July 23 - Danielle and Jenna leave (and I carry four babies at once)

This morning I had to say goodbye to Jenna and Danielle. :( I was over at the nursery in time for devotion and got to hear Jenna and Danielle's goodbye speeches as well as Mwawi and Daniel's responses.  Tears were shed.  Jenna spent some special cuddle time with Jese (her favorite :) ) and Danielle hugged on all the babies.  I finally held four babies at once!  I had Jese and Jestina in chitenjes and Shadreck and Misheck in my arms.  Danielle said I was ready for quadruplets. Haha, we'll see about that.

Four babies at once! :)

Roomies and twins. :)

I hugged Jenna and Danielle bye and more tears were shed.  After they left, Annie and I stayed around the nursery.  Annie wanted to cuddle "her baby" (Wanangwa) and I fed Jestina and then took her outside for sunshine and helped Anna with laundry.  Lots of laundry.  It was great hanging out with Anna and getting to talk to her.  She asked me what I was studying in school, if I was coming back to Malawi, and told me how much she hated saying good bye to friends.  A little while later, Annie came out to join us.  She and I started talking about dinner plans, now that it was just the three of us at the house.  Anna asked me when and where I learned to cook, etc, and then said, "I think you should just cook enough for Mike for the rest of his stay and he can keep it in the fridge." I told her that I wasn't quite able to prepare a month's worth of food and that I was sure Mike would be fine.  I think she is actually worried about him. :)

After hanging out at the nursery for awhile, Annie and I walked to Crossroads to use the internet and buy some groceries.  When we got back home, we reorganized and consolidated all of the food in the cabinets, now that Jayme, Jenna, and Gerda are gone.  There were so many duplicates of things.  We had eight jars of peanut butter, three jars of honey, four bags of flour, etc.  It's all organized now tho!  After that, I felt like I was nesting - I organized all the bags of medicine and toiletries that people have left, cleaned my room, organized my closet - I was crazy!  It's nice to have it all done, though.

So much food!

Tonight, Mike, Annie, and I went to Mama Mia's for dinner. It was a little pricey, but SO good.  It was cool to go to a nice, sit-down restaurant.  I had the Margarita pizza, which turned out to just be a cheese pizza, but it was amazing.  The crust was thin, the sauce was flavorful, and the cheese was perfect.  Yum! Halfway through dinner, Mike realized he didn't have his phone on him - his phone that had our taxi driver's number on it.  We ended up having Annie (who was almost out of units) text Fred and ask him to go into Mike's room, find his phone, find the taxi driver's number, and then text it back to us.  We used Annie's phone to call him, and all was well.  There were a couple of minutes of mild distress, though. ;)

Once we got home, I talked to Mom on the phone.  It was so good to hear her voice, but it made me realize how little I've told her during these past five weeks.  I have a lot of stories to tell when I get home!