visit these stations as needed. On Wednesday, the physical therapy team arrived and so there was that station as well. Also, outside there was a small VBS set up. The children sat 2-3 to a desk and would cheer everyday when our van pulled up because they were so excited.

Sheep day at VBS

Kinda creepy but the kids love it

The dentist ended up pulling an average of 30-40 teeth a day...about the amount he'd pull in a year at his office in the states. Needless to say, he was pretty exhausted by the end of each day. Malena had actually originally placed me as the dentist's assistant but I decided I would not be able to handle it. I didn't have to hold anybody down in Pharmacy.

Pulling teeth

The week went really well and I enjoyed being a part of a medical mission trip for a change. I've done VBS and built houses before on mission trips but I really did love helping people receive much needed medical care even though I have no medical background whatsoever. It made me wish I had the stomach to be a doctor. On the other hand, my handwriting is probably too good.

I don't have the exact numbers, I'm sure I will receive a report from Malena soon, but I do know we treated about 1,300 people (some of them were probably repeats, but there was no way to tell). Malena took great care of me during the week. I am so blessed to have such a sweet mother-in-law. When we had arrived at the Houston airport and were eating our long awaited chips and queso, I told her I couldn't believe she does so many mission trips in one year. It takes a special person to be able to do what she does so positively.

At the end of our trip we spent a day in the city of Managua. It ended up being a day of mixed emotions. We drove into town from Jinotega in 3 vehicles: 2 trucks and a 15 passenger van. I rode in the front seat of one of the trucks because I had been getting car sick whenever we had traveled by van. I had also taken a Dramamine which knocked me out cold the entire trip to Managua. We headed first to the market where we were able to buy souvenirs if we so desired. Then we went to lunch at a chicken fast food restaurant (much like Kentucky Fried Chicken). We were told to leave our stuff in the car and it would be safe considering the cars would be locked and there was a security guard in the parking lot. When we arrived back at the vehicles after lunch, the van had been broken into and four backpacks had been stolen, one of which had a girl's passport in it. The security guard claimed he saw nothing and must have been in the bathroom when the thieves made their move, but seeing as our table was right next to the bathroom and we never saw him enter the restaurant, we're convinced he was lying. After much deliberation and attempts to bribe the security guard we weren't having any luck, so we left defeated and more cautious of our belongings. In the 12 years that our missionary leader has been in Nicaragua, he had never had a problem with theft at the restaurant. Malena had been riding in the van and her computer was in her bag, but luckily she had taken it into the restaurant with her. Things could have been much worse had she lost that bag. In fact, she made a great point that as unfortunate as it was for those team members to have their bags stolen, at least it was a problem that money could fix.

Oscar, another young translator who works for the Mision, later told me that when we'd arrived at the chicken restaurant, there had been a man who had hopped onto the back of truck I was riding in and was trying to lift the tarp off our luggage to steal whatever was underneath while we were driving! Luckily we had pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant before he could get the tarp off enough to take anything.

Speaking of Oscar, I also asked him if he'd ever visited the United States. He told me he hadn't but that his aunt has been trying to get him to come over illegally for years. She actually paid a guide around $6,000 to help her enter the U.S. illegally. As soon as they made it safely across the border, the guide left her in the middle of the desert. Now his aunt is in America as legal resident. He said he would never consider going to America illegally, that it didn't seem right to him, but that the odds of getting permission (a Visa) to visit legally was like winning the lottery. Again, it was interesting to hear his perspective. I can't imagine being told that I was not allowed to enter another country I wanted to visit. It's sad for honest people like Oscar, who wouldn't take advantage of the opportunity to travel the U.S.

Our next stop was ziplining through the jungle. I was most excited about doing this because it was only going to cost us $25 and people normally pay much more as an excursion on a cruise. It ended up being one of the highlights of the week and a great way to end the day despite the theft incident. Malena ended up going as well and we had a blast! Since I'd worked the zipline as a counselor at Pine Cove, I was familiar with the equipment as well as the mechanics and wasn't too afraid about going despite my tendency to dislike heights. I began ziplining solo and then the guide asked if I wanted to do "Superman" with him (all "no hands on rope" positions had to be done with a guide). I said I would even though I had no idea at the time what that meant. It ended being an upside down sprawled eagle style sort of like the upside-down part of a cartwheel. Very fun...very awkward pictures. After the "Superman" the guide asked me if I wanted to do "Superwoman". I of course obliged without any knowledge as to what I was getting myself into. "Superwoman" ended up being head first, feet back, hands and head straight ahead like I was flying...definitely my favorite way to go down. The best part? The 81-year-old man on our team ended up doing the "Superwoman" on his last ride...what a trooper! Here are pictures from the zipline AND a video of Malena zipling! I didn't get many pictures throughout the week because Pharmacy was a busy station most of the time, but I know Malena got several so when I get them from her I'll be sure to post them.

Swine Flu sign outside our window at the Mision...which makes this next video pretty amusing...



Play Station 2 is a big deal. Kids pay a pretty penny to play for an hour at a time in these houses that they have designated for video game play only. I thought Preston would enjoy this.

The kids playing Play Station.

Geared up and ready to go!

Like I said, awkward picture.

On the platform waiting to go again

Malena and her guide ziplining

Oh and I almost forgot my favorite thing about Nicaragua! Twenty Cordobas (Nicaraguan currency) equals one U.S. dollar. Ice cream was about 10 Cordobas for two scoops. That's 50 cents people! For two scoops of ice cream!!! You better believe I took advantage of that opportunity every chance I got. Though I guess if it weren't 8 times that expensive in the U.S. I'd probably be 30 lbs. heavier than I am right now.

In other news, Ella took a bath in the sink today and it was the cutest thing you've ever seen. AND she said Aunt Rene' (sounded more like "Ahhh Nay"), Preston ("Psss Tnnn") and my name ("Shhhhhh"). I missed this baby.

Blowing bubbles through a spool of thread...no lie.