2019 started off with an adventure in Nicaragua visiting Charles’ brother, Dave and his family for a couple of weeks. Dave and Claudia have lived in Managua since 2001 and lead a church in the city. We enjoyed meeting several people and attending services there. In addition to the ins and outs of their daily lives as missionaries, we also visited some of the sites in and around Managua. One of my favorites included trips to El Predio Food Park (https://www.elprediofoodpark.com/), which is Nicaragua’s take on the food truck craze. We visited this place a couple of times and I could not resist the delicious ceviche served at Ceviche Express.
We also enjoyed hiking in and around the Mombacho Volcano Natural Reserve (https://www.mombacho.org/en/). The ride to the top of the volcano is one to remember. Then you can walk for a couple miles around the volcano crater in the lush landscape and see the sights and sounds of the area and the city of Granada situated below.
Lastly, we enjoyed a few days at a beach house in Rancho Santana (https://ranchosantana.com/) along Nicaragua’s Emerald (Pacific ) Coast. The vistas from the back patio of the home took our breathe away and made the luxurious home feel even more amazing. We spent a lot of our time simply lounging by the back patio pool and one afternoon at Playa Los Perros.
The girls and their cousins on the back patio of the beach house. 
After a couple incredibly fun weeks in Nicaragua, we headed home to Sacramento to settle into our new year routine, which quite unremarkably looks very similar to this new year routine. Charles and I headed back to work at PowerSchool. He’s been with the company for just over sixteen years now and I am working towards my four year anniversary with PowerSchool. I enjoy my work as an instructional designer on the Customer Education team and Charles continues to work as a senior DevOps engineer. Along with the daily grind of work, we also filled our evening hours with shuttling girls to a wide range of activities – Girl Scouts, water polo practices and games, driving lessons (*gasp*), volunteer activities – OR we attended to activities of our own – book club, volunteering for many of the youth organizations our kids are involved with, church small group, cookbook club, and more. Now, as I list all these things, it’s no wonder we are constantly tired. 😉
There is a Fountain of Youth: It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.
Sophia Loren (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/sophia_loren_599835?src=t_youth)
At the end of January, Cindy enjoyed her annual trip out to Bodega Bay for a scrapbook retreat which really has become more of a girls R & R retreat for her. She does dapple with her scrapbook supplies and intends to do more than she does. She loves the time away by the ocean, to watch movies, read, walk/hike, explore, eat crab, and visit with the gals attending it too. She’s been going for over ten years now.
February brought new milestones into our eldest’s life. Notably, she traveled solo on a Southwest flight to southern California to visit her grandparents in Palm Springs. Upon returning, she took and passed her driver’s permit test and so began the days of her driving much to her parent’s delight. We also passed the days of February with sunset walks with our beast, Finnick, and sitting poolside in the foggy and frigid temperatures to watch our oldest play waterpolo. Cindy now knows she prefers the hot summer months for watching her kids swim or play in the pool.
In March, we ventured up the coast to Salt Point State Park for a weekend of coastal camping. It’s awesome and amazing to be able to enjoy this fun and favorite activity of ours year around. We don’t take advantage of it enough in the “winter” months because we get busy with school, sports, and other activities, such as Girl Scout cookie sales. But when we can, we certainly find the time spent outdoors and away from the weekly grind refreshing!
In April for spring break, Aynslee took off to Mexico with her youth group for a weeklong mission trip while Charles, Cindy, and Saige headed to Palm Springs for some warmer weather. Cindy’s parents live there for most of the winter months now to escape the cold and snow in Colorado though it seems Colorado continues to hold out a few spring storms for them when they return.
May, June, and July found us returning to our usual summer routines with the girls swimming most every day at the College Green Cabana Club and us spending nearly every Saturday morning at a swim meet. This year, Aynslee became a certified lifeguard and spent a good portion of her summer working as a swimmer coach for her swim team and teaching private swim lessons. Saige became a teenager in May and Cindy celebrated her fiftieth birthday in fabulous fashion by playing classic 80’s arcade games at the Coin-Op! And Saige became a teenager!
