My Blind Old Man

Soon after Willy arrived in the USA, I began to notice that he was squinting a lot and seemed to have a hard time reading anything far away. It didn’t really bother him too much, and he rarely even mentioned it, so I kind of forgot until a few months after our wedding. After he was on my health insurance plan, we tried to get him an appointment with an ophthalmologist. They were unfortunately booked until the end of January, so we went ahead and made the appointment and got put on a waiting list for a sooner opening. My mom works for the medical group we use, and called me about a week later to say there was a cancellation for a couple days later if we could make it in. Luckily my boss is very understanding and was fine with me leaving a few hours early to go with Willy to the doctor. It turns out that his vision is so bad he really should not even be driving without glasses, so we went the next morning to get the prescription filled and were able to get his new glasses in less than a week. Now that I know just how bad his vision really is, I feel so much better knowing he can see clearly with the glasses. I know I’m a bit prejudice, but I think he looks really cute too.

Wedding Weekend

Our good friends Jason Jahn and Jennifer Reynolds were planning to get married on December 11, 2010 at the church in Anaheim where Jason is the pastor. It was through Jason that Willy and I met; Jason led the team the first time I went to Guatemala, encouraged us as we began our relationship, did our pre-marital counseling sessions via three-way call (in Spanish/English), was one of the groomsmen in our wedding, and translated the whole thing for us. He has been a big part of our relationship, so we wanted to make sure we were able to go to the wedding and be available to help them prepare for it in any way they needed it. It worked out perfectly that the weekend of their wedding fell on my Friday off, so we made plans to spend the entire weekend in Anaheim. We headed down at about 10:30 in the morning and made a quick stop once we were there for Willy to get his hair cut. Afterwards, we picked up Jason and Erik from the church and ran over to Costco for a cheap lunch. When we returned to the church, Jennifer was there and the set-up began. Jason and Jennifer are both big time coffee and book lovers, so those two things created the theme for the reception; a coffee house. The guys brought in five or six couches from all over the church, and we arranged them throughout the room with book shelves, end tables, and lots and lots of books! There were also a bunch of random/fun lamps scattered around each of the couch areas, so those with the nice fireplace created a cool lighted atmosphere. I was so mad at myself later when I realized I didn’t take a single picture during the wedding or reception! We helped get the finishing touches on the room after the rehearsal dinner, and then we headed over to a movie theatre to see the newest Narnia movie. Then we headed to our hotel (I got an amazing deal for a really nice hotel online!) to crash for the night.

On Saturday morning, we met my mom and my sister Alison at Knott’s Berry Farm and enjoyed our time walking around, riding a few rides, and watching a stunt show. None of us were in a huge rush to go on a lot of rides because we all were able to get in for free. Knott’s has a deal every year where social services employees and a guest can get in for free for a month, and Alison and I both qualified for it. It was nice to just enjoy the park and not worry about having to get our monies worth by going on a ton of rides.



Willy and I left around two so we could get back to our hotel room to get ready for the wedding that night. The wedding was wonderful and of course Jennifer looked beautiful. Everyone had a great time hanging out in the ‘coffee house’ and enjoyed custom coffee drinks from an onsite ‘barista’ Jason and Jennifer provided. Willy was really excited because they were featuring Guatemalan coffee which is actually grown by our cousin Julio. After the wedding was over, we helped get the room back in order and then went back to our hotel for another night. Thankfully I did remember to get one picture of us that night back at the hotel.

We left the hotel at about 8am the next morning so we could get to Disneyland close to opening time. We arrived at the perfect time and were able to get on a lot of rides without any waiting in line. After a few hours, we headed over to California adventure for some lunch and then called it a day. It was a great weekend, very full, but very fun!

Gotta love California Winters; you can be out in
December in shorts and sun dresses like it's summer time!