Nuevo Amigo

So, last night/this morning at 1am, Corey got back from the airport with a new friend from Guatemala, Victor. He came with greetings and cookies from Joseph. Victor was in Joseph's ward. I say "was" because Joseph just got transferred this week. But a month or so ago, probably at church function in Guatemala, Joseph heard Victor talking about how he needed to use his visa or he'd lose it.  Joseph piped up and said "You can stay with my family! They have people over all the time!" That is true. I might count up someday all the visitors we've had over the years, I wonder if I could remember them all? I think the first was way long ago when we were in the pink house, Corey met a family from Uruguay at the airport who were arriving with no plans, and they stayed with us in our tiny tiny house. There were like 5 or 6 of them, I can't remember. And in the pink house we had between 1-4 kids, cause we had Joseph when we moved there in 2000, and we had Hyrum when we moved out in 2004. Anyway, so yeah, even way back then we were hosting random Latinos, and we have close friends from Corey's mission and business in Brazil.... yes, we do seem to have Latino guests quite often. And we've been on the receiving end of a lot of hospitality from them. So I wish I didn't feel this way, but I gotta be honest, it does cause me stress to have people come stay here. Atleast I get stressed in the weeks of planning for and thinking about it beforehand. Cause we have a busy house and family already without trying to entertain people. It doesn't seem to cause Corey stress. Several months ago, on the last day of summer break when I was at a function for one of our Latino friends, and I honestly didn't really want to be there, I realized that I now understood the stress that Corey feels with a large family, cause I feel it with all the Latino functions, entertaining, travelling to their countries. Yes, I usually agree to go along. Yes, there are moments of fun and joy, but it's a lot of work and stress. I know he has moments of joy with the kids, but I recongnize it is a lot or work and stress. But I'm more built to be ok with the stress of little kids and messes, if it's just us and we're not trying to impress anyone else (like by having a clean house for a houseguest). The kids make Corey feel like we're running faster than we have strength, so I said if we are trying to not be over our heads anymore, we gotta stop. I said I'd be willing to stop having kids if he was willing to stop hosting Latinos. So, here we are.

And so it looks like Peter might not be our last child. Corey took him up the canyon to see Snowbird. I agree, it is always fun to see our home town and state through someone elses eyes. We do live in a beautiful area. 

So Victor is super nice and super low key. It is never bad when people are here, so I don't know why I stress about it so much before hand... I'm gonna guess that it's mostly due to me being in my head and thinking of having another person/people who I need to be aware of and feel like I need to attend to and try and read their minds and make sure they are having a good time and are not bored. But I might not stress about having guests if I could let go of that. So last night I didn't try to clean up the house "because we are expecting company!" I just left us as we are, which right now in the month of Christmas, is messy. Yes, maybe all the reasons why I don't like it are just because of unnecessary expectations in my head. So, I'm gonna take it easy during his visit with us. He will be here for 10 days. Owen and Victor played a little bit of roller hockey in the garage. After school today, Corey took him and some of the kids to go roller blading at the church gym for a bit. I hope they didn't mark up the baseketball floor. And then Corey took him tonight to the Youth activity - which was caroling and delivering gift baskets.

Isn't that a cute picture of Victor next to one of our rather tall neighbors? Guatemalans are so tiny!! Like Joseph isn't as tall as he'd like, but he looks tall compared to them! I think that is Victor in the 2nd picture here....  I'll ask Victor if that's him tomorrow. So, it will be fun to share Christmas with him, it will make it a new and memorable experience. And someday we'll actually have a home with a finished basement and we'll have a proper guest room. Right now I'll prob be a little stressed. Here's Victors spot -

I should have but I didn't clean up my area, where I'm still sorting papers. That is the area with properly finished walls and flooring, so it probably would have been warmer, but it's still a mess, so Corey set it up here.

For once in our life, the lego area is one of the few clean area of the house! And it's stayed clean without me doing it every day or week - it's clean thanks to the fact that most of the legos are gone! We still have 6 of the big bins of legos in the garage! Mel should be coming home this week for the break. So we're probably going to move her into Owen and Daniel's room and let O and D sleep on our floor. Also Valentina might be coming up, so we need to be prepared with a place for her to sleep. I shall not stress. No, even better: I shall tell myself "I am feeling stressed, and that is okay." I will take deep breaths and pray and put on a smile and just control the controllables. I am not like Nephi in the wilderness, This isn't Valley Forge. I can do this." #eternalperspective