2011 (Part One)

I got this idea from my beautiful friend Sadie, and in return I am paying her back with these:

Oh yes girl, you BEST believe that I saw these in J-Town and totally thought of you! And that I carried them on the plane so that they wouldn't get smushed. Message me with your address!

JANUARY

Brock and I went to Ecuador with my family. This was such an amazing experience, but unfortunately I lost my camera on the last day of the trip. I may or may not be over it by now. OKAY SO I'M NOT. 

Nevertheless, it was incredible (obviously). My family was able to volunteer in an orphanage in Quito for a few days, and then we traveled via motorized canoe up the Amazon River to a remote community along the Napo estuary. We ate grubs, visited the local shaman, hiked in the rainforest, learned how to hunt with blow dart guns and spears, and played in the river with the local children every day (I have literally never laughed so hard in my life as I did when playing with them).

Me playing a made-up game called "La Cocodrilla" with the kids.
I was a crocodile who tried to gobble them up as they swung past me.
You would not BELIEVE the acrobatics they were capable of!

Don't let Ofelia's sweet smile deceive you...she's a firecracker!

My brother, Caden, hanging out with some of his new friends.
Check out the muscles of the kid in the foreground! Unreal.

FEBRUARY

Went to a taping of the Conan O'Brien show in Burbank, CA! The guests were Marisa Tomei and Harland Williams (of "Rocket Man" fame...so funny). Fitz and the Tantrums performed "Moneymaker" at the end of the show--I'd never heard of them before, but they were awesome!

Where the magic happens, baby.

Our spot in line and our tickets!

MARCH

The entire campus was swept up in Jimmermania, and we were no exception! 

We went to the last home game he played at BYU. 

GOOOOOOOOOO COUGARS!

Conference champs! Now on to the Sweet 16!

APRIL

Brock finally graduated from BYU! HALLELUJAH! He left with a B.S. in Mathematics, a B.A. in Communications, and a minor in business management.

A long time coming!

I got SO lucky in the in-law department.

MAY

Moved to DC for internships. I interned on the Hill for Rep. Jason Chaffetz (UT-3) and Brock worked for the Brookings Institution.

The first weekend we were there, President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been assassinated. We were living at 2600 Pennsylvania Avenue, so we ran down with a bunch of friends to the White House (on 1600 Penn, about a mile away) to celebrate with the masses!

Watching the news with all our Washington Seminar friends.

MADNESS!!

Flags of the US and Pakistan. Yeah, thanks for the help, Zardari...

Says it all.

We also had the opportunity to watch the President give an address on Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery. It was an extremely hot day, but an extremely cool experience :)

JUNE

Celebrated our fourth anniversary in Baltimore. (Brock stayed for an extra day to take the LSAT. HA! Remember when he was gonna do law school???) I ate my beloved corn cakes at the Cheesecake Factory, and Brock saw his beloved Vladimir Guerrero play for the Orioles at Camden Yards.

JULY

My dear momma came to visit me us in DC! She arrived the same weekend that my cousin Phillip was inducted into the A-100 class for the State Department's foreign service officers. He's headed to Djibouti, Djibouti, so we had a fun dinner together at an Ethiopian restaurant (since there is obviously no difference between Ethiopia and Djibouti . . . hey, it was as close as we could get!).

We also took everyone on an EPIC night tour of the Mall using bikes from Capital Bikeshare. Brock may or may not have gotten in a fight with a guy at the Washington Monument. Okay, so he didn't.

A hilarious show that we saw at the Kennedy Center!

Goofing off in the Library of Congress :)

Crazy Ethiopian bread called injera. 

Beautiful night for a bike tour!

AUGUST

We had a great month visiting family before heading off to Amman. We spent a couple weeks with my family in Fort Collins and a couple with Brock's family in Huntington Beach. Summer perfection!

Chicken fights at the watering hole with the fam!

Wakeboarding at Horsetooth.

Tubing in the creek.

Beachin' it in Huntington.

Californian Mexican food...nothing beats it. Not even Mexican Mexican food.

We bid adieu to Allie as she drove off into the sunset (for BYU!) and then drove back to Utah ourselves (with fun pit stops in Vegas and at our favorite B&B in Ogden).

Lemme smang it guuuuuuurl.

We got a great deal on a room at the Stratosphere.

