Am I Forgetting Anything?

I feel like I keep making up a new list before I cross off the lists that I have already made.  It feels good to cross something off, but then I add two more things onto the list.  Pat only has 2 more days of work.  I only have 1 more real estate closing (I have been selling real estate for the last 10 years for those that didn't know).  I have decided to stay a little active in real estate by putting my license in the Kentucky Residential Referral Service.  So if anyone has need of a realtor, just let me know and I will refer you to Laura Fulton in my office.  And I will be able to make a little money at the same time. 

We rented our house yesterday and a relocating family is going to move in the day after we leave.  We have a yard sale scheduled for this Saturday morning (please no rain!!) and I have scheduled it on craigslist.  I have gone through every closet and drawer at least once, some two or even three times.  The pile of stuff to take with us is getting a little bigger.  The pile of stuff to sell is getting a lot bigger.  It's amazing how much "stuff" we have accumulated through the years. 

Tonight I wanted to pull out the pictures that I took when we were in Cuenca to remind myself of why we are doing all of this.  I have never posted these views that I took from our apartment that we rented there.  Now I remember why we are doing all of this work and going through all of this change.  Take a look and see if you don't agree:

Look at that blue sky!!

I don't know if you can see the tennis courts there to the right, but we can see them from our windows.  We hope to be able to play some mornings when the courts are available.  I'm not sure we will be able to play for very long until we get acclimated to the altitude, but we are very excited about it.

Doesn't it look beautiful?  These are the views that we will see from our windows every day.   I am hopeful that everything comes together at the right time without getting too stressed out.  And we have been enjoying getting together with friends and family over the last few weeks while we are still here.  Just a little over 3 weeks left.  We hadn't really looked at the calendar when we made our plane reservations and didn't realize that we will be arriving in Cuenca on Easter Sunday.  What a wonderful way to start our new adventure!!   

Now for the good stuff - sorting, selling, giving away

Well, we have been back for about 10 days now and we have been busy with the following:

Sorting, Labeling, Getting Ready for the Yard Sale

More Boxes, Books, "Stuff"

While going through some of my boxes, I found a box of stuff from when I spent the summer of 1978 in France.  One of the things that I was really happy to find were the letters that I received from my mother that summer.  I was in a summer school program in France and we sent 2 weeks in Nime (in southern France), 2 weeks in Paris, and 2 weeks in Colmar (in eastern France).  In order for my mother to send me letters, she had to send them to a certain location before a certain date in order for the mail to be there when we arrived. 

Unfortunately, my mom passed away in 1994 and I had forgotten about the letters that she had sent to me.  So it was like getting a little present from her without her being around to send it to me.  Isn't God good?  I'm not sure what my mom would say if she knew about our plans to move to Ecuador.  I know that she would want us to be happy in whatever we decide to do.  I remember when I went to France for that summer, I think she was a little bit envious because I think she would have liked to go to Europe, but my dad had no desire to go, so she never got to go. 

Ever since my mom passed away, whenever a friend loses a parent, especially a mom, I usually tell them, "you will reallly miss her at the weirdest times.  You think you will really miss her on Mother's Day, her birthday, or the holidays.  But what you will find is that you will miss her when you least expect it.  A song will come on that will remind you of her.  Or you will smell something that reminds you of her."  And I also tell them, "just allow yourself to grieve her whenever that happens."  Finding those letters allowed me to grieve her and miss her again.  But I am kind of glad that I didn't find them until now because now I realize how precious they are and I will not just throw them away.  

Sorry to get so sentimental on you, but for those of you who read this and your mom is still alive, call her today and tell her that you love her. 

Back Home in the States

We had an awesome time in Cuenca and we really didn't want to come back home.  But we had the return flight tickets and Pat had to come back home to finish up working until April 1st.  So as of right now, he only has 19 more working days until retirement.  Ya-hoo!!!  Plus we have to finish getting everything ready for our return trip.  Now we have to sort, give, sell, throw away, etc.  I'm sure anyone who has been there knows exactly what I am talking about. 

We loved meeting so many nice people in Cuenca and we can't wait to return.  We fly to Quito on April 23rd and then on the Cuenca on April 24th.  So for those of you who we did not to get to see or meet over the last 2 weeks, maybe we will see you at the end of April.

We had a good flight back to Quito on Friday.  We were supposed to fly out of Quito to Miami at 9:30am on Saturday morning, but we received an email that the flight had been changed from 9:30am until 7:30pm.  So then we had an unexpected day in Quito.  If we had known, then we could have flown out later from Cuenca and stayed at the airport and gone straight to Miami.  As it was, we arrived in Miami at 11:30pm on Saturday and had missed our connecting flight to Louisville.  Customs was unbelievable!!  We got there just in time for a "shift change" and then the US citizen side had one guy working to get us through customs.  It took 45 minutes for 20 people to get through the line.  So then we tried to see if LAN Ecuador airlines would put us up in a hotel for the night since our flight to Louisville was not leaving Miami until 11:35am on Sunday.  We finally got to the hotel at 1:30am.  Even though we got up at 7:30am the next morning, it was still better to sleep in a hotel than to spend the night in the airport.

It was not easy, but we did just make both of our flights -- in Miami and again in Atlanta.  God is good.  It was good to get home, especially after all of the time waiting.  We will say that LAN airlines is a very nice airlines--nice plane, movies, food, etc.  It reminds of TWA on the way to Vegas or Eastern Airlines  a few years ago.  If we had checked on our flight a week before, we wouldn't have had such a problem trying to get back to Louisville.

Next post, I will post more pics from Cuenca.

Gigantic Moth in our Bedroom

OK, so everyone keeps telling us that there are no bugs, mosquitoes, etc. in Cuenca.  Well, we moved into our apartment on Monday and of course opened all the windows because it was so beautiful.  We did close the windows before we went to bed.  That night we went to sleep and yesterday morning when we woke up, we saw this irregularity in the wood over the closet door in our bedroom.  As we took a closer look, this is what we saw:

We named him Luke the Moth after our landlord.  

He stayed all day and into the night.  We had shut the bedroom door and checked on him all day.  After it got dark, I went in there and he was flying around.  So decided to try to get him back out the window.  Pat even tried to take him by the wings and get him out.  I think he ended up pulling off part of his wing.  The moth finally landed on a book and Pat picked up the book and put it out the window and he flew off.  Whew!!  I wish we could have had the whole thing on video.  I'm sure if anyone was watching us through the window, they sure were wondering what in the world we were doing.

That was quite a bit of excitement for one day.  I still have not posted the pictures of the buildings that we have seen around town.  The architecture of the buildings in the Old Town are very beautiful.  I have been trying to post them several times, but then the internet gets too slow.  I will have to try another time.  Hasta luego for now!!