Looks like we made it!

(a little barry for any of you who caught it...)

Well, we are now in the great city of Warren Michigan! We've had some struggles and ups and downs, but alas, we are here! Mom was a HUGE help in the process. She came out to help us clean (she basically cleaned the entire house-literally). While preston studied like mad for the boards. He looked a little crazy before he left and even sillier when he was finished. The good news is, it's over! We still haven't gotten the scores yet, we'll keep you posted on how he did.

Then, we took our Fabulous trip to Santa Fe NM courtesy of Bob Barker! It really was just what we needed, a nice relaxing get away. We basically did nothing the whole time. We were stuck at the resort, miles from civilization without a car - but it was actually perfect because we just wanted to be lazy! The trip there was a little crazy. We were on this DINKY plane, not only was it a rocky ride, but it also didn't have a bathroom (which nobody told me!). So it was an interesting flight, but we made it there. Our homey Casita was really nice, with a fireplace and everything (not that we ever used it, because it was blazin hot the whole time). We mostly just chilled in our room, layed by the pool, and read books. We did rent a car one day, from this shack of a place, to get food and explore the city. We went to the main plaza area, which was nothing but restaurants and stores and street venders. It was really neat. We bought some delicious grilled corn and I found a purse made out of candy wrappers, like the gum chains lori and I use to make, and it was selling for 180 bucks!

We looked for a cheap mexican place on the way home and stumbled upon Los Potrillos!
(check out the big barrels of juice in the background, they were just laddeling out cups from these suckers. It was pretty ghetto). We tried a cactus dish and enjoyed some delicious fajitas.

The highlight for me was eating at the onsight restaurant the "Blue Heron" for our one paid for meal on Bob. It was really delicious and REALLY expensive. But they paid for everything. We got an apetizer of delicious chicken spring rolls. Our waiter also kept bringing us out delicious mint, ginger, lime drinks. There was also a delightful live jazz group playing (which you may or may not be able to see in this picutre). The portions were small (you should have seen Preston's steak! It was no bigger than my fist). But everything was delicious, including our deserts! Yes that's plural, we EACH got one! We joked because our 20 dollar tip was more than we would normally pay for an entire meal. It was a fun night.

We also went on a short hike to watch the sunset over Santa Fe. We sat on these big water tower thingys, which kind of made me feel like a delinquent, but the view was much better.

We arrived home and were thrown back into the chaos of the move. Within the first 3 hours of our trip we stopped to get gas and I noticed that there were barely shreds of a tire on our trailer. One had completely blown. We called to get roadside service, which took about 3 hours to get to us. The guy was able to fix it real fast, but it put us way behind schedule. Preston was a little tense at first, especially chugging through the rockies at night I wasn't sure that we'd make it up this incline); but once he was comfortable, he was rockin out to the music and we had ourselves a good ol' roadtrip across the country.

We were welcomed into michigan by this glorious sign and some of the fam! It was so great to have the help moving and to see everyone! WIth all the chaos of moving in and trying to find a place to lock up the trailer, we forgot to pick up a shower curtain, so sunday morning we had to use a little creativity!

Lovin Life

Hey everyone,

Hope all are doing well. Sorry I haven't been calling much, but I've been a little 'taken' this last week. Got back into Provo last week and called up Connie's mother for a little help. Needed some bedding, towels, and stuff I couldn't pack. So I went over there Sunday night and hung out looking at pictures with her mother, and playing with Con's niece and nephew. We all went to the zoo the next day (Her mother, sister, niece, and nephew), here's a picture of me with her niece Tapanga. After the zoo we had a family Memorial Day BBQ. Lots of family, lots of fun.

Hung out with the family a lot before Connie finally came back on Wednesday. We all went to the airport to see her, Tiffanie and Todd (sis and bro-in-law) arrive. This picture has most everyone. Left-right: Tapanga, Tiff, Todd, baby Matthew, Candice, One good lookin guy, The love of my life, Merlin's head, Terra, and Cousin Sara. Merlin and Candice are married as well as Tiff and Todd. Terra's husband Andy was not there.

We had a variety of signs ready for their return, but I'm thinkin mine was the best. Lucky for me I found a 'Taker.'

So for the past week we've just been hanging out and playing a bunch with the family. Candice and her family live in Idaho and were down for the week. So it was like one giant party everyday. Enjoyed a fun family picnic, trips to the mall, and non-stop joking about Sugi being the next brother-in-law. Her sister's ganged up on me one afternoon telling me all the do's and don'ts about finding a ring and getting engaged. I think Connie was much more embarrased than I. One of the neatest parts of the weekend was standing in on the blessing of baby Matthew. He was given a name and blessing on Sunday, and they asked me to be apart of it. That was the first time I had ever done that; really cool.

Things are going well. Haven't picked a job yet, but hopefully this week I'll know. Just having fun and enjoying life at the moment.

