The Ward!

Today I was looking through Facebook during my lunch break when I came across a group entitled "Raised in the Ward-Guelph and PROUD OF IT". The "ward" was the oldest part and in many ways the poorest part of the city I grew up in. The elementary school I attended was in the heart of the Ward and we lived on the outskirts of the Ward. There was a public school down the road that in some ways became our rivals. Because of the high population of Italians in my city, many of the people who lived in the ward were related and parts of large Italian families. I would often go to my best friend's grandma's house when they did the canning of their pasta sauce and processed their meat.

Although the "ward" didn't always have a great reputation, I absolutely loved living there because I loved my family and the memories I made. The street I lived on had about 30 houses on it and you better believe that I knew the names of almost every person! There was a guy down the street who taught me how to make origami stuff, my best friends who were twins lived two houses down, the woman across the street would make me cookies when I'd come visit, another lady let me play with her babies anytime I wanted and the list of other memories is endless. One of my very favorite neighborhood memories is playing Kick the Can with all the kids on my street. We'd get into camo gear and play it into the night while the parents hung out on their front porches and watched us (sometimes revealing the hidding place of one of the kids). There was a candy store at the top of my street so anytime I found .05 cents in my parent's pants, it meant I could get a candy. We had a river at the bottom of the street and a forest area that we built tree forts in and would catch frogs/tadpoles to keep hidden in our rooms until they all ended up dying.



To this day, my parents still live in that house that I grew up in and since they love it so much, they bought the house next to them as well! Most of the houses in the area have since been renovated and are selling for 3x what they were when my parents bought their house but my parents house looks almost the same!



In just a few weeks I'm heading home for a month and I couldn't be more excited! Of course I'm sad to leave Texas and all my friends here but there's something about being home that I just love. It's the familiar place where most of my memories were made and I could know where I'm at even if I was wearing a blindfold. I've convinced my parents to go "old people camping" (originally I asked if we could do real camping, like in a tent, but they said they're too old so they'd prefer to do old people camping...basically, sleeping a motel near a campground). This is better than just staying at home so I agreed! It'll be the first time since I left that I'll be at home for that long and I'm looking forward to the time with my family (especially my lovely niece!).



So although the "ward" didn't always have the best reputation, I too am proud to say I grew up there and it's still what I consider "home"!



Here's a picture of the street I grew up in (the snow is the reason I still don't live there

Loving Pensacola and missing Texas!

On Monday morning I got a call to see if I could come to Pensacola for work this week. I left the next day and go back to Texas tomorrow. Last night we went to the beach and I got to walk along the ocean. After thinking about it a while, I think the last time I was in the Ocean was Christmas 2008 when I went to the Bahamas on a mission trip! There is something so peaceful yet powerful about the ocean. It was the most beautiful sunset and I almost cried (not a surprise to those close to me) just enjoying the sheer beauty of it all! Like a kid, I decided I was going to find one shell to bring home and I ended up getting SEVERAL shells to bring home!
Here are a few pictures from last night.


Even being here though, as beautiful as it is, doesn't make me want to move to Florida. It's wonderful to visit but at this stage in my life, I just love Texas way too much to move.

I had the thought that it might be good to make a list of the top 10 reasons I love Texas so much and hand it to anyone who asks me! So here's my list:

10. Everything in Texas blooms twice a year so you get to enjoy your flowers twice a year!
9. It has the best TexMex food around given that it's named after Texas!
8. People don't really stare at you if you go out in public with a cowboy hat and cowboy boots on.
7. The grocery stores and Dairy Queen play Christian music.
6. I can buy a dozen roses for $2 on the side of the road!
5. The water in the lakes feels like bathwater in the summer and normal temps in the winter so you can swim all year round (only recommended if you're from the North and have a different opinion on water temps).
4. My house being hidden in the trees feeling like a slice of heaven saved on earth for me to enjoy!As well as the sunsets and sky! They're definitely bigger in Texas!
3. My church and the kids I serve every other week in Kingdom Kids
2. BSF, the ladies there who so inspire me and have become like Texan mothers to me including teaching me to knit (not sure BSF of course)!
1. All the incredible people in my life that I love and enjoy living my life with!

Moths in the pantry...again!!

