Spring Break

It’s springs break for our local school district.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that BDB Academy is on spring break.  The boys are slaving away learning the difference between asteroids, meteors and meteoroids.  They’re being forced to use correct grammar and do things like math drills.  According to them, McKayla always gets to do fun stuff!  She’s in Ensenada on spring break.

Now before you get carried away, it’s not “Girls Gone Wild” spring break.  It’s rather doubtful that she’s hanging out by the beach in her very modest one piece, that goes from her chin to her knees.  It’s also rather doubtful that she’s doing body shots at Señor Frogs.  More likely she’s serving food and working hard.  She’s on her first Mission trip with our church.

They left Sunday after church, thus far, we haven’t heard anything.  I have no idea what they’re doing but I have a pretty good idea.*

***

Monday 8:15 am:  The caravan of cars and vans arrive at the Mexican border.  Someone misplaces their passport which requires everyone to get out of their cars to look for it.

8:22  Mckayla is distracted by a cute toddler selling chicle.  She decides to buy some but doesn’t have a quarter.  She wanders into a gift shop to break a $10.  The store is owned by Mexican drug lords.  The drug lords teenage daughter, Esmeralda, is pouting at the counter.  Her parents are incredibly overprotective and unreasonably mean.  They won’t let her date Jorge, the cute boy down the street.  McKayla recognizes a kindred spirit right away among all of the teen angst and oppression.

8:45 McKayla realizes that she wasn’t supposed to part from the group.  She runs back to where she left the cars and vans.  They’ve left to go look for her.  McKayla has forgotten the first rule of being lost:  Stay where you are.  Esmeralda offers to let her use the phone.  The girls leave to walk to Esmeralda’s house.

9:00  Esmeralda and McKayla are offered a ride by a crazy white woman, Nancy (aka Blanca), in a large SUV.  She’s nice enough but she seems like she’s incredibly stoned.  They stop at a chop shop.   A cranky man in the back recognizes Esmeralda.  They are taken on a long and bumpy car ride in the back of a van without windows.  Normally, the van is used by a coyote to transport Mexican’s across the border.  It’s hot and smelly.  The poor driver and Nancy, who happens to have a terrible potty mouth and caffeine addiction, are forced to endure the trip with not one, but two, complaining teens.

10:00 The girls arrive at the rival drug lords (and Nancy’s boyfriend) compound in the middle of nowhere.  He’s actually a pretty nice guy, he doesn’t have any sinister plans. Nonetheless though, he is a Mexican drug lord.  He plops the girls in his fabulous mansion and forbids them from leaving the game room while he decides what to do with them.

10:05 The complaints begin.

10:15 Esmeralda recognizes him as the mayor.  They complaints and harassment reach a new level of creativity.

2:15pm The rival drug lord begins to think he’s made a terrible mistake.  He’s not sure if he can survive the sully teen angst and complaints.  He sends in Nancy to relate.

5:00pm He decides to make peace by offering them dinner and trying to explain his side.  He would really just like Esmeralda’s dad to back off his coyotes.  Could she talk to her Dad about that?  She refuses.

Long story short, the rival drug lord couldn’t stand it any longer.  He decided to put them to work.  They’re now digging a tunnel to America that will pop up under Nancy’s maternity clothes store.

*All of this information was loosely gathered while watching the documentary Weeds

***

In all seriousness, I’m sure that she’s arrived safely in Ensenada.  I bet she wakes up early every morning excited to serve God.  I’m also pretty sure that she fills her days with amazing experiences and memories that will take weeks to relate to us.  I can’t wait to hear about them.

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Day 212

of not religiously blogging.  Or maybe that should be Day 212 of religiously not blogging. I’m not really sure.

I had to try twice to log onto wordpress because I’d forgotten my password.  In my defense, I knew the password, I just couldn’t remember where the uppercase letters where and if I added and exclamation mark or a question mark at the end.  I was rather surprised to find that I have 17 regular readers who check everyday to see if I’ve written anything.  If you are one of the 17 people, thank you so much, and I’m sorry to have been away so long.

But it is now March! And I’ve found that many things on my “grand to do list of life” are finally getting started.  I’d like to say that it has something to do with Spring and I’m cleaning up bad habits.  Or maybe, that I don’t like the pressure of New Year’s resolutions and like to procrastinate until the begining of spring.  Or maybe that March has some kind of magic that has finally made me organized and on the ball.

Really, I think it’s more about March being the month before I turn 31.  For some reason 31 seems so much older than 30.  I am no longer dangiling on the precipice of being middle aged.   Somehow, unwilling and rather unbeknownst to me, I’m there.  Somewhere in the last year I’ve moved from cool, hip, and in my twenties to being old.  I  have a teenager who considers it her job to constantly remind me.

Whatever the reasons, lots of things are getting done.

I’ve started running (again).  This time I’m sticking to it.  I signed up for my first 5k, which takes place on my birthday.    I think that it was providence that my credit union emailed me a special invitation to run on my birthday.  How could I not fork over $30 of Dave’s hard earned money and sacrifice many an hour on my treadmill?  Somehow I’ve convinced a friend to torture herself alongside me.   I’ve told everyone I can think of that I’m running.  And now, dear internet, you now know to.  I expect encouragement and accountability.

I signed up for my first alumni event.  (I wonder if the excitement of writing alumni will ever go away?  I hope not)  I’m going to see the dead sea scrolls.  And, I’m rather excited about it.  Go cougars!

I went home to visit my family.  Something I don’t do often enough.   This involved my first five eight hour car ride without my husband or my teenager daughter who constantly reminds me of my speeding.  It was long and arduous, and after the return five eight hour car ride, I vow to never again make the trek without them.  Never again.

I went to my first hockey game.

I went to my first Celtic festival.

Baseball has started yet again.  I spend more time shuttling kids to practice than I care to count.  Every Saturday from now until June is booked.  Every time I get overwhelmed, I think about 2012 when I’ll have 4 boys in baseball and daughter in high school.  The thought frightens me.

When I feel like weeping from the thought of three practices on the same day at the same time, I remember the excitement when Mike hit a home run or Marshall pitched a perfect inning or McKayla played amazing at second base.

I’m enjoying having two toddlers.  I’m slowly coming to the realization that it doesn’t matter how overactive my ovaries may be, this will probably be the last time I’ll have a 2 year old.

I’m feeling incredibly blessed to have two of them.

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