Saige also spent a few weeks volunteering for the Lunch at the Library program at our local branch. We’re disappointed our annual Memorial Day camping trip got rained out this year. but we squeezed in time in the great outdoors with a trip to Yosemite with Cindy’s sister’s family and a trip to Grover Hot Springs. We also visited the big city to see Hamilton in July, just before our last hurrah of summer – our church’s all church conference
The last week of July and first week of August took us back to Missions Springs in Santa Cruz for our church’s annual all church conference. Everyone in our family LOVES this week. It’s non-stop time with friends for a teenage girls. I literally have to request they eat at least one meal with us a day or we’d not see them except first thing in the morning and last thing at night or when they need a ride somewhere. Charles and I love it for the time to connect with friends, new and old. It also doesn’t hurt that neither one of us need to plan or cook a single meal all week or clean a single dish. The teaching and small groups round out the mornings and make it refreshing spiritually too. Unfortunately this year, Charles spent a lot of the week resting in our room with a headache to end all headaches.
The week before ACC, Charles was rear-ended by a drunk driver not more than a mile from our home. Charles was stopped at a stoplight in our Mazda5 and the drunk likely hit him from behind traveling at least 45 mph. Charles does not remember the impact as he likely lost consciousness. Long story shorter, Charles suffered a concussion and experienced bleeding on his brain. However, no evasive procedures were needed to repair anything. Time would allow the blood to absorb back into his brain and pain meds helped manage the headaches in the meantime. The Mazda5, after ten years of faithfully shuttling our family to and fro, was deemed a total lost.
Unfortunately for Charles, the night before Aynslee’s sixteenth birthday, and a day shy of a month from this accident, Charles was struck by another drunk driver while driving our Honda Pilot on the highway. (What are the odds?!?) Though on the highway, Charles was able to steer the Pilot onto the shoulder of the road without further incident; however, the drunk driver proceeded to swerve across all four lanes of traffic, struck the median, came back across all four lanes, and clipped another car that then rolled twice. Both the drunk driver and the other car ended up on the shoulder of the road a few hundred yards in front of Charles. Charles suffered more bleeding in his brain from this accident and another round of severe headaches but considering it could have been so much worse, we are grateful he walked away from it. We were also able to repair the Pilot.
In case you missed what was said, this second accident happened the night before Aynslee’s sixteenth birthday and a week before her driving test. Cindy wasn’t sure she wanted to let Aynslee on the road in anything smaller than a tank after these two accidents. Fortunately for us, Aynslee’s drive instructor allowed her to use his vehicle to take her driving test, because at that point we were down to only one car and it was in the shop! Needless to say, she passed with flying colors and continues to be a reasonable and cautious driver. To celebrate Aynslee’s sixteenth birthday, she enjoyed a fun pool party and taco bar at our friends’ house with a big pool and backyard!
The end of summer brought the end of orthodontia in our family as Saige finished her stint with Invisalign. Cindy found herself chaperoning Aynslee’s Girl Scout trip to Disneyland for a final hurrah before they disbanded. Aynslee started her junior year in high school and Saige started her eighth grade year. They ride together to Saige’s bus stop most mornings and Aynslee drops her off before heading to her high school. Our fall sport favorite is waterpolo. In the post season this fall, Aynslee’s waterpolo team made it to the playoffs and won their divisional sections. They played and won the next playoff game but lost the game right before the NorCal (equivalent to state tournament) final game! What a fun ride to see the girls hard work, effort, and determination take them so far!
We applaud you for reading this long 2019 highlight reel from our lives. Cindy hopes to take to blogging more on a monthly basis to give friends and family near and far glimpses into this whirlwind of a life we are loving and embracing with two very busy teens. We haven’t done a Christmas photo card or letter the last year or two but still so enjoy receiving them. So please don’t remove us from your list! We hope this blog will suffice to catch you up with us! Please feel free to reach out to us on our cell phones anytime and/or find Cindy on Facebook and/or Instagram, while the rest, Charles, Aynslee, and Saige are all on Instagram! Much love and grace!
Carve Out Time 