we got 'em....

You know how fun it is to get mail? Ok, well not bills and junk mail but real mail....the stuff with handwriting you recognize? envelopes with bright colored hues from dear friends? the kind that you start to open before you hit your front door? and how much better is it when it is a package (or parcel as our Brit teammates call it :)? It is like a present!!! I hope in our age of Internet communication we never lose the simple yet amazing value of actually mailing something. Snail mail here is definitely such, more like snail-after-he-got-run-over-by-a-dala-dala-yet-keeps-limpin'-on. No complaints from me because we got mail; nothing stolen, broken or damaged (except a few melted candies)!! Despite the lack of speed in getting mail we got 3 packages since arriving here (the last one arriving today (well, Friday, we think but we picked it up today) and I had to post this occasion for a couple reasons A.) to thank the amazing peeps that went out of their way to gather, buy, package, & ship them & B.) as a shameless & unabashed plug for others to send us mail as we LOVE it as it reminds us that we have amazing family & friends! Jason did have to spend some time negotiating how much we had to pay to pick them up but he is pretty good at bargaining (must be our cheapness) so it was virtually painless to get them and they were full of amazing & random goodies....dresses for Annikah, a shower curtain, animal crackers, ziplock bags, splenda and crystal lite (I am on diet-coke withdrawal), candy, canned chicken, new sheets for our bed, almond & maple extract (cannot get here and this morning we had homemade maple syrup- yum!!), a data cable Jason needed, some yummy seasoning packets, sun dried tomatoes, tortilla soup mix, cards, notes, an O magazine :), pudding, fruit snacks, Swedish Fish, and many other special gifts. It was so exciting to rip into them and I about wet myself when I saw chocolate chips and M&M's (it is really weird how much you miss things you never really thought you loved but now cannot get)! And Beck, those wasabi pee's rock my world! Thanks Anstees, Grandma Ronnie, & Grandma Rhoda- you made the thousands of miles feel a lot less vast. We shared some of our treats with our guard and his family and our house helper and they laughed at how excited we were to have them, the rest will be rationed and savoured!! Asante sana!