It's Been a While...

Jesse and I haven't posted anything in a little while. We've had a couple of busy weekends lately, two weddings one in Santa Rosa and another in Seattle, picnics, and church camping. We've had fun. Last weekend we went to Seattle and saw some of my old work friends and new friends that we made this year in Ensenada while on our mission trip.

Jesse is having a great time in his new job. He was hired on permanently a few weeks ago, so that was a great relief and blessing. He works in the most touristy part of San Francisco so it's fun for me to have lunch with him on occasion. My most favorite thing about him working there is that he can find out all the yummy restaurants that you would never know about unless you lived worked there.

I'm now 24 weeks along or around 6 months pregnant and feeling more and more pregnant every day. Back pain is a daily thing, non-stop belly movement too. I spend my days working on stuff for church, "nesting", playing my piano, and sometimes just lying on couch because I had a bad night/day. I really do love not having to work it's so relaxing especially during my pregnancy.

Since Jesse switched jobs we also switch health insurance so now Jesse and I will be going to Palo Alto Medical Foundation in Fremont. Which means I can give birth one block from my house at Washington Hospital rather than Kaiser in Hayward. Now I won't die at Kaiser. I used to work for PAMF and I just loved their service, I don't have to lie to them to get an appointment like I had to do with Kaiser. Though Kaiser had great emergency departments, sadly I would know, they saved my life twice. It's pretty sad that I'm 27 years old and I've been to the emergency room five times in my life since I was 22 years old. Sadly three of those times I've actually could have died. Anyways, I'm glad to be a PAMF.

Rocky is Rocky just happy as a little dog can be. He was having some eye issues, but the vet said not to worry he should be ok, but to keep and eye on his eye! Haha!

Jesse and I love working with the youth even though it's hard sometimes, we love them all and it's hard to see when they make bad decisions but all we can do is teach them. But we also rejoice when we see them make good decisions too. Just scares us for when our kids become teenagers. At least we will always have Rocky, he will never hate us.

Don't have anymore to say.

Melissa

It's a Boy!!!

This is our baby boy and I am 20 weeks along. My mom and Jesse's mom think it looks like Jesse. The radiologist said our baby was very active and "wiggly". I agree. We are overjoyed!!

Melissa

The Newest Professional Electrical Engineer!!

Jesse passed his State of California Professional Electrical Engineering License Exam, on the first try, which is very, very hard to do!!! He's so wonderful and smart.

Melissa

In a Week or So

Two exciting things are happening in a little over a week.

1) Jesse finds out if he passed his California Professional Engineering test. We really hope he did.

2) We find out the sex of our baby and I'll be half way through my pregnancy.

Patience....

Melissa

Thinking back to the Jungle....

Yes, we were swinging on jungle vines like Tarzan. The only time we weren't surrounded by disease carrying mosquitoes. Awesome!

Melissa

Back from Mexico

Our missionary group came back from Ensenada, Mexico about a week ago. Our time down there was more than awesome.

Construction wise we... (Team A: Jesse, Kara, Danny and James) framed a bathroom/showers on the first floor, since the church currently has only one bathroom. They worked really hard!!


We had two painting teams - Team "I like boys" (Alicia C., Mel, Alicia S., Daniel, and Josue) and Team Sloth( Kevin and Marce). Team "I like boys" did a great job painting two bible murals, Daniel and the Lions Den and Moses and the Read Sea. Team Sloth, as you can see, worked very "hard" and painted the white sanctuary white. We explained to them the the sanctuary wasn't actually painted white it was the texture and if it didn't have paint on it the texture could come off very easily.


Our last team and most dirtiest team - Team Holes (Nate and Franz, sometimes Kevin and Marce). The church building had structural problems such as the second story was not properly supported so it could fall down, keep this in mind... Team Holes worked on digging 3 X 3 X holes in the ground, bending rebar, and pouring concrete for the beams that the workers were going to put up after we left.


I really didn't have a job, other than taking pictures, running errands at the stores and being pregnant. I would spend part of the day laying down in the van napping, buying tacos, taking pictures, hanging out with our kids and talking to the people from the local church.

Overall, we had a wonderful time serving the local church, La Escalera de Jacob. On Tuesday night we had a Battle of The Bands between seven churches. The worship service was great except the fact there was over 100 people in the sanctuary on the second floor that was not properly supported, with a lot of people jumping around. Let's just say a few people of from our group including myself, were praying really, really hard that the Lord would send some angels to support the building. Later the local Pastor told us he praying the entire service so the floor wouldn't collapse. We could feel the floor sway. Either way the service went well.

