Writing from home

I'm writing this from my mom's kitchen counter in a very cold (65 degree) Oregon town where it's windy and rainy and a shock to our systems after coming from over 100 degree weather. :) It's so nice to be at my parents house - with the familiar smells and foods and laughs that I grew up with... no matter how long you're away from home, there's no place like home.

Maddy, Ali, and I traveled on Mother's Day - leaving our house at 6:30am, and arriving at my parents door at 2am the next morning. Must I even say that it was a long trip? lol. The first flight, my sister and her family was with us - them at the front of the plane, and us at the very back. But it made me feel good when the flight attendant passed and said 'your sister asked me to check if you were ok'. just knowing they were on the same plane brought me peace. They helped me lug my things and children through customs in Houston where you have to pick up all your luggage. we were a sight, lol, but made it through. The next flight was way harder.... evening flight and no sister on the plane - for some reason the airlines had Maddy and my seats separate - I offered to leave it like that (joke) but people quickly offered to move around so I could take care of my toddler on the 5 hour flight...yes I did say 5 hours :(. The poor gentleman sitting beside me was so kind - picking up Ali's binki at least 10 times and never complaining when we got up and down many times for potty runs. The last hour of the flight he did start drinking whiskey... maybe that was our fault lol. Truthfully the girls did pretty good considering the long flight - and then they fell asleep with only 20 minutes left  - meaning they were both dead weight when we were supposed to walk off the plane, get in the stroller, and get to our third flight. The kind man took Ali from me and carried & deposited her at our next gate for me. From that point on, there was no way I could do it on my own - my backpack was huge (why did I think I needed that much stuff!?!) and both girls needed to be carried  - people took pity on us and helped me all the way to the arms of my waiting parents. Maddy was crying because she was so cold and tired.

Tristan and Sigel are doing well I think. We all hate that we're separate for 3 weeks, but we'll be ok. We're talking a lot - yeah for technology! Tristan had another good meeting with some health department people regarding opening the clinic which is exciting. Sigel is busy with school and Taekwondo and homework.  Since we're not home, Tristan has been working until way too late in the evening :) on paperwork and projects... he's going to be just as tired as we are when we are reunited.

We've been working out the kinks with the dental clinic - the chair and drill and all is working more than it's not working now :) and we are working on a solution for the autoclave (the machine that sterilizes the instruments) that was broken. For me the really exciting thing has been the community efforts that we're seeing come together with the dental happenings. We have a neighbor girl - Demaris - that has made friends with Blanca, coming over and assisting Blanca with the office stuff - as a volunteer, and we have one dentist in Comayagua that is sterilizing all our equipment for us while we get our machine fixed, and another dentist that has offered to do any x-rays for free for our patients until we get an xray up and going. We also had a dentist come out and assist Blanca in doing some wisdom teeth this last week (a procedure she didn't feel comfortable to do on her own). We have around 30-40 patients being seen each week at the clinic!