Road to Kabul

I have been blessed with the rare fortune of having been close to the same circle of friends for officially (as of last month) more than half of my life. This post is in honor of one of them.

I decided to take a summer job in California one year and upon telling Brenda, she said "I want to go too!" We spent the summer living and working in San Jose. It was a great summer, but we had our ups and downs. One night I told her I wasn't feeling particularly well, which was only partially true. I had a small headache, but really, I was just feeling grouchy. I laid down and Brenda sat next to me on the bed and asked if there was something she could do. I said no. But she continued with suggestions. "Would it help if I....", "What about....". I kept telling her no, waiting for her to leave me alone. Then she simply said "If there anything in the whole wide world I could do or get for you that would make you feel better, just say the word and I will do my best."

Now, it's not that what she said that struck me in that moment, it was how she said it. I knew that she meant it 100%. She is just that kind of person. I smiled and told her I would let her know, and then I laid there stunned, contemplating our friendship. She was such an amazing friend and I wondered what I had ever done to deserve her friendship, then I started realizing that the answer was-nothing. At least that was how I felt. She inspired me that night to be a better friend and a better person. I am so grateful for her.

Brenda has recently graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography and she is AMAZING! Her skill and talent is breath-taking. I have three links to her websites in my blog roll that you should defintely check out; "New Leaf Photography", "Brenda Manookin Photography" and a brand-spanking new one called "Road to Kabul". She is leaving tomorrow for Afghanistan with her co-worker John to shoot a Documentary and they will be blogging about the whole thing online. Well, at least that is their intention. I'm not going to be too disappointed if they are too busy to blog everything, but I'll still be following along.

Anyway, Brenda & John, Here's to you! Good Luck!

Imagine

Imagine that your family's future is completely up in the air. It's been months and you are having a difficult time not agonizing over the unknown. The suspense is killing you as you do everything you possibly can, but are always brought back to that same place where there is nothing you can do but wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait.

After what seems like an eternity of waiting, suddenly a bolt of lightning strikes out of the blue with the perfect path for your family. Everyone is very excited and you happily start down this new path together. The most tremendous weight is lifted from your shoulders. You finally know what's going to happen next! You can now make specific plans and day dream about this new exciting adventure. You don't feel useless or stagnant anymore. Life is finally moving forward!!!!

Then the rug is pulled out from under you and your back where you started from. That's where I am now. We are not going to Taiwan. There was a "miscommunication" on their end about the contract they offered us. We heard from them last night apologizing about the mistake. They offered us a contract "C" in our dream location, which is exactly what we wanted. But it is actually a contract "A" which would not be enough hours and therefore pay.

So we are back at square one, even more clueless than we were before. I guess it could have been worse. I am so grateful that we didn't already pay for the flight! We were planning on doing that this morning. I'm pretty well over it by now, but man that was a hard blow.

This has been an extreme test of my patience. I want to do what Heavenly Father wants us to do and in his time, but it is so difficult not to rush things forward. This is definitely a learning experience.

Taiwan!

We are moving to Taiwan! As long as we can get all our paperwork taken care of in the next two weeks. I'll write more about it later.

Part 2 Chocolate Comparison

As well as plain British chocolate we also brought home quite a few candy bars that they have here in the states as well, to compare back to back. It's taken us a while because, well, that's a lot of chocolate. So this is what we compared:



1)Mars/Milky way

2)Snickers

3)Bounty/Almond Joy

4)Malteasers/Whoppers

5)Kit Kat

6)Twix

7)Starbursts





1) The British have a Milky way but it is more like the American 3 musketeers. And I think Americans had a Mars bar once upon a time... but British Mars bar and American Milky way consist of pretty much the same stuff. But when it comes to flavor, I was amazed at the difference. The milky way is more sugary, but has less flavor, if that even makes sense. The Mars was just so much more enjoyable. I didn't even want to finish the milky way because it was just so flavorless in comparison.


2) We actually had a hard time telling the difference. This tasted pretty much the same.

3) Bounty has better chocolate for sure, but the coconut is a bit dry in comparison to the Almond Joy. All in all, this is entirely unfair, but I choose Almond Joy because Almonds make everything better! (I didn't compare it to Mounds because it's Dark chocolate)

4)British version hands down! Not even a question. If you're a fan of Whoppers, you'll never want to go back after you've had the british version.

5)Ditto of #4. I couldn't believe the difference. When I inspected the packaging a little further, I noticed that Hersheys makes Kit Kat in the States and Nestles makes Kit Kat in the UK. Interesting.

6)The two are very similar, but American Twix is better.

7)The first time I had British Starbursts, it really weirded me out. The texture reminded me of a very sugary gum that you swallow. My recent comparison of them back to back, didn't seem as bad so I have to say I am neutral on this. They do have some cool flavors. Their regular flavors are Strawberry, Lemon-Lime, Black currant and Orange. They have a package that I'm not sure if I've seen in the States where every flavor is Strawberry mixed with something else like passion fruit or mango. Those were awesome.

Good Day

I think the finality of our recent move has just struck me and I don't like it. I just went to a friend's blog and saw the title of her latest blog "English Picnic" and I got so homesick I almost cried. Well, maybe not almost. Brent and I have both been missing England in a lot of different ways.

On a happier note, we got together with some very good friends of ours today and had a wonderful time with them. One of my best-est friends is coming into town tomorrow and I'm trying to convince another one that she needs to evacuate her new southern Florida residence to come see me.

The weather has cooled off a little bit, making it much more bearable to go out and enjoy the sunshine past the first few hours of the day. On our walk to the park today we saw a little swimming pool someone had in their yard that they were giving away and picked it up for Zoe because all of the outdoor swimming pools are now absurdly closed.

Best news of the whole day? Zoe overcame a year-long, deathly fear of playing on the playground. She went on the slide and swings for the first time in a year with out being forced to and without flipping out and crying. I was so happy because I missed seeing her get such a thrill out of them like I did during her extreme, dare devil, thrill-seeker days.