Where does the time go?

It's Sunday again, Sunday night to be exact and I can't believe another week has gone by.  Another week filled with interesting and sometimes amusing things.  I guess the most important event was that I drove a car.  I know,  interesting huh?  Well for me it was a big step, and I drove twice, without Jerry.  For all the years that we've travelled in Mexico I never drove except in Cabo, after we'd been there 4 or 5 times, and it's a small town.  I'm not gonna lie, I was nervous,  really nervous.  But when you run out of food and your husband is gone for 14 hours a day...well you get in the car, and lucky for me the twins are here to co-pilot...I'm pretty sure I would have gotten lost just trying to get back to the house.  Weirdest thing about neighborhoods here for me.  The houses don't have numbers.  So, if you were to try to program a GPS (which we have in one of the cars) you pretty much need to know the longitude and latitude to get it right.  Lets just say that we've been lost, a lot, using the GPS that came in the car.  No offense Garmin, but theres a great app from Google Maps for the iphone that puts you to shame.  It even talks to you, just like a GPS, but it's accurate, and if you make a wrong turn it reconfigures immediately, we know, cuz we had it happen.  So, back to driving.  It wasn't far, but there is major road construction between the mission home and the local Wal-mart/Sams Club.  I'm pretty sure without Harper and Blair I wouldn't have gotten there or home the first day.  They have a much better memory than me and evidently pay more attention while driving with their dad.  So we had an easy go of it the first day.  I'm also driving what is the equivalent of a Honda Civic at home, so it feels pretty easy to get behind the wheel.  The second time (out of milk, sound familiar?) I was going to go on my own and at the last minute, Harper decided to save me from myself and go along.  I did better, but the trip would have been just a little longer without her.  (Can I insert here that I'm really gonna miss those two when they go home?)  So I haven't driven all the way into the mission office (about and hour and a half away from the mission home) but I feel like I could now.  

The other big news is that the stuff we shipped from home arrived Monday morning right on time.  Big cheer for the moving company in Mexico, they came on the day and at the time they said they would.  And everything was there in one piece.  We didn't ship a lot, but it was nice to have the rest of our clothes and our family pics, it feels a little more like home.  That kept us pretty busy all day Monday, unpacking all the boxes and putting everything away.  I was really happy to see my cookbooks and that I had stuck a huge box of Good Seasons Italian dressing mix in with my kitchen stuff as I can't find it here and you know that great chicken pasta is just not the same without it.  

I think I mentioned 14 hour days, that would be Jerry.  This week held visits with 4 of the stake presidents in the mission,  plus interviews with 3 of the 5 zones of missionaries.  He was leaving before daylight and coming home after dark every day.  With the twins here he didn't want me to be gone all that time, so instead I sent baked goods.  I don't have a lot of talents anymore, but I can still bake.  That leads me to the other awesome news of the week...I know how to use the oven now.  It's not really great and doesn't bake really evenly...but I've also learned that the missionaries will eat almost anything that is homemade.  And I would feel really stupid about the oven, but the Facilities Management guy that's in charge of everything couldn't figure it out either. So Monday I was told they would come to "fix" the oven.  At 5:30 I had given up hope when two employees showed up to tell me that I really just needed to hold the light button down longer to get it to light.  Yep, felt really blonde at that point, but then they proceeded to tell me that the house is wired with a security system and how to use it.  Perhaps that freaked me out just a little, seeing as I have a hard time remembering my own phone number.  After all the instructions he then just handed me a fob like the ones on my car keys and said "or you can just turn it on and off with this when you leave". Whew, one more password I don't have to remember!! But that night I made the first of three recipes of brownies for the missionary interviews.  Some people are given really great talents....I just bake.

I have had my first two missionaries call with medical problems.  After raising 6 kids that have had almost every imaginable disease or problem, I feel pretty confident in this area....as long as I can give the instructions and find out the symptoms in English.  So far one companion or the other has been from the States.  The first one had the flu, that was easy to hit out of the park, and the second had chipped his tooth and wondered what to take for the pain til he could see the dentist.  Two homeruns in a row.  I know there not all gonna be this easy, but it's nice to start out feeling just a little confident.  The best part was calling the missionary with the flu back that night, to see how he was feeling.  He said much better (brat diet, ibuprofen, gatorade, the usual rememdies) and that his fever was down, could he go back out to work tomorrow?  I felt so bad telling him not to go out til his fever was down for 24 hours.  What a great young man, it's such a privilege to work with them.  

I'm going to post a few pics of our first pday.  Now don't freak out when you see that we don't have our tags on.  We were told at the Mission Presidents Seminar that if you have your children with you, you can take a pday with them and be their parents, not missionaries.  Jerry was really due a day off.  Really he has been working almost around the clock.  So we got up early on Friday programmed in that great Google maps App and drove into the middle of Mexico City.  Yep, we did.  Nope, we aren't completely crazy.  We really wanted to see the Museo Antropologia (sp?) that is one of the best in the world.  Over the years we've visited several of the archaeological sites in Mexico, so interesting to see the sites and imagine the people in the Book of Mormon times that would have lived there.  So we made it there, parked, visited the museum and Chapultepec Park across the street.  Chapultepec is sort of like the Central Park of NYC.  In it is Castillo Chapultepec which was built by the one and only king of Spain (who was Austrian by birth and married to a French woman, weird).   On the way home we stopped by Cuernavaca (it really was about ten minutes off the road home) as they have a Costco there, yep, you heard that right.  But my joy turned into disappointment when it didn't have chocolate chips or Cocoa powder.  Wasn't chocolate invented by the Aztecs?  They did have a huge brick of chocolate the size of a coffee table book, a large coffee table book, but I'm not that desperate yet.  It was a great day and there will be some pics to follow.  This week has more visits by the physical facilites people (theres always something) and more missionary interviews, plus our first two missionaries to go home are coming for dinner (that Good Seasons Italian dressing could not have come in a more timely manner).  

We love Mexico, missionaries and all of the little miracles we see every day.  The last miracle of the week is that our house in Cardiff is rented, starting this Friday.  Thanks Andy Ek, for all your hard work, the last piece of the puzzle is now in place.  We're grateful for the Lord's blessings in all the aspects of our lives....nos vemos!!!!