September

Whoa, I went a whole month without posting.

But...

We are going to be moving into our newly completed apartment this weekend!!

Then the computer will be out in the open instead of in Ana's room. It's tough for me to get stuff done on it in here.

I am consistently getting all the hours I need at work now and I feel pretty comfortable with what I am doing.

I have submitted one secondary application for med school and I am working on a few more. My letters of recommendation should all be done now and arriving in a few days. I will try to get all the essays done in that time.

Anyway, I need to go tell University of Washington why I am applying to them specifically. See you later!

Until then - enjoy as much or as little of this cartoon as you would like. I remember watching when I was a kid.


I remember watching this one too. Mostly I like the first part.

where has september gone?

The summer has flown by so fast. My kids are getting so big! Since a picture is worth 1000 words, here are some pics from our last week.


(Ana gets into everything, when we're not watching carefully. In addition to this mess, she also cracked eggs on the floor, spilled juice all over the kitchen, and dumped lotion all over the bathroom sink - in just 1 weekend.)


(Its gotten a little cooler and even rained, but she still loves being outside!)

(We built a tent yesterday and she can't get enough. We left it up today and she's been in it all morning.)

(Isn't he getting big!?!)

too much TV

Prior to moving in with my in-laws, Dave and I never had cable. Not only do we have cable here, but a really nice TV, too. Ana would hardly sit 10 minutes through a show a few months ago. All that has changed. Most mornings I turn on Playhouse Disney for her while I get ready, and stuff. I like many of the shows: Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and Handy Manny are probably my favorites, and most are acceptable. But what is with the Doodlebops? I can appreciate the "get up and move" theme, but it just seems a little too ... fruity. Am I way off base? When it comes on, I find myself watching the whole show in awe. The girl's alright, but what's with the dudes? Out of control, thats all I can say. We're going back to rabbit ears when we're in our own place. Part of me will miss the easy entertainment, but I am looking forward to it. As long as I get NBC, because I really like The Office. And 30 Rock.

3 1/2 months

The other day I went into Jacks room to find him up on his elbows looking around. He really likes being on the floor, as long as Ana leaves him alone. He rolled over yesterday. I think it was an accident. We sure love having him around.

blog behind

I feel so behind in the blogging world. I don't have time every day to check everyone's blog, and so I feel like I'm missing so much from everyone. I'm slowly working on becoming a "follower" to all the blogs, so I know when everyone updates. I feel like such a lame blogger. But don't give up on me. I'll post a new one soon enough and once our computer isn't in a bedroom, I know I'll be checking up more often.

I've been working on setting a routine for myself. I feel like the days that have structure run so much better and my little girl is so much happier. I really want to be a morning person. Its hard to make the change from a 1 (or later) to 9 (or later) schedule to 11-7. Dave has a weird schedule so I want to set one that maximizes the time I have with him. Once I get it down I think the girls in our family will do much better.

cute kids

I know I'm a biased mother, but my kids are really cute! I don't want to forget these times, so I gotta brag a little.

Ana is growing so fast and she changes every day. She is as intense as her mother, and sometimes its a struggle to channel it. She can climb out of her crib, and she's taken to hiding when she has something she knows she shouldn't. For example, she really likes butter. Today when I wouldn't let her get into the fridge she said, "I wanna hide with the butter!" What a girl. But she also is starting to understand some gospel concepts and that I really neat! When you tell her something, she thinks about it and remembers it and talks about it. Its really cool to watch her learn so many things.

I can't believe Jack is already 3 months old! He grins so easily and I'm sure he's going to be a cheerful kid. He is growing big, too. He's grown out of some of his clothes and it makes me sad to put them away. He has discovered his hands and is getting pretty good at putting them in his mouth to calm himself down. He sleeps through the night every night and he naps really well, as long as Ana doens't wake him up.

It was only a matter of time

The pictures not great, but you'll notice a few inch long peices sticking up along her part. She got a hold of scissors.

I went crazy

So, I guess last Thursday my lack of sleep drove me crazy. I had Dave cut my hair. It needs a little evening out, but I'm please enough with it that I haven't gone to a salon yet. It feels good to have short hair again. It hasn't been this short since 9th grade!


We went to my mom's house on Friday and Saturday. It was a fun trip. Ana found my sister's mascara there. Its amazing how she new what to do with it.

Anyway, we're back to our normal sleep schedule again, thank goodness. I feel much better.

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.