Don't Buy Stuff

I love this skit. I need it every once in a while because... well, we don't have any money.



Don't forget about Peru 2-3 below.

Peru - Day 2-3

These were the first two service days in Huaycán. We ended up dividing into 4 groups, two medical and two construction. I will have more info on what the construction groups did in another post.

In Huaycán, being a very poor part of Lima, there is a government sponsored nursery system for those who cannot pay. Single moms in the area are probably the ones who benefit the most from the program aside from the kids themselves. It is called the Wawa Wasi program. Wawa is the old native indian term for baby and wasi was the word for house. It is weird to say it a lot though, just try it. All the nurseries we went into had a sign like this one.



Over 120,000 people live in Huaycán. It is divided into 26 zones, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each zone has about 12 wawa wasis which each take care of 5-8 kids 2-5 years old. During day 2 and 3 we did health screenings for all of the wawa wasis in two of the zones of Huaycán. We weighed and measured each of the kids and the doctors saw all of them. We had some free medications with us for parasites, bacterial infections, and other stuff like that. I don't have any idea how many prescriptions were written.

Here are a couple pictures of weighing and measuring in the wawa wasis.




This was the scale they had there for us to use. It was funny. The kids sat in the little overalls looking thing and hung from it to be weighed. You can kind of see how it was in the next picture. Pretty much every kid cried in it. In the first picture you see me holding it up because in that little place there was nowhere to hang it from the house itself - it looked like pretty much any of the supports for the roof would break if we used it. So, I put the scale on a broomstick and stood next to a bookshelf. It worked well enough.




This little girl was sooo cute. The picture just doesn't do her justice.


I think this one could go in a brochure or something. The man is Craig. He was the expedition leader. He is an ER doctor in Utah, served a mission in Bolivia and has gone to South America something like 7-8 times for things like this. He and his family were very nice. I don't have a good picture right now of the doctor I translated for. Her name is Peggy and she also was an ER doctor. I will try to put one up next time.


The group we went down with is called Ascend Alliance. They focus on working with government or other programs that are sustainable. They have a Peru regional director that is from Lima and directs Ascend's activities there. Anyway, the in country people do trainings for the wawa wasi people on having healthy conditions and such in each of the wawa wasis. Ascend also has literacy programs for the moms who work in the wawa wasis and the moms of some of the kids that are part of the program. They teach business skills to local small business owners and lots of things like that. We were just a part of what goes on through Ascend in Peru. Apart from all the work that we did with the screenings and building things I think our trip helped the people that are working there every day by showing them support.

Here are some pictures of the area I took while we were either on the bus or while we were walking between the wawa wasis. The whole area is basically on mountainside - gray, ugly, half-mixed concrete looking mountainside. I don't know how many people are familiar with this but in Lima and other parts of South America, the poor people are the ones that live on the hills. I guess it is further from where they all want to work and the government doesn't care about them just taking the land because no one else wants to live there. Either way, for some reason, it is backwards from how it is here.







After day 3 we moved on to another part of Huaycán to help at a school. The people in these zones knew we were leaving them so they put together a little program to say thank you for what we had done. It felt like too much but I guess it really meant a lot to them. Some little kids dressed up in typical dress from different regions of the country and did cool little dances. Then pretty much everyone, including us from the group, danced for about a million years without stopping. They really like dancing. A lot.




Well, that should pretty much do it for today's post. If I left anything else out that you want to know just ask and I will include it in the next Peru post about day 4, at the school.

My week in sleep

I do not do well sleep-deprived. Ask anyone. My mom says I get "irrational." She tried to warn Dave, but he didn't believe her until one night after we were married I came unglued under sleep deprivation. He thought it was comical at the time. That made it worse. Anyway, I would say 90% of the time, if I'm mad, its because I'm tired. No kidding. Also when I am sleep-deprived, all I can think about is "when can I nap/sleep." I go through the day praying that I'll catch a few zzz's here and there. I usually need at least 8 hours of sleep to ward off any "episodes." With that in mind, let me share with you my last week in sleep.

Last Thurs night: The baby took a long evening nap and didn't fall asleep until after 2. I didn't feel well either so it was after 3 before I fell asleep. I got up at 8.

Fri: Spent the night in the emergency room. Finally got to sleep at 3. Woke up at 6 for pre-surgery info. Got in another hour before I went home to feed the baby.

