Vacation

is terrific!  We've been having a lot of fun.  Ricardo and I flew to El Paso, then rented a car and drove up to Santa Fe, NM.  We've stayed here 3 days and tomorrow we drive back down to spend some time in Mexico with his family, and finish up our trip by seeing some friends get married in Palomas, Mexico.  

Picture highlights from our vacationing so far...

Vacation started off REALLY WELL...turns out our gate at the airport was next to a flight taking the L.A. Galaxy (soccer team) back to California...so I got to take Ricardo's picture with...yes...that's him: David Beckham.  

1am Dallas time...we're at Juan and Celina's house in El Paso, I'm trying on my new Saudi Arabian dress that Juan brought back for me.  Ricardo got dressed up too, to look the part!

Driving to Santa Fe...we stopped in Hatch, NM, chile capital of the world!

Where's the river???

St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe.

Breakfast and New York Times while Ricardo explored and took pictures

Loretto Chapel, and the Miraculous Staircase

We went to a Painting place and spent an afternoon being perfectionists.

I made a plate and chalice for communion...I'm excited to pick them up tomorrow and see what they look like.  They'll be a whole lot brighter than what they look like now, I'm sure I'll be shocked. I got used to the pastel-looking colors.

Ricardo made a chips & salsa plate for his mom!

Me hanging out with an R2D2 mailbox.

The oldest church in the United States: San Miguel Mission. 

We saw the original adobe steps leading to the altar, still present from the year 1610.

We rented mountain bikes and killed our legs riding up the mountain.

After we made it back down!

me joining the "water ladies" statues....

Hanging out in Starbucks...we loved the tile on the outside of the building!

So, that's what we've done so far, besides hanging out and walking around.  Our hotel is really cute, and right now I'm in bed and enjoying the channels that we get here (more than home!)...and am watching reruns of Top Chef!  I'll post more pictures later on, good night for now!

I did it!

10 on 10

My 2nd attempt is better than the first, I at least got 10 photos!  This project has made me start realizing that I need a new camera.  The one I have was wonderful when I got it in 2001. But that digital technology is now old, (someone joked to me that evening that the technology that was worth so much then is worth about $18 now!)  and the camera itself is broken and held together with masking tape.  I have been having some trouble with it, nothing major, but I think it might be time to move on?  

Unfortunately, it also took me a really long time to post this.  Does anyone else ever have trouble loading photos?  I know they weren't too big, but after the first 5, I was able to load an average of 1 per day.  Maybe with all the stormy weather the internet connection just wasn't great.  But I've finally finished this post, and am ready to move on to other ones.

So, here are my 10 pictures for the 10th, shaped by what I did and where I was.  We had the confirmation dinner that night (and most of the rest of the day I was writing a paper for internship).  

12pm This is the chair we found on the street.  To me it looks like it has a face.

1pm Flowers from L@s Seminaristas dinner on Thursday

2pm: the flower I broke

3pm: elephant ear mid-unfurl

4pm: look close for the baby jalapeños

5pm   Setting up centerpieces

6pm Confirmation Dinner!

7pm Confirmand and Mentor: Shelly and Heidi

8pm Home, and my husband's new haircut!!

9pm have I ever told you how much I hate my phone? But I love the chotki (Eastern Orthodox Prayer Beads) that are attached...

It is finished.

With the exception of Internship stuff, which ends May 31 this year, I am now officially done with my semester. Last papers submitted by midnight (about 14 minutes ago to be exact), and now I am on summer vacation. Except...that summer is full of youth events and other work-related things, so I'm wondering if it will be more restful or less?  

Quien sabe? 

This is quick, I'm ready for bed. But I'm also very excited that tomorrow is 10 on 10 day, so there will be a new post with my 10 pictures (one each hour for 10 consecutive hours on the 10th day of the month) so look for that coming soon!

And maybe one of our haircuts. Ricardo's is much more dramatic than mine was, since he had more hair cut off than he still has on his head!

happy hour

With SPU girls!  

Here's the story...

Back in November I visited a small church called Journey.   I walked in, and was greeted by a very lovely person who started a conversation with me and found out where I'm from....and then they wondered if I happened to know Kaitlin, who went to the same college as I did.  Of course I knew Kaitlin, who was the Student Ministry Coordinator after me on 2nd S. Marston.  

So...we caught up, had breakfast one day in January, and then in March, I find Kayla Walker (now Walker-Edin) on facebook, and see that she's currently at SMU.  (It's a BIG school, that's why I can justify not knowing she was here...) Kayla also lived in Marston and graduated same year as I did.

So then there were three!! Kaitlin, Kayla, and Calia...all living in Dallas.  Weird.

But that's not all.  Michelle Wunsch, who also lived in Marston, was on the same PA staff as Kaitlin and Kayla, has been here for the past 8 weeks for job training.  

So, we've enjoyed hanging out, and met up for a couple of happy hours, the 2nd of which was last night (post-final papers being turned in for Kayla and I).

Here's the picture of our dinner time (mostly talk time...we ate dinner in about 20 minutes, but sat and talked for 2 hours) at Amigos!

Calia, Kaitlin, Kayla, Michelle

I thought the rest of you might enjoy this story of random coincidence...

