Old news! November

I wrote this 3 weeks ago thinking I would add some pictures but I never published it.  I'll add a few pictures on the side  from Sister Arnold taken at a family home evening at our apartment several months ago when we had a member of our ward come with a friend and play native instruments for us.

This post is going to come in spots and spurts.  I haven't taken any pictures this week.  We were kind of disappointed when we came back from Thanksgiving and found that the Mi Casa girls were all gone.  We had a present to give them before they left for the Christmas Holidays.  They told us they were leaving the 12th of December but I guess the girls leave earlier than the boys.  So we will have to give them a gift to start out their new year.  Which might be just as well.  While the Calls were here, we toured their quarters and when we looked in their tiny little personal lockers, there was very little. Fluer, the lady that takes care of them says they really treasure things like a personal soap, etc.  They will love the things that my sister Marjean, my daughters, and daughter-in-law and other of my brothers and sisters and sisters-in law gathered up.  They sent little personal make-up bags with make-up, hair things, lotion, soap, etc.  I will take some pictures when they come back.  Next week will be our last week with the boys before vacation plus we have CCM missionaries, and then things will slow down a little which will be nice just before Christmas.

This week we diagnosed the new CCM missionaries and went to the temple.  While Paul went out to re-cement a crown for President Mask, I had a nice visit with Carol Mask.  They are coming tomorrow night to do a family home evening about the Book of Mormon Lands.  Tuesday we have a ladies luncheon at Sister Martino's and Carol asked me to do a Christmas Reading with her.  It should be fun.

I get up at 5:30 in the morning so I can get some time on the treadmill before our regular exercise.  I have to go up when it is still dark because someone else comes up to use it at 6:00.  Sometimes, it is a little scary.  I don't turn the lights on in the room because it is up on the roof and I don't want people in the building across from us to see me.  It  has big windows all around it. This morning I looked down for a minute to turn the machine on, when I  looked up there was a man crouched in the doorway.  I don't know who was more startled,  him or me.  It was one of our wonderful workers replacing a door mat.   It is hard to make myself go each morning but I always feel better when I do.  I have been listening to conference talks from 2008 on my ipod while I walk and I have heard some great talks, one particularly on marriage that I had forgotten about.

Saturday we went with an old friend from Mesa, Ray Campos and his wife to dinner at a typical Guatemalan Restaurant that the Gauatemalans go to.  My sons asked me when they were here what the typical Guatemalan food was.  Now we can tell them.  We had a soup called Ti kik which is a speciality from Coban.  It is a delicious base with a turkey cooked in it.  The turkey pieces are in the soup, skin, bone, and all.  They serve it with rice which you put in the soup and a corn tamale that has nothing in it.  You put chunks of it in the soup as you eat it.  It was very delicious.  Then we had warm mole with platanos for dessert.  It was a fun meal and we are going to try to keep in contact with Ray.  His wife is a lovely woman.  She does handicrafts in her home using natural materials.  I would like to see her nativities that she makes with Gourds.
I made bread that day so I was able to give them a loaf of homemade bread and some freezer jam.  I gave her my last box of sure jell so she could make some.  I'll have to get some more when we go for Paul's sister's wedding.  

We had very good Spanish classes this week.  The class is going so much better now that one person is teaching it and she makes us speak Spanish all the time in the class.  I understood and spoke more at church today than I ever have before.  That is all for now.  I will add more as the week progresses.
 
We had a very long day at church today--6 hours.  I was going to go home early with Jennifer Johnson because Paul had a ward council meeting but one of the young women who plays sometimes in church asked me if I would help her with Joy To The World after the meetings,so I stayed.  It was a long, long meeting.
I was going to fix a big meal and a fancy dessert t but we were so hungry by the time we got home that I made sandwiches and salad and used one of my cookies in a pouch and mixed together some peanut butter cookies.  Later we relaxed and listened to music with a cup of  hot chocolate with whip cream.  We finished the evening with the senior missionaries watching the Christmas Devotional.  It has been a good week.