Sat: Dave was home, but sleeping on the couch. Ana woke up in the middle of the night, (about 3:00) and didn't fall back asleep until after 5. The baby woke up at 8.

Sun: I actually did get decent sleep that night.

Mon: Dave attempts to sleep in the bedroom. Half way through the night, he said he needed an extra pillow. I was too tired to get up, so I gave him mine and slept fitfully until Jack woke up at 5:30. He went right back to sleep, but Ana woke up at 6:30. She didn't go back to sleep.

Tues: Ana had taken a 2 hour nap at 5:00 and was up until 11. We finally got to bed after 12, the baby woke up sometime in the middle of the night and then Ana woke up at 8 with a fever.

Last night: Jack didn't go to sleep until after 1. By this time, I was in tears over my lack of sleep. Then Ana woke up at 6. I spent an hour rocking her back to sleep, just to find that the baby was awake. I spent an hour rocking him, put him in the swing and we both fell asleep in the living room.

That extra couple hours on the chair has done wonders, but I am still dead tired. Its like Ana knows that I have to be the one to take care of her. (Dave can't lift more than 15 lbs for a month.) But she still is really cute. She wanted Jack to play with her on the floor the other day, and I got some cute snap shots of it. Hopefully this next week will be better than the last.

Dang that Jimmy Dean

So, on Wednesday I took a Jimmy Dean sausage/egg breakfast thing out of the freezer and took it to work with me for breakfast. For some reason I didn't eat it that day but I did let it sit out on the counter for an hour or so to defrost before putting it in the fridge. Then, on Friday I was hungry enough to finally eat it. I thought for about 2.4 seconds about how it had been left out and then placed in the fridge instead of frozen as it was meant to be but figured it would be fine. It tasted ok.

About noon on Friday I felt a little rumbly in the tumbly if you know what I mean and figured I hadn't thought it through well enough during those 2.4 seconds of consideration. I came home from work at about 6:00pm still cursing that Jimmy Dean. At about 7:00pm I realized the pain was all coming from the lower right side of my abdomen. I couldn't get comfortable in any position. Thoughts of the bill kept me out of the ER until 10:00pm when I decided I didn't care if I payed $300 to get rid of the gas pain I felt. It took a while. Finally at about 1:00am I got morphine (they decided I needed my appendix out. it wasn't the sausage after all). Morphine was my friend.

Then it all seemed to go by pretty quick. I fell asleep and the surgical team all got there at 6:30am, I went into surgery just after that time. I walked around the hospital enough on Saturday that they let me go home that night.

It really stinks being at home but not being able to do very much now. I can't lift more than 15 pounds for the next month. I can't even lift up Ana and Jack is almost 15 pounds as well. But I have progressed enough that I am comfortable enough to sit at the computer for a few minutes.

So, there is my latest story.

And I have done the prize drawing as well. In honor of my recent hospital stay I put all the names into my free mug they gave me and Ana drew the lucky winner. It was...





Terri !!!!!!!


I will put the CD in the mail by next Monday.

Peru day 2-3 to come shortly with more pictures. Really. I know you are doubting me on that but what else am I going to be doing? Really.

Trip to the ER

Last night when Dave got off work he had some serious abdominal cramping. It kept getting worse, so at about 9:30 we went to the ER. At 7 this morning, they took out his appendix. Kinda crazy. He'll probably be released tonight. He's doing really good. I'm sure his recovery will be great and fast. One of those things you just don't expect to come up, ya know. This is the first ER trip of our married life. Things have really not turned out how we expected when we moved here. All these crazy things keep happening, or not happening like we'd imagined. But we're confident everything will be okay.

its crunch(es) time

After I had Ana, I bounced right back to my pre-pregnancy weight by 6 weeks. It was only about 5 pounds more than my pre-pregnancy weight with Jack, yet here it is 2 1/2 months later and I'm still weigh almost 15 pounds more than I did when I got pregnant. Dang, I guess I'll have to work at it this time.

So, I started swapping kids with a friend, Kenna, here in town. She has a 4 year old and a 2 year old, and I take my kids to her house and go run, and then stay with her kids while she goes out. We did that Monday morning. Wednesday morning Dave was home, so I just went out on my bike. Then this morning both are husbands were home so we went to the local pool to swim laps. I'm pretty excited for this new exercise regimen. It feels good to be out doing it again. But, boy am I out of shape. I also have my new wii fit, which I want to work on the other days of the week, as well as start doing sit ups so I can get rid of some of this flab. I really love exercise, so thats the easy part. I'm glad to just have someone to watch the kids while I do it.

