i wrote these the last couple of weeks for my myspace blog.

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here i am...

still in the midwest. i've gotten to see a lot of my cousins the past couple days. that means lots of hugs and laughing. i love it. hopefully i'll get some pictures up soon. i will before i go to jamaica. remember. that's on november first.
today i'm having lunch with a friend from jamaica. she's american and a lot older than me, she's from here, the president of their board of directors...it's going to be really good, but also, it's going to be kind of heavy as we talk about some of the realities of full-time life in jamaica. she's only stayed there for 3 months at a time, and not always just at the children's home. i have to face that there will be times when i am lonely...i'm not going to have a community of friends like i get to have when i'm at hume. i'm going to be far away from my fam for the holidays. i did it in 8th grade and it was really hard...sad...but even then, i was with my grandparents, aunt and uncle and cousins in bolivia, so this will be different because i wont have ANY family. and there's just something about the holiday time of year...
this weekend all of our fam in the area is going to be at our grandparents' lake house. i'm stoked. i'm making all the food while everyone else who is young and able will be taking the dock out for the winter.
OH!! my dad flew over for the weeked! it's been so nice to have him here. why couldn't we be friends before i decided to move out of the country? ugh. also, one of our best, best family friends is in the hospital with a possible brain anurism. his son's 4th birthday is tomorrow. stinks, huh? if i wasn't going to jamaica, i'd move in with them until he was all better so that his wife could freely go to work and the hospital and i'd take care of joseph and riley.
i miss my siblings...




scary things at home and fun in the midwest

joe, he's like my my second dad, is in the hospital and will be for at least a few more days...

they're monitoring swelling in the brain. the other day he went in because he thought an old jaw break injury was flaring up, and they told him he possibly had a brain anurism and then he had a minor stroke yesterday or something. MINOR...i don't want to make aything seem more than it is...

but it's scary and sad and he's a stay at home father of a four and two year old. his wife's gone to the hospital the past couple of nights for a few hours and my mom and sister stayed with joseph and riley until she came home. they call me each time so i can talk to the kids. it's so cute.

anyhow...today i'm cooking for my aunts, uncles, cousins...yay!

and last night me, my cousins and auntie watched tlc and csi and erin brokovich and it was fun...




update on joe

he's in the hospital until saturday. no results yet on brain problems, but he sounds a lot better when we talk to him. he was super medicated for a few days because of the pain and stuff. i don't know how he's doing from the stroke, but he can walk and talk and at first, they told him he'd have to learn to walk all over again but thankfully it didn't happen that way. hopefully he'll be fine, get out on saturday, take it easy, and then still be fine and healthy. we shall see...



prepare yourself. i'm typing kind of the way i talk. this will be very random. and i mean really random. kind of like thinking out loud. please don't think i'm ridiculous or not smart because i might seem silly and since we are not really talking, you're just reading this, you can't hear the tone of my voice or see my facial expressions and yeah. silly. i'm tired with a headache and silly.
joe is home, now. so that is good.
i keep having dreams that my stuff is all over the airport and i'm trying to pack and the plane is about to leave and all kinds of random people from my life keep showing up to say goodbye.
i went on my first real train ride! my cousin and i rode the amtrak for a few hours to a town called champaign to visit friends. and every time i saw a billboard that said "champaign" i thought of "campaign" the worship band for ponderosa at hume lake last summer. because champaign and campaign look the same at a glance. the past few days have been busy...bustling all over illinois, mostly downtown chicago. i went to a halloween party for the first time since i can remember. it was fun because i wore fake glasses and my retainers and i wanted to dress up like the swedish character, pippi longstocking, but didn't get that costume together and just wore a bunch of random clothes and i feel like i could've been on beauty and the geek. have you ever seen that show? well. i'm not really recommending it. i just looked pretty fabulous in my grey and white plaid shorts, hot pink sweater, argyle socks...you get the idea?
i leave for jamaica in THREE DAYS! wow...
the 'best' part is how it's just 45 minutes from the miami airport to the montego bay airport...haha, it's drives me nuts! i get so antsy and excited every time...giggling to myself and wanting to applaud from the moment i see the island until the plane lands. sometimes i explain my silly excitement to the people sitting by me, and sometimes i just let them think i'm super weird. aack! three days!
i got to see savannah from my joshua class today. crazy! two hume girls in chicago.
i'm excited to get to jamaica and give the other girl who is there from the states right now a break for a little bit. i'm super excited to hold a sleeping baby in my baby nook. you'll see what i mean by that when i post some pictures. i know i've told a lot of you about this already. i'm excited to play and sing with the kids. and swim. and hang out with ion and shantara, our kids with cerebral palsy. and it's going to be nice and warm!
please pray for robin's nest and the kids. i found out that a barf-bug has been going around. this might be weird, but even though i don't want to catch the bug, i really like taking care of sick people. but i'm used to taking care of just one, maybe two sick people...not seven little kids at once. oh man...also, there is a lot of construction on our property as we are building a new dorm for the boys, and construction means...RATS! yikes! i hope i have the courage to shoo them away. i have the habit of jumping onto furniture and squealing when i see lil creepy rodents. i've been able to handle the lizards in my room in jamaica in the past...but rats?! yikes...
well. this was me rambling. i hope you enjoyed it. i am going to sleep now. but i might finish watching this episode of oprah in which viewers learn about skin cancer. please excuse my non-usage of proper punctuating .

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