Slip-n-slide!

We set up a slip-n-slide for the kids with a team one day - it was hilarious to watch and the kids LOVED it! They still ask me when we're going to do it again!

Erica!

I was blessed incredibly by visitors this spring. To top it off, Erica, my best friend from Wheaton, came to visit for 2 weeks! Since she's a teacher, she has the summer off. We had a blast going to school, hanging out with the summer interns, relaxing on the beach, talking about music and life. We even did some sight singing (yep, we're music nerds)! It was so much fun to have her here and to show her my life - we talked a lot this year, so she had heard all about the people, places, and things in my life and now got to experience them firsthand!

The pictures, clockwise from top left: relaxing. eating frozen yogurt at La Sirena. erica documenting the tarantula hunt that Lauren and I went on one night. beautiful beach. "water games" day with the kids! world cup excitement...? and erica spending the day with lauren and meeting some of the kids she works with.

Katy's Visit

After a wonderful birthday celebration with my North Coast family (and Molly, who surprised me by coming up a day early!), Katy came to visit! She got to stay for two weeks, which was incredible. We had a lot of fun, a lot of beach time, and a lot of sister craziness time! The three of us hadn’t been together since January, so the sister time was definitely needed!

Katy and I went out to Playa Grande, walked around Montellano, and spent a few days at school. We forded the river and sat in the team house drinking coffee with Junior and Francina when the guagua broke down one morning. She helped me write almost 100 of the kids’ progress reports, and she came to the Mother’s Day extravaganza (See Facebook for pictures). The three of us got to go to New Life, my church, together, have lunch at La Sirena with Sariel and Holly (and eat some delicious frozen yogurt, of course), and relax around the apartment. We also spent a CRAZY afternoon re-writing “Welcome to the 60’s” from Hairspray, choreographing, and recording a video of us singing and dancing as a Mother’s Day gift!

We went to Jarabacoa for the weekend, but it rained a lot and then the elections sent us home a day early (we didn’t want to be traveling on the day they announced the results). So (thanks to Mom and Dad’s generosity) we went to the resort a day early and got to spend 3 lovely days there together. Wave pool, water slides, delicious food, weird shows (have you ever heard someone sing The Stars and Stripes Forever on the words “Here we go”???!), dressing up, ocean, beach, the usual… right!

It was sad to see Katy go. Spending time all together was so refreshing and wonderful. At one point in our lives, if you had put the three of us in a room together for even two days, we would have killed each other! So it’s sort of amazing that we spent two weeks together and loved every minute of it! (At least I did… haha!) I have been so fortunate to get to share my life here with my entire family – a rare blessing for someone on the mission field.



We tried to take jumping pictures... Molly's a frog! Keep scrolling to see the best jump.