Last blog post everrrr!!! We have just returned from the amazon what?? It was the craziest/ coolest thing ever and 10x more beautiful and better than you could imagine. We saw monkeys, tarantulas, ate bugs, got cleansed by a amazon healer, swam in the Napo river, learned how to salsa dance etc, and also had to say goodbye to our babies in a one week period. We cried so hard our eyes kind of felt like sand paper the next day hahah the people here are so amazing though, They just kept comforting us as always and wanted to make sure we were okay. This has been the most amazing experience of our lives and our kids here will always have a part of our hearts. We have learned to wash clothes by hand, tie a cloth diaper, live with 20 girls, speak a little Spanish, throw a spear, how to de flea a bed, how to keep 8 toddlers amused all by yourself,just basically how to live in a foreign country without your family, and soo much more! Crazy that coming home is actually going to be the real adjustment. One of the most important things that we have learned is to never take our families or what we have for granted. Must say we will never forget swinging from vines or seeing the second largest tree in south America or how Nicole fell in love with our guide Javier and Anna and the bar tender had a real connection... gotta love the amazon! Thanks for following our adventure in Ecuador and tune in next time for more crazy international love! hahah  Ps: after a 17 hour flight delay we will finally be with our families in the morning whooo!! Xoxoxoxo Anna and Nicole

Birthday dinner

Sunday Dinner

40 some odd pounds of meat!

Happy 4th of July!!!! This afternoon at the orphanage we had a big 4th of July party... bbq, decorating all the kids wheelchairs for a parade, bobbing for apples, and we also got the pleasure of making potato salad and cheeseburgers for 100 people... :) It was honestly a blast of a day and so fun to show the Ecuadorians how to fiesta USA style. haha speaking of... we decided to plan a flash mob for when everyone was eating dinner so we had someone turn on the song Party In The USA and one by one we just all joined this synchronized dance ahah it was so great to see all of the tia´s faces like what the heck are these freaks doing?? haha In other news we have also realized that the stereotypes you would have about tons of girls living together are for real hahah Rumor has it that if you put your hair in 2 braids and put conditioner in the ends that will grow faster... I heard wrong and have been putting lotion in the ends ahah ooops.  There is also a girl who always asks things like... If I leave my face wash on through the night do you think it will make my skin better? So of course we all said yes cause we didn't think she really would but yep she did hahah Me and Anna had Sunday dinner and we made spaghetti.. Homemade rolls and "easy" brownies. Yummy! Also I was lucky and got to go to testimony meeting this Sunday! I don't know what came over me but I just decided to go up and bear my testimony! I wish I could say that I did it in perfect Spanish but who am I kidding I used a translator hahah also on Sunday I had made a scripture chart for martin and told him i would get him a ctr ring if he read every night for two weeks and this past sunday he also finished that! He was sooo stoked and it was so adorable. He has also been asking us to pray before we eat lunch and dinner. What a cool kid!! It is going to be so hard to leave all them! There are so many little things that happen every day that just make you fall even more in love with them. Every morning when I get to shift at Milagros Cristian (who is paralyzed from the waste down) scoots as fast as he can down the hall to come give me a hug with the biggest smile you have ever seen on his face, Laurita when she wants to say her prayers points up the the picture of Jesus on the wall then folds her arms all ready, when I go in and kiss Orvie in the morning on his cheek when he is still in his crib giggles so hard that sometimes he snorts hahaha just adore all of them. Hope everyone at home had a good time celebrating the good ol U S of A. xoxoxo Nicole
Supp people! this morn i had trini so i sleep in a little then we get on the bus and head up to turi which is about a 20 minute drive but while on our way up there strangest thing happened they were having a parade for the fourth of july so we jumped out and joined in... just kidding i wish but the police had crossed off the way to get up there soo we had to turn around and go home but as nicole told you earlier osso was having a party for the fourth so we went home and helped with all the food and such and ended being really fun to help with all the food... me and nicole mixed like 20 pounds of beef for the hambugar patties and it was lovely with the smell and freezing cold texture of the deep raw meat good thing i ve seen my dad gut a dear and could mix it with my bare hands haha thanks dad! then we got all ready and headed to osso where we decorated the place and all the kids chairs and them and then we took all the kids and made our very own parade and if i dont say so my self was quite the site, we took up the entire street and had a line of about four cars behind us for a little while... pretty legit! then after the 20 ish minute parade we headed back and started doing some games and then got all the food ready and got my face painted and just looked way to cool for school haha but i must say it was quite the sight seeing our whole group in all red white and blue including most of our Ecuadorian friends dressed up too yeahh represent! then ate and had some dang good burgers and salad and all that good ole American food! then we were lucky enough to have fire works even though they arent exactly legal we had some good bottle rockets but the best part of my night was when the fireworks were going off Christian from Esperanza was right next to me and he put his arm around me and it was just the cutest thing and he just held it there until the show was over!! ohhh i love that kid and all of the others! then we cleaned up and headed home and had quite the singing blow out in the bus home but even though it was hard missing the fourth back home this was a pretty dang good fourth Ecuadorian style!
hope all of you had a wonderful fourth too! love you all and god bless America haha :) xoxo anna