Happy New Year!

We are back! It was last December 13th when I departed Manila to take a much needed vacation. Daniel works very hard and I feel he needs a little balance in his life so I plan these vacations for him because there is no way he could ever do them. I love visiting family. I love to see his mom's face as he enters the room. She is so proud of her son and all of what he has been able to accomplish so what a treat it was to go to Uruguay for Christmas this year. His brother Roberto and his sweet wife Sandra as exceptional hostesses and treat us so good whenever we come. They reserve us a house on the beach worth a lot of money each night we are there. They refuse to take payment for it so this year we decided to give each person of the family a gift as a token of our appreciation. We took pearls for all the women in the family and ties for the guys plus other gifts for the kids.

We got each of the family member something to remember us. We can't even know how to begin to return the favor of Roberto and Sandra's kindness. What a blessing it was to have a nice home on the beach to stay those 16 days while we were there. We ate the best empanadas, chivitos, pasta, steak and facturas to name a few. We would come each day for lunch and dinner to eat together as a family. The only bummer is that Daniel's mom fell and broke her pelvis. OUCH! poor thing, she was miserable to whole time we were there and is still trying to recuperate from the fall. We felt so sad that it happened the very night we arrived. She lost her balance and the next thing you saw was her hip and head hitting the floor. It happened so quickly. No one could do anything to prevent it. We were there as well as Roberto and Sandra.

We got to spend time with Vale. Lexi, Ale and Tiago as well as Daniel's sister Estela and her son Luciano and his family. His daughter Victoria is such a cute little dancer. She and I danced together on Christmas Eve. There are fireworks too like in El Salvador and for a few moments that noise of fireworks reminded me so much of the Christmases in El Salvador.

The beginning of a new year always starts with a big bang not only because it marks a new year but also a new year of life for me. Every January 3rd I get to be a year older or hopefully wiser. This year was very memorable because I was able to spend it with my husband, my mom, two sisters, nephews and even an aunt and uncle and cousin who all live in Orlando. One January 6th Dia de Reyes we celebrated again with a nice dinner hosted by the Henriquez family. I was able to spend seven glorious days with them. Priceless!

After what seemed like the longest vacation on record for us, we finally came home Monday January 9th. We left early Sunday January 8th and traveled for two days. We were exhausted when we got home to say the least. One of our suitcases didn't make it from Dallas and its the one that is the heaviest. We brought jams and mate so that one got checked by the aduana people and that is why probably there wasn't enough time to transfer it to the next flight.

Now we are back home unpacking all the stuff we brought back from our trip. Somehow we managed to fill up five suitcases, one carry on and two backpacks. I don't think I want to do this again. It was tremendous work to carry all of that and I could tell Daniel hated it. He would rather travel light!

Love,
Vero