More news coming soon!

almost done

So sorry to be delinquent on my blogging...it's been awhile.  However, it's that time of the semester when final papers take precedence over blogging, and since I turned a rather large one in today, I'm feeling quite free to spend a little time catching up here!

By this time next week I should be entirely done with my semester and on to the insane summer schedule of youth activities.

It's making me tired just thinking about it...so this will be short.  But here are some pictures I've managed to snag this past week, of garden progress and random sightings.

Elephant ears just unfurled all at once one morning!

Find the hiding gecko

My lovely little pansies...

and one more: today was our final intern group meeting, so we had lunch.  Here's the picture (photo credit goes to David Urban) of us after lunch, ready to say our goodbyes (except three of us have class together after intern group!) Is it just me, or are we kind of glow-y around the edges?

Blog Philosophy

I just wrote one of my internship papers, which had to be on the topic of Personal Nurture...which I think is a weird phrase.  But so is pastoral self-care, or anything else you call it.  Me-Time?  

It turns out though, that what I wrote about was my blog!  Since I wrote about my blog for my paper, I decided to write about my paper for my blog.  Blogging is something I have decided I really like doing, especially since I can write about the things I love to do, and the thoughts I currently have.  It is my self-care, and you, dear blog readers, are part of it since your feedback and comments have delighted me and I check often to see if there are any new ones, or any new blog posts on your own blogs!

This past weekend was busy!  Ric and I went camping and paintball playing with the youth.  Paintball is not my favorite...it hurts.  I got hit on the back and my rib STILL hurts!  But the camping was fun, and the game was rather fun too.  Until I got hit.  Here's a picture of me in stealth mode...I'm so tough.  (not really).  I don't feel too guilty about hitting my youth group with paint (I have terrible aim, I don't know if I really hit anyone!), but I do feel guilty for enjoying it.

Truthfully, the best part was the camping.  Last year I brought my guitar, and fortunately a youth showed up who was a great guitar player and singer and he led worship.  This year, no such luck.  No one else played the guitar, so worship was led by me...and wasn't great!  I know so few chords and hadn't played in 2 + years.  Yikes.  It was still worship around a campfire though, with s'mores...all that's needed for a fun and meaningful time.  I think s'mores can be a symbol of the Trinity, right? 

While I ponder that, here are some more camping pictures...

Ricardo setting up our cute tent. What a guy!

Me trying to remember some chords so we could worship...

Yes, I sing while I pack...such a dork.

Morning sunshine!  Just in case there was any question about how much of a dork I really am...

I've really gotta get back to doing homework, end of semester is just a week and a half away!

Monk...

It's a great show.  I highly recommend it, if you happen to have cable (we don't, we borrow the dvd's from my parents).  I think it just started showing re-runs on NBC on Sunday nights.  I used to say (joking) that I married  Monk, because of some of Ricardo's particularities and peculiarities.  (Now I think we're both OCD in our own ways).  Today, however, I was the most monk-ish because we're having visitors next weekend and I am using it as an excuse to get some big Spring Cleaning done.  

I even typed up and printed out a checklist...it's maybe half done.  Some of the things on the list are extremely unlikely though: like hanging the bulletin board in our office...it hasn't been hung up in 8 months, what's another week or two? And along those lines, organizing closets probably won't happen either...as long as it looks clean, does it matter what's behind closed doors?  

Other things I have discovered about myself: I really hate bleach.  The smell makes me feel ill (headache!), and I don't like how it makes my hands feel the rest of the day.  I've noticed that I don't clean with any bleach products very often, and today while cleaning I remembered why.  While I have some cleaning products that I prefer to use because they don't bother my head, I also have started wondering how to eliminate some of the chemicals that I probably don't need to be using.  Anyone out there have more experience with this?  I'm all about killing germs...but not so keen on introducing other toxins (chemicals, allergens, etc) into our environment.  I hope some of you have some solutions!

Other news:

Some of our other priorities shifted, since a tree (or half of one) fell in our backyard on Sunday.  For those of you who remember last year's storms, this is the same tree that dropped a huge branch in our yard last May, and now it has lost more than half it's top.  It took Ric awhile with a chainsaw to get it down to manageable pieces, and most of it is now out of the way, but it cut into our cleaning time a lot.

Poor Tree.

 It fell on the telephone line too, and pulled it down, ripping it out of the box.  Good thing we only have cell phones.

Now, I'm tired of cleaning, so I used one of my old college days tricks: whenever I got stressed or too busy, or just needed a break, I would paint my nails...that way I couldn't do anything much for at least 15 minutes...usually longer. 

With pink toes and fingernails, I didn't feel like doing anything else, so blogging was a good option.  Random piece of information: did you know that people with a strong or thick Texas/southern accent actually say "fungerneyls" instead of fingernails?  

Bueno

Ready to sleep!

Estaba hablando con Fabian hace unos dias y le mostre mi blog (que es tan chido, bien bacan), pero todo esta en ingles.  Entonces tal vez puedo hacer unas historias en el castellano tambien, pero hoy no...porque ya son casi las 2 de la madrugada y estoy muy cansada.  

Hoy estaba en la iglesia todo el dia, como cada Domingo, pero llegue a casa y empece a limpiar porque mis padres y padrinos vienen a visitarnos en una semana mas. Apenas me di cuenta que ya era muy tarde, y quiero dormir...buenas noches hermanos y hermanas!