When I left home this summer I said good bye to my family thinking that I wouldn't see them again until June. That was until I got to thinking that it was high time I surprised my family and so I did. I left Nicaragua on Friday and was met that night at the airport by my sister Sara (can't keep secrets from your POA). The following morning we first stopped in and saw Tanya and the kids. Then we moved on to the farm where everyone was up and mom was at the counter making tea. I walked in the door and said "Merry Christmas"! At first mom thought I was Wayne with glasses but when she recognized who I was; I think she was speechless and motionless because she just kind of stood there with a look of disbelief on her face. Faye, Jason, and the kids were there too and came to see the commotion. Faye and mom had similar responses and if you know anything about the Bootsma family you might guess that they cried; tears of happiness I'm assuming.
From there the weekend kind of passed in a blur. In just the four days at home I was able to attend the Miedema Christmas Dinner (a family tradition I haven't been able to attend in over 10 years), celebrate Andrew's (my nephew) birthday, be apart of the 'traditional girls out at Christmas' tradition (we went out for dinner and to the movie Australia; a real chick-flick), Rachel's (my niece) piano recital. I also got to help decorate mom and dad's house for Christmas, have mom's Sunday soup and pea soup, have gouda cheese on raisin bread, experience a snow storm and cold temperatures, sleep with a hot water bottle, and play Rook.
My favourite picture of the weekend is below, taken by Faye of Charlie and Annika in the snow.
Also found this fan club of supporters sporting Sea to Sea T-shirts.
This picture was taken at the Christmas Dinner of Faye, Sara, and I with mom and Beppe.
The title says 'surprises' because the last surprise was the trip back to Nicaragua. Arriving in Houston, Texas I was surprised to see snow flying but didn't think too much of it because it didn't seem to be coming down too hard. I guess I was wrong because any snow in Texas is making history and so we had big problems at the airport. All the planes had to be deiced by one machine. We were told that this process would take 20 minutes per plane and that there were 30 planes on the runway needing to be deiced. It didn't take us long to figure out that we were going to be waiting a long time. Looking back I'm glad I didn't know ahead of time that it would be a 8 and a half hour wait or I wouldn't have boarded that plane. I didn't get back to Managua until 6:00am on the day I was to be back at work. A quick shower and some breakfast and I made it to school with a couple minutes to spare. Now I'm just waiting on my luggage to arrive. Oh the joys of air travel!
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