a perfect day con Katerin.

Saturday we had the most lovely time together. My time is running short here in Antigua, so I decided it'd be nice to take one last trip. So Saturday morning around 8:30am Katerin and her family, Leonel, my friend Javier & his daughter, and I loaded into a minibus and headed for Esquintla. Here we visited a place called "Aqua Park" where there is a beautiful natural river through the center of the park and 15 different pools with various themes and depths and types of water slides - it was a blast!

We brought with us a hecka bunch of food and around lunch time had a grand churrasco (cook-out) with 4 different types of meat, onions, this tomato sauce stuff, potatoes, black beans, guacamole, tortillas and tortilla chips, and beverage - it was Delicious!! Everyone helped with the preparation...

Here's the girls helping Leonel with the chicken...

kidlings working on the guacamole...

Javier grilling the tomatoes...

me and Gabby buttering potatoes...

boys grilling the meat...

Katerin's mom with the onions... It was a huge meal, but SO good - and everyone's little bellies were quite content afterward :)

So then we packed up and headed to the beach!! The kids had never visited la playa, so we drove to Puerto San Jose && spent a few hours in the waves, this was actually my favorite part of the trip... It melted me heart to spend time close with Katerin and to see her so free, so incredibly different from the day I first met her and she was still suffering from her epileptic attacks...

Whoa, what a difference! Praise God.

This is the whole family - except dad, because he had to work :(

Needless to say, we ALL got real wet, and real sandy!!!

Little Gabby has the hugest crush on Leonel, the whole day they were hand-in-hand or she was asking me where he was! haha

As we left the beach around 6pm, we pit-stopped to buy some coconut and mango on the side of the road, then headed back to Antigua. It was such a lovely day, and everyone slept really good that night! What a blessing this trip was to me, so lucky to have had such an opportunity.

Now I'm looking at my last couple weeks here...

2 weeks from tomorrow I'll be on a plane home,

feelings of sadness have already begun to set in,

but I'm going to make the best of the time I have left and,

as my sweet mother emailed me this morning,

I'm going to remember that "GUA is only a days flight away!" :) I love her.

It will be good to hug my family and friends when I make it back to the States...

it has been such an incredible year in Guatemala,

looking forward to the next season of life too!

...But not for another 14 days ;-P

tchau for now!