Hot, Hot, Hot!

Well, things are rolling along here in Guyana. I have been attending more big meetings and working on my project. Luckily, the project allows me to still work with youth and do some travel to some of the outer regions. The outer areas contain such humble and sweet people-I love it! An interesting thing that we learned was that when the boss is away, everyone comes in late. So, yesterday we got there close to on-time and most people were an hour late. Guess that's a worldwide phenomenon. Oh, the first picture is of our land lady and the second is some friends from our ward. Hope the pictures aren't too dark.

But, a Guyanese thing is to not have any toilet paper in the bathrooms. Each month, you are given a bar of soap and a roll of toilet paper. Perhaps they have had issues with the stealing of office supplies, namely toilet paper.

Well, officially it is only 88-90 degrees most days with 89% humidity, but it feels like 100 degrees. I sweat like it's my job, but other than that, it is great. No worms yet, but it might be nice to get one since our lady cooks really oily foods.

Love and miss you guys!

Uncle George

I don't want to distract from Taki's great buys, but I've been meaning to post about Uncle George's funeral for a couple weeks now. I learned some cool stuff that I thought you all might be interested to know. Here are some fun facts:

-Uncle George swallowed a pencil when he was 5 and had to have it surgically removed
-He was an incredible gardener with a real green thumb
-He wasn't ticklish, but he did get seasick
-He loved baseball and was a serious bowling champion with lots of trophies
-He met Aunt Ruby on a bowling team. I guess he was quite the ladies man and everyone was after him!
-He really liked to hum
-He was a VERY picky eater and people would always say, "Oh George, you won't eat anything!" and he'd always reply, "Nonsense, I eat everything that I like!"
-He was a pretty quiet guy and when asked the secret to being quiet he responded, "You just don't talk!"
-His proposal was, "Let's go to Vegas!"
-He loved Vegas and won a pretty big jackpot there a while back, something crazy like $30,000. He got a super big check and everything!
-He loved to BBQ

I got to spend some time with the family, which was a lot of fun. I'm trying to gather information about our grandparents so that we can share stories with out kids someday. Anyhow, I think there's a little Uncle George in all of us!

My first Purchases for "US"

Hey everyone. So if you didn't know, last year when I moved in we had no furniture. My roomate John had a friend with a bunch of stuff in storage, and we worked out a deal for him to "store" it at our place. He lent us his dining room table n chairs, desk, tv, dvd player, vcr, and vacuum. Well, he moved away last week, so we've been scrappin it again eating on the floor and stuff. But, not anymore. So I've kinda been this spend-aholic lately but have been getting some really sweet deals. You know I've never bought furniture, so this is a whole new experience, and I loved it. I think the most exciting part about it is the fact that I'm buying them for Connie and I. Well, hopefully I suppose.

So we began moving everything out into the U-haul and John called to ask his buddy if he could buy the vacuum. His friend just gave it to him, and then asked John if anyone would want to buy the tv. We had just loaded it in the car and John told me his friend was selling it for $200. With only 10 minutes to decide, and completely exhausted from moving it all out, I made a compulsive purchase and offered him $175. You know that I'm not good at spending money without thinking heavily on it. He took it, so we went back out and moved it all back in. That was for the tv and stand, but his friend threw in the dvd and vcr too. It's a stinkin big tv, but I figure Connie (we) will enjoy watching her Survivor and The Amazing Race on it. That's the first deal.

Then last week I found this dining room table on Craig's list (kinda like an online garage sale) for $75 dollars. Went over today to look at it, and it's in sweet condition. My buddy with the truck fell through so I decided to make a couple trips in my car. Well, turns out with my master action jackson stacking skills I was able to get the table, extra leaf, and all six chairs in my car!! Pretty much amazing. And, the lady asked for only $65 cause I was such a poor sweet college kid. Rockin' good deal eh? Gotta love the charm too.

Our Pansies

As most of you know, before leaving Provo for Spring Break, I gave Connie a couple packets of Pansies as a gift. Not only is it her favorite flower, but I thought it'd be perfect to plant together and see grow when summer comes. The package said 70 days, which is right around the beginning of June. So, when we see each other again, we will hopefully have pansies to celebrate the growth in our relationship. Here's a little sneak peak of how well they've sprouted. Connie did an excellent job in caring for them in the first few weeks.

Hole in the Wall

So anyone who's visited our apartment (which is pretty much just Lori) knows that our downstairs bathroom has a strange Soil scent. We've always had really bad spider problems in there as well. Lori noticed that it smelled worse under the sink.
Well I poked my head under there the other day (in the cupboard right under the sink) and I noticed that I could see SUNLIGHT coming through the wall and there was some dirt in the cabinet and 2 big ol' spiders. GOO! So yeah, apparently there's been a big hole in the wall, directly to the outside, and I just noticed saturday. Pretty awesome, eh?