Fun in the Sun

For the past three weeks we have been staying at a beach house with Manuel and Chelsea. It was sooo nice. There was air-conditioning, which is always a treat, hot water – heaven, and the house was just overall very nice. There was a private pool in the backyard, then the beach started at the end of the yard. It was so nice of them to let us stay with them!

Last night we finally returned home and I thought, this place isn´t very pretty, and it´s got a lot of problems, but it´s home and it feels nice to be home. I felt that way for about two hours, until the mosquitos started biting and I took my cold shower. I want to go back to the beach house…

When Chelsea came to see our house and we spent an hour here checking email, she saw ants coming in the front door. She said, “Katie, how do you keep the ants out”, I just laughed and said, you don´t. “So you just kill them?”, I just laughed again, that would be a never ending task. “We just co-habitate". They don´t bug me as long as they stay off of me and my daughter.”

So that night I accidentally invaded their space in my front yard when I stepped, and lingered, in a single file line of “Army Ants”; the giant red ones that move bushes from one side of the yard to the other. It was dark, so I didn´t realize it right away until I felt them going over the top of my foot. I jumped out of their line and forgot about it – until a half hour later when I felt some definate biting/pinching at the back of my knee. I actually thought it was a spider and I kind of freaked. I started slapping the back of my pants, which made the pinching worse, then I just dropped my pants completely in front of Isaac and his mom and saw this huge red ant hanging on my skin, I kept trying to slap it off but it wouldn´t let go. Isaac finally grabbed it off. His mom, laughing at me, came over to inspect the offender, “Ohh, that one is a queen!” It was much larger than the others in the regular line up. Just my luck to loiter in the royal procession...

Some family members took some fun pool pictures of Ari. I´ll put them up as soon as I get them.

Temple Dedication and Mission Reunions

Isaac´s Mission Pres. and wife. Ariana had a nice big blowout pre-picture.

This month has been such a wonderful experience. The Panama temple was dedicated on August 10, 2008 by President Monson. So many members where able to witness this unique experience. The Panamanians are so excited to finally have their own temple!
Manuel and Isaac were both interviewed by Carol Mikita following the session they went to.

The night before there was a cultural event where each stake in the country, I think there are 11 stakes, had a presentation preformed by their young men and women. It was fun to watch all of the dances, I know they have spent months working on them. We saw SO many members and return missionaries there from all over the country. Isaac and I were both able to say hello to people we haven´t seen since our missions.

The evening of the dedication we had a mission reunion with 5 mission presidents and their wives (Bowler, Seegmiller, Williams, Boren, and Duffin). I saw both of my presidents, and Isaac´s president was there also. Isaac has wanted to see him again for such a long time. It was so fun to see them and the return missionaries that were able to come down. I was impressed at the turnout.

On Monday night, the 11th, Manuel and Isaac, with the help of another friend, were able to organize a get together for their old ward. We met in the church building they went to back then (Marcasa). There were tons of people that came, it was great! Most of them grew up together and many haven´t seen each other in almost 20 years. There have been two general authorities out of Panama and they both came from that ward, I am so glad that Isaac grew up with those influences around him. Some of the members there aren´t active anymore, but I hope this get together will ignite some interest again.

Some of the Marcasa Gang

July Collage

What a Cutie! I love the little faces she is starting to make all the time!

Same Thing, Another Month

Ari With Abuelita

A group of the young women when we went to the temple openhouse

Ariana´s hair-do by her two year old cousin Avery

It seems like this month just flew by and there isn´t anything super exciting that I can think of that is different than my post last month. Ariana is very proficient in the crawling department, although she still won´t follow me into another room, she just cries when she sees me leave and calms down when I come back. I guess it is good though, I only have to keep one area baby proof still.

What amazes me is that she is standing up everywhere. She loves to pull herself up to the furniture to stand, which I know is a totally normal thing, but in a six month old? She´ll be 7 months tomorrow, but she has been pulling herself up for a couple of weeks now. I think she´ll be a nine month old walker. Her balance has even improved alot the last few days. I guess a few hard knocks on the tile makes her a fast learner. I try to cushion all of her favorite standing areas as much as possible but she always seems to find her way out of the cushion zone. Maybe she´s a thrill seeker, great.

Manuel (Isaac´s brother) and Chelsea flew in yesterday. We are excited that they could come with their 4 kids. They are here just in time for the Temple open house and dedication. They´ll stay for 3 weeks, that means three weeks of beach for us too, yay. It´s funny that we live here in a tropical paradise yet we only go to the beach when we have visitors. We should get out more often.

Isaac is finishing up his finals this week. One semster down, many more to go.

Any Thoughts?

