birthday part 2

One thing I love about my birthday is that I not only share that week with my dad whose birthday is the day after mine, but also with my sweet friend Ruby, whose bday is the day before mine. I also share the same day with my good friend Pao, but she now lives in mexico and we don't get to celebrate together anymore. Anyways, last Saturday, our friends got together to celebrate me and Ruby's birthdays. I also like a tradition that we have here amongst our friends that when it is someone's birthday, we take time for everyone at the party to go around and say what they appreciate about that person. It's really a nice time of receiving affirmation from your friends....I think it's a good practice to take time, even if it's just once a year, to actually communicate to those people you love why it is that you love them. Here are some pictures from our party, plus a few of Suzy's personal pool party in our patio this past weekend!

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth...

I've just been too busy to blog since we got back from our trip! And sadly enough, too busy to take pictures as well.

The same day Suzy and I came back, the mission team from Quaker Gap came down, which is always a highlight of each year! I went with them to Comasagua a few days to translate for VBS for 100 kids in the morning and 100 in the afternoon. It's always so fun to have familiar faces from my childhood here and get to do ministry with them as well. Here is one of the few pictures I took. This is one of the worship service. This was right before the power went out because of the hurricane force hail storm. I wasn't sure how I felt about translating with a wet microphone in my hand during a thunderstorm, at the bottom of a hill that has had mudslides numerous times.

Then, on Tuesday I started back at work. The kids don't start until the end of August, but we have teacher workdays until then.

Also, Thursday was my birthday!! Can you believe we didn't take a single picture all day?? Elvis woke me up at midnight to start giving me presents, and had gerber daisies waiting for me on the breakfast table, along with a caramel pecan Cinnabon, eggs, and fresh fruit (and coffee of course!), a card, and another present waiting in the car for me to go to work. Then, we went out to eat that night at the Gourmet Burger Company, by far my favorite nice restaurant here at the moment because of the great menu variety! I got a Portobello mushroom burger with Brie cheese, topped with cajun grilled avocado, roasted veggies, and a Cuban pineapple sauce. YUM!!! Where else could I get Brie cheese here?!?!

Friday just happened to be my dad's birthday (happy birthday DAD!!!) so to celebrate I ate all my leftovers from Thursday, plus Key Lime Pie last night with friends. Isn't it funny that we always associate birthdays and any other celebrations by eating way more calories than we should? I wonder why that is. I sure did enjoy it though =)

So, in other and cuter news, Suzy is crawling now! And she can go from crawling to sitting and vice versa. And she is clapping which is super cute. We had to lower the play pen because she was pulling up on it as well. She also loves playing her drum and so here is a video of her playing and of her cracking up:

Last pictures from our trip

Suzy and I are back at home in El Salvador! We had an amazing trip, saw so many people that I love. We were able to spend more time with marty and Sara and Anna and that was a blast! I think the grandparents and great grandparents were so happy to have them both there at the same time. I'm so glad that worked out for us to be there together. I think Suzy' s favorite part (other than being with family) was all the water- she LOVED playing in the ocean, kiddie pool, bathtub, etc! It was nice that I didn't have to worry about her drinking the water like I do here at home. She loved sucking the salt water off of her hands too!

The trip was a complete success, however, the traveling home was a bit stressful you might say. We left Wallace at 6 am and took our first flight to Dallas which went very well. Then in Dallas we went to the next gate so Suzy could stretch out and play for a while (we had a 3 hour layover) and ran into my boss and co-worker who were going on the very same flight! Coincidence? I think not. They helped me a lot in the airport and getting on the plane. That flight from Dallas was 3 hours which is a verrrry long time with a squirmy 7 month old! The hard part was that every time we took off in every flight, she would poop right then and we couldn't get up to go to the bathroom which was obviously uncomfortable for her (and others within sniffing range). To keep her happy, we would walk up and down the aisle when possible so she could see everybody and play with everyone. She got passed around quite a bit! She is quite the social butterfly I must say.
Anyways, i was definitely counting down the minutes until we landed and could see Elvis. They finally got on the speakers to announce that we were landing, but because of a ferocious thunderstorm in El Salvador, they announced that we would be landing in Honduras instead! There, we would refuel and wait out the storm. By this point I was about to have a meltdown...I was running out of diapers, bottles, and could jsut picture us spending the night in Honduras. They wouldn't let us off the plane in Honduras, but i turned on my cellphone and luckily had service, and right then Elvis called. He was having a meltdown too because the windshield wipers on our car stopped working and so he was stranded in the torrential rains and couldn't get to the airport, and he thought we were already there waiting for him! Turns out, after a LOT of praying, we were able to leave Honduras in about an hour, Suzy fell asleep, Elvis got the windshield wipers working and we were all at the airport (which was roasting by the way because the storm knocked the air out) reunited, exhausted from the stress and time apart, hugging and crying. He had my favorite flowers waiting for me and we decided we were never traveling without each other again if we can help it!

Here are the highlights from the last part of our trip!

Reunited part 2

These past few days have been awesome for me, reuniting with great friends, including meeting Brooke and Tyler at UNC! Suzy loved walking around campus and eating at Sakura and i did too. She also loved all the other children she met: Aaron, Lydia, and Nora. I love that she will be friends with my friends' children. Here are some pictures from the fun filled past few days: