Observations gleaned from the Dark Knight

1. Women love Super heroes-unless she is sleeping with him and he has to leave in the middle of the night to save some other woman from some horrible fate. So, if you are a super hero, beware. Your woman will probably leave you for a regular, but probably more publicly famous, hero.
2. Morality is not (or should not be) relative, but it can change. While evil forces are always immoral, the moral minded often get easily tripped up by applying a rigid standard of morality to one who does not acknowledge said code. It is the reason why the whole torture debate exists: why should we abide by a strict code of ethics when our opponents don't acknowledge that it exists? Because it is moral. Well what if more people die because our soldiers won't shoot the suicide bomber disguised as a shepherd? The moral thing to do, in a few very extenuating circumstances, is often that which is considered most immoral.
3. Batman and George Bush share a lot of the same tag lines.
4. Licking your lips and talking as if you are a bit unsure of yourself not only makes you seem creepy and deranged, but sets an eerily shocking foundation for your moment of confident, splendid and calculated destruction. So if you want to disarm someone with your shock and awe, act as if you are unsure of what you are doing. Way to go Heath. Too bad your performance in this role arguably convinced you to kill yourself.
5. I have officially locked myself into viewing one genre of movie. My husband won't go see anything that doesn't have "man/men" at the end of the title, or contain the words "star", "wars" or "transformers." I think that pretty much sums up every movie we have seen together. Ever. Is this my fault? Oh well, I don't really care. Batman rocked. And I did go see Mama Mia-it was less than mediocre.

After eight days of ranching, reunioning, wedding stuff and what not without Adam, pizza/Batman night without Eli was a welcome retreat. I don't have any ranch pictures because I had no batteries for my camera. And Eli was mostly screaming the whole time and not looking very picture worthy. But I had a blast. SO if you want to see them, bug my sister to send them to me so I can post. Oh, but we buzzed E's head. He did not like it.

I'm not going to lie

I am so burned out of blogging.

And the sin be upon the head of the parents....(also for Kenna)

You can never watch your kids too closely at a barbecue where there is a pool and beer.

For Kenna

More than once in Nicaragua, I felt like Pam on that most memorable episode where she and Jim vacation at Dwight's beet farm; she wakes up in the middle of the night to a loud banging sound, goes to look out the window and sees Cousin Moes using the outhouse with the door whipping in the wind. She turns to the camera with a bewildered-amused, but nonetheless bewildered-look on her face and exclaims, "What century is this?"

I relate this sentiment not only to the unfortunate times when I had to use what can hardly be termed a restroom, but also to the emaciated horse-drawn carriages with whom we shared the road. I don't know why it was so poignantly sad to me to see the ribs and hips poking out of the overworked horses; I'm not really an animal lover. It was the same reason it upset me to see people perpetually throwing coke bottles out the window, or 9 year old children well on their way to needing every tooth in their mouths extracted. It was all symbolic of a fundamental ignorance about simple things like teeth, and how having all 32 of them greatly increases the contentment level of a person. As if I am saying anything profound. It was a third world country. We all know what that is like, so I am obviously stating the obvious. Enough.

We had a wonderful time. Adam was totally in his element, making best friends with every bus driver and street urchin. The experience he got, practicing all the procedures he has spent the last year doing on mannequins, finally on real people who needed them so badly, was invaluable. We worked really hard, but we played hard on the weekends. We went surfing the last day we were there, at a gorgeous beach that only took us 45 minutes on a winding dirt road to get to; we rode in the back of a van, which I am sure is meant for human trafficking. It was at least 95 degrees in there, and there were at least 10 sweaty people huddled together. Very authentic Latin American experience. Unfortunately, the van couldn't quite make it up the 60 degree sloped hill it came down after it had rained. Here is the van trying to make it up...such awesome entertainment to watch it try and make it up that grade. So we had to ride back with a swindling taxi man who told us we would get murdered if we did not have him drive us back to the airport in Managua rather than ride the bus...

We also went to church in a little town called Rivas on the day we left. It was amazing. There were 20 or 30 people there, a brand new missionary from Springville who was elated to see us, and a super strong confirmation that the Gospel is true in any language. It didn't matter that the bishopric were all in jeans, that the sound system was fuzzy or even that I didn't understand much of what was being said.

I am so glad that we did this. I am so glad that I married someone who cared enough about choosing a career which opens so many doors for meaningful service. I am so excited for my kids to be old enough to participate in these sojourns with us, so that they can know how incredibly lucky they are to born in this country. And so that they will always brush their teeth.

Round 2

I can't believe I am giving the masses what they want: pictures before words. But here they are. I'll write about it later. Still unpacking.

Pictures round 1

Happy Fourth of July! I love this country. Nothing like spending time working on rotting teeth and wading through trash laden cities, one after another, to make you appreciate your heritage. Here are pictures from our visit to Nicaragua:

I will post more later. Enjoy your fireworks, barbecue, sitting time and whatever it is you do that makes you appreciate your freedom today.

My poor little neglected blog

Hello. I hardly remember protocol here. We are still in Utah and don't have our camera cord, which means this will be a pictureless post, which officially eliminates 50% of interest which a new post on this blog may have generated. Oh well. Nicaragua was amazing. We played and worked really hard. We missed our boy. He didn't like us when we got back. But that's cool, we are all friends again now. We miss our home, we miss our friends and we miss normal routine life which does not involve the decrepit teeth of nine year old kids, 100% humidity and repeated near death experiences in errant taxis. I'll keep it short and sweet for those who kept reading despite my disclaimer about no pictures. And I will post the pictures shortly.