Peru - Day 1

I know I didn't even come close to posting this in the "day or two" timeframe I gave earlier but at least it is here now. I still plan on doing a post for each day with a few pictures each time.

So, I left for Peru on July 19th. My flight left from SLC at 8:30am and arrived at about 10:30pm in Lima with a 4 hour layover in Atlanta somewhere in between. It wasn't quite as exciting as the first time I flew and I swear there is less room for my legs now, but it was still pretty good.

I got checked in and found my room - Then I got a different room as I wrote about before.

Here is the view from my window that first night at about midnight just before sleeping.


This picture is a view of the airport from our hotel we stayed in the first night.


Sunday morning I went to sacrament meeting in a ward near the airport. It was very reminiscent of my meetings in Chile. I didn't get a picture of the chapel there because I didn't know how I felt about taking my camera where we were going. Then, because of a transportation issue, we stayed at the hotel for a few hours. I felt pretty cooped up there. Everyone kept telling me it was not safe for me to walk very far from the hotel on my own so I just hung around and got to know a lot of the staff until the afternoon when we left to our other hotel-type place called the Huampaní. I kept thinking I would take pictures of some other things in the hotel later but never got around to it. Here are a few other pictures I had of that first day.

Another picture showing the distance from the airport to the Ramada we stayed in that first night.


My bedroom there - it was pretty nice.


I loved (reading) the different therapy options at the hotel spa. Of course I did not try them at $80 a pop. I am sure Janet would have done chocolate therapy. I originally thought they would just give you a really good piece of chocolate and hope it helped you to feel better but I guess it actually involved a little more than that.


One last note: I am sure most of you already know this but you can click on any of the pictures to see the larger, full size version.

tricky Ana / Jack at 2 months

Here are a few of Ana's latest tricks.

The other morning I wasn't feeling well so Dave got up with the kids. A little while later, I was woken up to see this trick of Ana's. Jack and Ana both loved it!













This is Ana's newest trick. She pulled a chair over to the swing set to swing from the bar. She even lets go and falls down. She was giggling so hard today while she did it. When she showed Grandma her new trick she said, "its pretty tricky."
















Today was Jack's 2 month well baby check up. He weighed 13 lbs and was 23 inches long. He is a healthy little boy who loves to smile!

around here...

...we're watching the Olympics. I love it!

100 on 8-8-8

I recently returned home from Peru - well it was almost two weeks ago now. Either way I plan on doing one post for each day I was there with a couple pictures and specifics on what happened that day. To kick it all off I made a quick little mix entitled "Dave --> Peru" to give away. It takes you with me through my trip to Peru and back home. Yep, this is my very first giveaway and I am doing it because this is my 100th post!! You have until Sunday, August 17th at 5:00PM MST to leave a comment on this post to be entered in the drawing. The winner will receive a one of a kind CD complete with artwork which will probably look like this:



I only work with the best high tech programs like Microsoft paint. That is definitely not the final version but it will be something similar.

The following is the tracklist to the mix with a little something about each song:

*Holiday - Weezer, Blue Album
This song is mostly about me being excited and planning to go away for a while. I like every song from the blue album - there aren't a ton of CD's I can say that about.

*Long Line of Cars - Cake, Comfort Eagle
Traffic wasn't really that bad on the way to SLC. Mostly I really saw long lines of cars in Lima during rush hour on Friday night. It was pretty bad. Anyway, who doesn't like Cake right?

*Long Time Sunshine - Rivers Cuomo, Alone
This song mentions travel in some way a time or two. Also, I remember at one point on the flight from Atlanta to Peru it showed a map of the world up on the TV screens. It was a map showing the line between sunshine and darkness and it was in kind of a big S shape with the southern hemisphere showing more darkness being in winter and all. Anyway, I just remember looking at the screen just as we were crossing the line into the shadow and thinking about how much I enjoy the longer days of summer. That's all.

*Michael and Heather at the Baggage Claim - Fountains of Wayne, Traffic and Weather
It took a LONG time for my one piece of checked luggage to show up at the airport in Lima. I was not really to the point of being worried, just thoroughly annoyed. Either way, this was when I got to know better the first person I met who was coming down as part of our group. We were the only two from our group on that specific flight. This song was as close as I could get, there wasn't one called "Dave and Kristine at the Baggage Claim."

