July 6, 2008 (Sunday)
The Lord’s Hand in my Life:
Simple pleasures…like a picnic in the park and a kite in the sky.
Having the means to buy a friend a gift.

Today was Annie’s birthday! I was so excited for her. I love other people’s birthdays. Sadly we were going to make Annie stuffed French toast for breakfast, but it was fast Sunday today so we couldn’t. She understood though – we’ll have to surprise her with it some other time.

At church they decided to watch General Conference again. So we had two hours to read our scriptures and write in our journals because we couldn’t understand it in Romanian. It’s was nice, relaxing and uplifting, but BOY I get so tired. When church was done the sisters gave Annie flowers and a card, and the entire branch sang Happy Birthday to her. I loved it, and I’m pretty sure she did too!

After church and a nice nap we all went to celebrate Annie’s birthday. She wanted a picnic so that’s exactly what we did. A few days ago she drew a picture of what the picnic would look like on her birthday. She carefully drew each of us in a scene in the park eating food on a blanket. We tried to reenact the drawing as much as possible for her. We ended up taking a tram to a local park. To our dismay we weren’t allowed to sit on the grass. We were all a little irritated about that. What park doesn’t let you sit on the grass!? Come on now! Only in Romania…Every time we stepped foot on the grass people gave us dirty looks…so we ended up improvising and we put our blankets on the floor in the middle of the pavilion in the park. We chatted, took our shoes off and ate sandwiches, chips and fruit salad. Then we gave Annie our gifts. Some of the other girls got her hair clips, and I got her this necklace in Krakow that I noticed she had been eyeing. It was so cute because when she opened it she was like “how did you know! I secretly wanted that!” I was so glad she liked it…it made me happy! I was hoping to get her something she really liked.

As we were leaving the park we ran into the most disturbing display of goats I have ever seen. We were all disgusted. Who in their right mind would put those up?! There were a couple of real - now dead - goats with red outfits on them. Their ears were falling off and their eyes were decomposing. It was gross! We took a picture with them, but it didn't do justice to the disgust we felt.

In Annie’s drawing she had some of us flying a kite – so we bought a kite. There ended up being too many trees and no where in that particular park to fly it so we decided to go back to the other girls apartment for caramel ice cream and Better than Sex brownies and then go to the local field so we could fly it. When we went back to the apartment we sang Happy Birthday, and each went around and said something we loved about Annie. There were so many good things. The predominant theme of the comments was how everyone loved how selfless she was. Her parents did a great job at raising such a sweet girl.

To finalize Annie’s Birthday and make it complete we decided to physically reenact her drawing. So we went and put on the outfits, jewelry and shoes we were wearing in the drawing and grabbed all the rest of the elements we needed in order to make the drawing become a reality. After several attempts we finally got the perfect picture. Then to continue the picture streak we had a blast trying to get pictures of us all jumping. At one point Whitney S. and I both jumped and our legs hit together and we fell to the floor. We also tried doing a pyramid – that was interesting. Mindy kept falling on me. Regardless, I love these girls!

P.S. Whitney S. and I have been doing pretty good on our eating healthy, and I think Elisa isn’t doing it with us anymore…