Hooray.

I'm feeling good this morning. Especially after I emailed the professor who I'm doing research with this summer, letting him know I'm feeling back to normal and would like to start working with the telescope on campus again, and he told me that we will begin observing the night sky starting tomorrow at 7 pm. That is exciting for two reasons: 1) This will be my first experience with the telescope in the observatory this summer, and 2) I have twenty-one hours still to rest up for the big event. I have to admit, I was kind of getting weary at the thought of going to campus and working today if my professor had asked me to come, I think it was my body telling me that it is still recovering from surgery and would like a little more time to heal before I get busy again. Thank you God, for the time you've given me to rest and heal, and thank you for such an EXCITING event to look forward to tomorrow night!!

Yesterday I felt very sophisticated and cultural. Brent's dad had six tickets to one of the premiere shows of the Pageant of the Masters in Laguna, so he and his wife invited Todd & Ashley and Brent & Hayley to join them. If you've never heard of the Pageant of the Masters, it is a pretty awesome show. Let me try to describe it...imagine seeing a beautiful oil painting, like Da Vinci's The Last Supper, but instead of it being an actual painting, you see that all the human figures are REAL HUMANS, not just brush strokes. In the Pageant of the Masters people dress up and pose in positions to resemble popular works of art, it is amazing how absolutely still they can pose in some of the most awkward positions, and how truly "painted" the humans look. They even posed as famous sculptures, one of my favorites was their rendition of the top of the Paris Opera House. I think my favorite painting that they recreated was one that had three trapeze artists in mid-swing and jump, I don't know HOW they posed to look like they were floating in mid-air like that. Absolutely amazing.

On the way down to the Pageant Brent and I played a game in the car where you take turns slapping each others hands as hard as you possibly can, and you see who gives up first. The one who gives up first loses, obviously. Brent had me start out the game by slapping him first, so I held nothing back and gave him the full force of Hayley's stinging palm. Poor guy gave up right away, his hand turned bright red. :( After a minute or two he decided that giving up right away just wasn't gonna cut it, so we began the game again. He claims he was holding nothing back from me, but I'm sorry, his slaps just didn't phase me. All but one of my slaps killed him, but he couldn't figure out why his weren't affecting me, until his mom pointed out to him, "Brent, she's on pain drugs!" He gave up the game right away, we were laughing so hard. I wonder if my pain medication for my surgery really let me be the stronger for that game. :) So funny.

When we arrived at the site of the Pageant we had about an hour or so before the Pageant started so we walked around the art festival that was set up. Brent is totally the artist between the two of us. He actually sounded sophisticated as we walked around observing things...while I was saying things like, "Ooo, pretty," or "Weird," or "I like that one," or, "That's kinda cool," he was saying smart things like, "He must have used a mixture of charcoals and pastels for that." I guess that's what getting your degree from the Art Institute of Santa Monica will do for you. :)

Did you know that I had to stay home from my brother's wedding and the Ukraine mission trip this year? Each day I'm longing ever more to be in Ukraine with my family right now. My mom has been super super good about emailing me stories from their time over there. She's letting me know of all that she observes God doing over there, the things people are being taught, etc, and she also lets me in on the silly little moments of light-hearted interaction between the American team members and their/my Belarusian friends. OH, I want to be with them.

Rufichka...I miss ya. We should totally talk. :)