*Half the World Away - Oasis, The Masterplan
The two large cities in South America that I have visited do have a distinctive smell, something said in this song, but I wouldn't really say it stunk. Mostly it was kind of weird to think that my head was now pointing in a very different direction than everyone in Idaho after a day of flying in an airplane. It was surprising to me to see some of the differences between Santiago and Lima. Mostly, Lima seemed a lot more poor than I had thought it would be. I expected it to be more like Santiago. I think The Masterplan is my favorite Oasis album. I like when Noel sings instead of Liam. Is that bad? No, it isn't.

*Hold on Hope - Guided by Voices, Do the Collapse
Even though the great majority of my time in Lima was spent working, this is the only song for that part of the trip. Nothing specific from the song, just the basic feeling for all the things I saw. The area we worked in was called Huaycán, it was really poor but most of the kids we saw there were really healthy.

*Midnight Moon - Smoking Popes, Born to Quit
I am not quite sure how well the last song transitions into this one but that's ok. It kind of goes with why I have this song on here anyway. Every night I would be really tired from walking and working all day but I still had a hard time making myself get ready for bed and going to sleep. It was definitely the hardest part of being away from Erin for a week and a half.

*Waiting - The Rentals, Return of the Rentals
This song is actually for what Erin was up to while I was gone. There is a bit more energy because she was having a great time at her parents' house seeing her brother she hadn't seen for more than a year.

*Seatbacks and Tray Tables - Fountains of Wayne, Traffic and Weather
Yeah, I know, two songs from the same band AND the same CD on one mix. I couldn't help it, their last CD had a bunch of travel type themes. Just look at the title. Anyway, my iPod was dead but I found myself thinking of this song pretty much every time someone on the plane said this. FOW gets in touch with their... folky/country? side every once in a while and I like it in this song.

*Tongue Tied - Eve 6, Eve 6 (Black Fly album)
I don't hardly ever listen to this anymore but it was the best thing I had to go with the airport in Atlanta on the way home - 1000 faces... There were just so many people there and I didn't love the employees either. They said a couple things to me at immigration and later in the airport that I just didn't appreciate too much. Also, when I was in Atlanta on my way to Chile in 2002 I SWEAR one of the trash cans talked to me. Really - it wasn't a homeless guy hiding inside, I checked. Actually all it said was something like, "Be careful trash will be compacting now." I have mentioned this to a few people since it happened but I think this will be the last place I ever speak of it unless someone can back me up on the fact that it happens sometimes there. Maybe they got new trash cans or maybe I am crazy but I didn't get to hear anything like that this time.

*Landed - Ben Folds, Songs for Silverman
I love the piano in this song. It would be so cool to be able to play it. Other than that, I really like the song and it talks about a plane landing. My plane landed.

*See You - Foo Fighters, The Colour and the Shape
I like this song a lot too and it talks about how happy I was to be back with Erin, Ana and Jack.

So, there it is. Good luck to all, don't forget to comment even if it's your first time and you are a little scared...

First Draft

Here is the first draft of my personal statement for my med school application:

I am the coolest person ever. Please admit me to medical school. I will love you forever. Really.


I don't know why anyone would need the whole page they give you...

Jack's blessing weekend

This weekend was a very cool weekend. On Saturday, we went to the Twin Falls Temple Open House. Ana was so excited to go inside the Temple. She was very good during the tour, too. We told her that mommy and daddy got married in the Temple and that she could, too. Since then, she's been saying, "I get married in Temple." I hope she remembers that. It is such a beautiful place. Yesterday was Jack's blessing day. I am so grateful for a husband who holds the Priesthood. With family in town, the whole weekend has been very family-oriented. What a blessing to know we'll be with them forever!

our little man in his blessing outfit. isn't he cute!

siblings

our little family

Ana in her new dress I made (with a lot of help from my mom).

A close up shot

a few pictures

Well, these are mostly Ana's birthday pictures. I'm sure Dave will be posting stuff about Peru soon, and we'll take lots of pictures on Sunday for Jack's blessing.

Ana's butterfly birthday cake.

Opening her new dress ups - earrings, a purse and 2 new skirts

Ana was standing looking at this sign that day singing, "Happy Birthday to Ana."

Ana and her cousin Shari playing with her new picnic set.

Jack, sleeping on Daddy's legs. He's getting so big!