A Good Weekend

No filters, just pure beauty.

This was the sunrise greeting me at work on Friday morning.  I think it was a sign of the good weekend ahead. 

Chris and I spent Saturday at the beach.  It was my first visit to South Padre Island without any wind, and it was awesome!  The water was warm enough for a swim, although I chose to build sand castles instead.  

My "sand castle" looked a lot like Doug.

Today, Chris and I tried the first fruit from our fruit tree.  I can now say with certainty that we have an orange tree, which makes me very happy.

Fresh fruit + a day at the beach = a very good weekend.    

All Things Fish

I helped a youth group with an anti-Halloween fall festival last week. Yes, the fall festival was actually referred to as the anti-Halloween fall festival. The advertisement for the fall festival went something like this: "Avoid the pagan festivities of Halloween and come to the fall festival." I have been to my fair share of fall festivals designed to provide alternative activities on Halloween, but I had never been to one so blatantly advertising it's underlying purpose.

The youth group I work with was in charge of a game booth at the anti-Halloween fall festival. I decided on a simple game called "Go Fish."  The idea of the game was to land a ping-pong ball in the fish bowl to win fish.  I liked this game because I actually needed to buy a fish bowl for Mr. Fish, my recently acquired beta fish.  I no idea the game would turn out so cute!

I wanted to fill the fish bowl with live goldfish to give away as prizes.  My friend Juan was deeply distressed by this plan.  He advocated for the fate of the goldfish given to random children who lacked a fishbowl, fish food, or a desire to care for a fish.  Persuaded by his reasoning, I decided to give out these adorable fish themed prizes instead.

 

The bible verse on the paper matched the theme of the game and the theme of the anti-Halloween fall festival.

I was very pleased with how the booth turned out, but I'm not sure how the actual game went.  I may have skipped the anit-Halloween fall festival to engage in the pagan activity of handing out Halloween candy at home with Chris and Doug.  Oops!

Poncho, Poncho, Poncho

A few weeks ago I went to Wal-Mart in search of a poncho but I couldn't find one.   I asked an employee where I could find a poncho.  The employee looked at me and told me (in Spanish) that she did not speak English. As the employee started to walk away, I said, "Oh, pues, hablo un poquito espanol."  I then proceded to tell her that I was looking for a (Estoy buscando por un) . . . hmmm.  That's where my sentence ended because I was thinking, "How do you say poncho in Spanish?"  Determined to find a poncho, I explained that I didn't know the Spanish word for what I was looking for, but I started describing to her the "cosa" (thing) that I needed.  I compared the "cosa" to a trashbag and stated that you wear it when you are outside during the rain, only I couldn't remember the word for rain and had to make rain hand motions with my fingers.  Upon seeing my hand motions, the employees eyes lit up and she said, "oh, un poncho!"  That's when I learned that the word poncho is the same in English and Spanish.  I kindly listened to the employee's directions to the ponchos and then asked her if she knew how to say poncho in English.  She didn't, which made me feel a little bit better.