April has been a whirlwind of activity for us, and with all that activity undoubtedly comes a bit of craziness! The start of the month saw us returning from Nicaragua, then just 10 days later we traveled to Maine for a long weekend with my husband’s family. The rest of the month I was busy out straight working on a large project for Let’s Dish!. I think April is notorious for being crazy busy, as people get rush to get outside after the winter.

May starts on Thursday and I just can’t believe summer is almost here already. What is it about getting older that makes the days (and years) seem to fly by so quickly? (OK, just writing that statement made me sound like my mom. *yikes*) This is the one time of year I wish time would slow down. The girls are playing softball, the weather is absolutely beautiful (most of the time), the flowers are in bloom, and it doesn’t get dark until after 8pm.

We built a {insert fancy name for deck cover} to hold our new hammock chairs (direct from Nicaragua) and have since become the new hangout for all the neighborhood kids (who think these chairs are amusement park rides). But they really are wonderfully relaxing places to sit with a book on warm spring afternoons.

But there hasn’t been a ton of relaxing on them yet, what with all that crazy busyness I mentioned. Have you ever wished you could attach some sort of homing signal to various household items? Lots of people lose their keys, but we don’t have that problem too much. Library books are a huge source of frustration in our household. Those should come with homing signals that can be triggered by the library when a book is overdue. Wouldn’t that be great? (Note to any library administrators reading… please invoke the signal only between the hours of 9am and 9pm.) The library has told us we have a book overdue, and my daughter can’t find it (of course). We’ve turned the house upside down but it still eludes us. I know, we should have a better system and stay more organized. Yeah, yeah. Maybe I’ll get around to perfecting that system next April.

After a missed connection in Houston, we were rerouted to a different airport and finally arrived home at 1:30am Tuesday morning. Our bags are still in DC, but should be delivered today. I did have my camera though, and have just uploaded some of our pictures to Picasa. (Send me an email to get the URL for the pics.)

We’re definitely very tired, and were glad to sleep in our own beds (and also to brush our teeth without using bottled water!). For 10 years I’ve been hearing from people who have made the trip to Campo Alegria how the trip is life changing. That’s just another aspect of a trip like this that you can’t really understand until you’ve experienced for yourself. Seeing how much of the world lives (at least those in poor areas of the world) causes you to take stock of your own life.

When they told me I might not have my luggage until Friday, I started thinking about how much I needed my makeup and hair stuff (which for the most part went unused in Nica anyway). Ummm… hello?! Didn’t I just leave a third-world country where most people don’t even have electricity to use that flat iron! I think it’s that constant juxtaposition of the haves and have-nots that is most prevalent in the minds of those who make trips like this.

I suppose my biggest fear challenge is to keep these thoughts in the forefront of my mind as the days and weeks go by, and not to forgot them as quickly as my suntan fades.

Thanks for your prayers – we received many blessings because of them along the way. If you’re interested, here’s how you can continue to pray for the projects we visited:

• For Adam and Rachel at Campo Alegria, that another American couple would join them as they minister to the town of Rivas and everyone who visits Campo Alegria. (Also for the impending birth of their second child.)
• For the girls of Casa Havilla, that they would grow up to be strong women of faith, who are able to help change the community around them for the better.
• For continued safety of the Buzzbee family, as they minister and support the people of Managua. (Learn more about the Buzzbee family here.)
• For the funds and volunteers to grow Campo Alegria, so it can bring hope to many many more children in Nicaragua.