Calming back down

Life has definately calmed back down since I got back from Sierra Leone. Not really that much has happened. The tornados came through, but nothing really happened out here. We lost power for about 8 hours and ended up sleeping at a downstairs apartment with another family. Norm and I kept eachother entertained though, even without power- (see pics)

Parkston got to stay at our apartment the day after the storm (see pics) because Renno and Jenny lost power. We had lots of fun until the power at their house came back on and Parkston's parents made him go home- what a bummer.

Since then, I've gone home to go shopping for a bridesmaid's dress for my friend Katie's wedding. I'll be wearing a fuscia & black dress. I'm not really a big fan of pink, but at least the dress itself is cute, if not the color. The next weekend, Norm and I took Jenny to Milan for the first time. We made her try Chow Wagon and then we saw "Bucket List." That's my whole past since I posted last. It's been a LONG time.

I'm not really sure what I used to do all the time before, unless I really did spend several hours every day on grad school stuff. Who knows, but it never seemed like that long! Oh well, I'm getting to read more and my room is cleaner than it used to be- a great triumph in my world. I've been trying to be more in shape, plus exercising gives me something to do. I'm starting to walk with some people at work and I've been running some. I also tried yoga this weekend. I liked it more than I thought I would. (I used your DVD Norm, I hope you don't mind.) It was actually kind of hard.

I babysat a lot this weekend. That's what happens when Candice leaves town. I watched kids Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. All 3 nights were really good. Two of the nights I never even saw the kids awake, all I had to do was sleep on someone else's couch for most of the night.

I really am going to try to be better about blogging, so keep me accountable and harass me if I go too long without posting again.

I'm Back

I'm back in the US. It's nice to be home with hot showers and carpet and my heater. Not to say that I don't miss Sierra Leone, because if I could sell my heater for $3,000 I'd be making a trip back to see Chelsea really soon. [If anyone is interested in a $3,000 heater just let me know. It's an awesome heater!]
I started back at work today. It was great to see everybody. For the first 2.5 hours at work I got to be a completely useless human being and just talk to everybody. Dr. Al even called me up to his office to "have a discussion" which meant talk about the trip. He has even decided that now I should go somewhere in Africa to work- not that I haven't been thinking about it but I didn't even say anything about it. He just started talking about me sending letters to NGOs to see if they need staff and how if you get enough people involved it souldn't be that hard. I think he wants to get rid of me! We even had a party with ice cream and peanut butter cookies and chips & salsa for me coming back. But for my office, we really have parties for EVERY occasion possible. We're having another tomorrow for super/ fat tuesday. It's a fun place to work (but not a good place to be on a diet).
Last weekend, Norm and I went to Milan to the Chow Wagon and the Ritz-3 theatre of course. We saw 27 Dresses. It was pretty good. On Sunday, Norm and I made dinner. She got a cookbook for Christmas that shows you how to sneak veggies into food using pretty much baby food in the recepies. We made chicken nuggets with carrots and sweet potatoes. They were pretty good, but I'm still not so sure what I think about the whole idea of cooking with baby food.