We would like some advice from the parents out there. For the past three weeks or so Ariana has started waking up at 2, 3 or 4 in the morning, random times, no schedule . The month before she finally started sleeping in until about 6 or 7. Now she rarely sleeps through the night. Do you:

A. Pick her up after one or two minutes, try to soothe her and give her a bottle.

B. Let her cry for 5 minutes or so to see if she will go back to sleep and give her a bottle if she doesn´t.

C. Ignore her completely, she´ll go back to sleep eventually.

Any thoughts on the subject would be very appreciated!

Ariana at Six Months Old

I can´t believe how much a baby progresses from day to day. This month Ariana has become so active and everyday she is learning and doing something new. This month she started holding her own bottle (Yay!) and crawling (Uh-oh). She is not all out speeding around yet, but she gets a little faster and steadier every day. If I put her on the floor I put her on a bedspread or her little foam alphabet pad, but for some reason she goes straight for the tile. When she gets there, she just lays down on her tummy and starts licking the tile. Weird! I clap my hands at her and say “Ari, no!” but she just looks up at me, laughs and goes back to licking. Is she lacking something in her diet? Now I am afraid to leave her on the bed because she sees the tile from there and tries to go for it but of course doesn´t realize there is a drop involved. She is starting to move fast enough now that I don´t think I can let her play there anymore.

Just today she started boosting herself up onto her knees. She climbs up the wall with her hands and kneels there holding onto the wall or her little rocker, what ever she can pull herself up to (my leg). She was kneeling up to her little chair a few minutes ago, and had her first bonk against the tile. It sounds horrible when a head hits the tile (carpet isn´t used here, just tile floors or cement floors. Hard on crawling and walking, but I heard they´re great for potty training). But a little cuddling, caressing and juice resolved the tears pretty quick, so I don´t think there is any permanent damage.

She weighed in last week at 17 lbs 10 ounces. She only gained one pound last month. She´s a little bit anti-social, I think because she is holed up with just me all day. At church and the store she gets a little aggravated when people try to hold her. She already has a reputation as being fussy at church. She´s not at home though, she is very calm until she´s tired, then she´s a bit of a screamer. Cherish observed that she has no middle ground. She goes from a 0 to 10 in about a half a second. It´s just good that she´s usually a 0.

We are enjoying her so much and happy to be here with her.

Yanguez update

We are now officially land owners in Panama. The title took about three weeks to get and now we are working on building permits, hopefully we can start building a house pronto.

I am in the young women´s presidency at church and Isaac is a sub in the Elder´s Quorum Presidency (the actual counselors are currently inactive, but they don´t want to release them hoping that obligation will help them come back), Isaac has also just been called to be a Sunday school teacher. They´ve also called me as choir director, and anyone who knows me very well knows how funny that is. But I know the tunes to most of the songs, so that qualifies me. We had our first preformance 2 weeks ago, after only three weeks of practice. Not bad, but not great.

Isaac is almost finished with his first semester in the University of Panama Nursing Program. He says he would rather be studying in Utah though. He is doing well and is moving forward.

A week and a half ago someone dropped off a little puppy on our porch at 4 am. Since we sleep in the livingroom we heard her yelping right away. She was really little and all wet and shaking. Isaac gave her some warm milk and put her back in the laundry room. The next morning we noticed she had thrown up the milk and had diarrhea. We kept trying to give her milk, but over the next day and a half she got really weak and the diarrhea was getting worse. Isaac took her to the vet and they said she had Parvovirus, fleas and ticks. They gave her a couple of shots for the virus and a Gatorade type drink to try to rehydrate her. They told us that 80% of puppies with parvovirus don´t make it. Isaac helped her with the drink every four hours and pulled about 30 ticks out of her ears, belly, paws, etc. (The ticks here, called agarapatas, are huge and nasty. They are big pulsating bags of blood that can get as big as my thumb nail when they are full. Gross.) She seemed to be recovering, a few days after the shot; she was walking around, yapping a bit again and even tried to climb the big steps out of the laundry room. Then the following days she started getting weak again, until she couldn´t even walk the day Isaac took her back for her follow up shot. They gave him some stronger vitamins and some other things to nurse her with, saying that the virus will sometimes attack the heart or liver after the GI tract. She died that evening. It was really hard to see her suffer. We weren´t even planning on keeping her, but we wanted to help her live. Sad.

I am including a picture of an ant that was in season for about 2 weeks. Destiny was telling me about the huge ants in the new Indiana Jones movie. I told her we have them just as big here, but with wings. If you had your car parked under a light at night, hundreds would get stuck to the moisture of the roof. It was kinda creepy. I took the picture of it next to a juice bottle so you can relate the size a little better.

CONGRATULATIONS HEIDI! Heidi, yep, the youngest Morrell from the Paul and MaryAnne clan, just had a baby boy on June 27th. His name is Elyn Heston Brown. Way to go little sis!