I left Vegas a winner! I won a whole whopping dollar on the Deal or No Deal game.
In the black, baby!

The Alaskan Inn--our favorite little B&B in the mountains!

Whew! When I started this post I had no intention of it getting this long (story of my blogging life).

To be continued!

الحمد لله

One of my favorite phrases in Arabic is الحمد لله: alhamdulillah--"praise be to God." Muslims say this approximately every five seconds.

"How are you doing?"

"!الحمد لله"

"How is the food?"

"!الحمد لله"

"I'm getting married!"

"!الحمد لله"

"I'm getting divorced!"

"!الحمد لله"

While I imagine some people find this annoying, I love it. How beautiful for a language, for a people, to constantly be acknowledging the graciousness of our Heavenly Father.

***

One of my dearest friends, Tiffany Whitsitt, is on my hit list. You see, she introduced me to this new website called Pinterest. It allows you to catalog any picture you find on the internet and save it onto different pinboards you make . . . sort of like clipping out hundreds of pretty magazine pictures and having them all in one place.

While this is all well and good, there is a downside. More than any other website I've ever been to, Pinterest has the ability to make you really  ungrateful really fast. Think about it: A community of thousands of people collecting pictures of the world's most beautiful things into one inspirational megacenter. As you wander through page after page of gorgeous herringbone floors, tropical paradises, extravagant weddings, and unbelievable homes, it's terribly easy to get caught up in IwantIwantIwant.

***

When my family went to Ecuador this past January, we stayed at a lodge up the Amazon that was close to a small river community. Every day, we went down to the river to play on the rope swing with the village children. Despite the fact that this dinky little rope swing was one of the only sources of entertainment in their small community, I never saw these children fight or bicker over it. Everybody played together and laughed like I'd never heard before. Squealing giggles and screams of joy shot into the thick jungle air, tumbling along the steady water until the river curved and carried them away. They had nothing and everything.

Day after day, I played a made-up game with them called "La Coccodrilla"--I was a hungry crocodile wanting my dinner, and would stand on a rock lunging at the children as they swung by. With their abs of steel and ridiculous  upper body strength, they easily summoned the acrobatics necessary to evade me--I would splash into the river with a "Noooo!!!" as my jumps fell short time after time. And even underwater, I could hear peals of their sing-song laughter above.

Their joy made me  joyful, their laughter made me  laugh. I remember going to bed at night with awful headaches because I had been laughing so hard for so long with my whole soul.

These children will likely never see a room with herringbone wood floors, they'll likely never visit the Maldives. Their weddings will be modest, as will their homes. But what do they care?

But what do I care?

I have it all, already.

.الحمد لله

Out of the Mouths of Babes

There are many forthcoming posts about Ecuador, but I thought I'd tease you with a couple quotes from the trip:

Caden (8), after we have just recovered NINE LOST PASSPORTS that were taken when one of our bags was stolen at the airport in Quito. (Apparently the idiot thief was unaware that passports sell for THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS on the black market. Hahahaha sucker.) The bag that the passports were in, unfortunately, was never recovered. Other than the passports, it contained one of our video cameras and some fruit roll-ups.

Lips quivering, brow furrowed: "Awwwww! They took the fruit roll-ups?????"

Connor (6), at the airport in Miami: "Kristi, you're almost always the meanest person in our family."

Juan (???...literally. He doesn't know how old he is.), our sickety-sick guide Amazonian guide with long, flowing black locks of wonder. He'd just told us about the WORST tourist he'd ever hosted--a girl who was going to Ecuador to try to get off drugs, and decided to take a naked swim in the pool at Yachana. Which happens to be filled with caimans. The whole week, our family joked with Juan that if he slipped up once, we'd all get naked.

On a particular trip into the jungle, Juan pointed out wildlife and then we'd all look at it through his telescope. To say that guy had eyes like a hawk would be the understatement of the century. He was a freaking FREAK. If there was a tiny speck on a tiny twig half a mile away, he'd be all "Oh hey guys. Look at the toucan." And it would be a freaking toucan. FREAK. Anyway, so we're having all sorts of fun when Brock says something to the extent of, "Hey Juan. If you ever misclassify one of these animals, I'mma get naked right here, right now."

To which Juan retorted: "Oh. I'm glad I brought my telescope then."

Juan, 1. Brock, 0.