Last year, around the middle of the summer, I discovered moths in my pantry. Not thinking too much about it, I killed the ones I could see and cleaned up their little bodies. A few days later, there were more moths. With the business of the summer, when I was home, I would clean the pantry of moths. When my parents came for a visit, to my mother's great disgust, she found the moths. Unlike her daughter, who was naive to the origin of moths, my mother began taking things out of the pantry and teach her daughter a lesson in the progression and creation of moths. Much to my disgust, almost all the items in my pantry that came in bags or boxes, had been eaten through and have larva as well as eggs living in it! My mother went about the task of cleaning out the entire pantry and purchasing several plastic containers to store the newly purchased replacement food. It took about a week to clean the entire pantry and remove all signs of moths and larve. We'll, about a year later, I found moths in my pantry again this week. Instead of just killing the few on the top, I took everything out of the pantry, put it on the table and told the girls to go through their stuff. I wrote the following letters:

The girls were quite disgusted by the sample larva and bag with larva and eggs growing in it. As I write this, I feel a little queezy. So last night once the girls had gone through all their items and put it back in the pantry in plastic bins, I disposed of 4 full garbage bags. I'm confident that some of that food had been in the pantry since I purchased the house over a year and a half ago! The problem with living with so many people is that they forget what they bought so they never eat it and when the time comes, no one claims it! In the end, I was able to transform the pantry and excite my organizational (aka, nerdy) side and label the pantry. I wish I had taken a before picture of the pantry but didn't think of it until I was taking the finishing picture! Here is what the pantry looks like now!

Notice the labels on the plastic bins! This makes my heart very happy! If I was as cool as my friend Lisa Hasz I would buy a label maker machine but I think my roommates would fear me labelling them with my passion for labelling! Naiyah's label would read "lazy dog - no need to beware". Pookey's label (the cat) would read "careful - I bite". I will leave my roommate's labels undisclosed!

So after a clean pantry, freshly mowed lawn and cleaned baseboards in the living room, life at home seems more at peace!

Green is in the air - literally!

It's amazing how much things can change in one week of being away! I feel like when I left last Saturday, the trees were just beginning to bud, the grass didn't need mowing, and now everything is green and certainly in need of mowing. When I write everything, I meant it! There is pollen on literally everything! My car has turned a shade of green and since everyone has green cars too, I don't feel as inclined to clean it! If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!! A few other changes in just one week is that my mailbox door is completely broken off and now resides inside the mailbox and the bottom drawer of my oven is no longer attached to the hinges. When I tried to put it back, I found 6 cat play toys and a shopping list I looked for EVERYWHERE a few weeks ago (I obviously didn't look under the oven...obvious place of course!).

My trip to Colombia was absolutely wonderful, until around 1 AM on Friday morning when I woke up with a fever, shaking from being cold, in a room with a temperature of 93 degrees! Mentally, I knew I shouldn't feel cold but since I was cold, I packed on clothes until I lay there without the fan blowing on me, wearing long pants, a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, warm socks and two blankets. After some evaluation, I decided the best plan was to call my mother in Canada at 2 AM her time. This is the second time I've called her out of bed in the middle of the night in a foreign country thinking she could help me (the first was in Cambodia). Since she didn't really know how to help, I called my nurse friend Beth! She was more resourceful than my mother for sure and after following her advice, I felt a little better in the morning.

Today, 4 days later, I still have a parasite that I'm trying to get out of my body, but I feel much better than I did. I haven't been able to eat more than a few crackers each day but I don't feel quite as weak as I did. Being sick is no fun, but it's even less fun when you're in another country sleeping on a hard bed using a shower without hot water and having to use toilet paper that feels more like newspaper!

I am now trying to get back into "life" here including going to Bible Study last night. I almost threw up in class last night because one of my kids pulled her teeth out while I was doing their discussion of the previous week's lesson. In many ways, I feel ready to be a parent but the thought of their little teeth coming out of their mouth sort of makes me feel queezy! As a kid it seemed cool but as an adult, the "coolness" fact has somewhat dimished. The obvious cool part was putting it under your pillow and getting money. In my house, the tooth fairy must have worked at the Christian bookstore where my mother worked because we always got Christian tapes. Assuming the toothfairy threw out the teeth after collecting them from under our pillows, I was shocked a few years ago to stumble across a little container filled with baby teeth! I'm not sure if my mother was planning to make a necklace with them one day or just couldn't help parting with them, but I certainly feel that once a tooth falls out, it should be disposed of. I suggested to my kid last night that she just throw the bloody tooth out and draw a picture of it to put under her pillow but she kept the tooth.

On a lighter note, I saw my first hummingbird today! I can't wait until they are swarming the feeder outside my window! Gotta love Spring!