On our last day at the church site, the Pastor and his wife, Veronica told us that our church was a great blessing to them because now they can continue being Pastors of the church. They did not want to burden us with the fact that they were facing having to close down the church because the building was unsafe to support the amount of people in their congregation. The Pastor didn't want us to feel obligated to spend a whole lot of money to fix their church. Of course we didn't know this when we started to buy construction materials but thankfully we were able to find beams to support the second floor that weren't expensive and were approved by the local structural engineer to fix the problem.

Many, many other great things happened on this trip just ask anyone who went. Personally, for me I felt that no matter what life situation I am in I will serve the Lord wherever he calls Jesse and I to go. One our new leaders this year Alicia C. told us statement that I thought was very interesting, "Go, until you are called to stay," rather than "Stay, until you are called to go."

Melissa

Mexico, Here We Come!!

Today, Jesse and I are taking 14 people, mostly college and high school students to Ensenada, Mexico for our yearly mission trip. We are really excited to be going back to the Ranch and La Escalera de Jacob. This year we'll be working on constructing a church bathroom, possibly helping reinforce the 2nd floor, have a Battle of The Bands this Tuesday night with 4 or 5 other local churches and a soccer game.

The group has been training for weeks, for the music, soccer and learning more about christian life and being a missionary, so the group is really excited. Plus we found this awesome taco stand that won't make us sick, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.

If you are the praying type, please pray that everything goes well, no one gets sick and that we can build great relationships with the Mexican churches. See you all in a little over a week!

Melissa

The Baby

Here's a 12 week ultrasound of our child. Enjoy.

First Job

I got my first full design job in 2006, three residential buildings in Emeryville. They're finished as of today and they look real nice. Here are some pictures from a couple of weeks ago.

Articles

I don't usually post articles, but I read a couple of good ones over the last few days and wanted to pass them along.

First up is from Dr. Lonnie Lowery at t-nation in response to those ridiculous corn syrup commercials. The article is here.

Now I don't know if this is cool or not, but it seems that at some point in the future (like 2012) our whole modern society could come crashing down as the sun hits the world with a big plasma burst. This would melt active transformers and leave the world without electricity for between four and ten years. NASA has a probe orbiting the sun that's supposed to warn us when there's solar activity that would be dangerous in this way, but evidently it's not going to last much longer, and last time it warned us about something there wasn't enough time to do anything about it. So... yeah, the article is interesting, it's here, hopefully it will continue to be, sometimes NewScientist will only give you a paragraph preview of an article if you're not a subscriber.

And finally, back to fitness, this is for you treadmill junkies and others who have to get your 'cardio' in. Go lift weights instead. Article here.

PE Exam

I got accepted today to test for my Professional Engineers License. Better hit the books again.

Also, went disc golfing in Santa Cruz last Saturday and it was very very nice. The parking lot was paved, it was a nice day and no one was there so we weren't waiting on anyone and no one was waiting on us. Plus I didn't suck, which was nice too.

That's all the updates for now.

Seriously

This is a standard Little Red Riding Hood Cover:


This is a Little Red Riding Hood Barbi available for children to play with:


Seriously?

Angry Guy

A guy in the locker room today unleashed a string of expletives when he tried to use a soup dispenser that was out, forcing him to move to the other one three feet away. Normally I'd shrug that off as 'a lot of other stuff must be going on in his life,' but it was so out of proportion I'm still thinking about it. There's no point to my story, it was just interesting, and we haven't put anything up here in a week.

Note: It's possible he was angry because Hoobastank had just come on the radio, because that made me angry too, but the soap seemed a more likely culprit.

Pictures

Pictures from the trip are up on Photobucket, link under 'Pictures' to the right, or here.

Bacon

Melissa bought me some thick bacon yesterday, now most bacon is better than fifty percent fat, whereas this bacon was nearly seventy percent meat. It was so meaty in fact that it tasted like a particularly juicy pork chop.

In other bacon news, Melissa, Nate and I enjoyed bacon in Iquitos that was almost a quarter inch thick. Now that's some bacon.

Back from the Land of Peru! Part 1

Jesse and I are back home. We are happy to be back and sad at the same time. We love the comforts of our home but we love so many things about Peru. Here are a few excerpts from our travel journal along with some pictures. If you are ever in my house and want to read in detail about our travel feel free to pick up our travel journal. Here it goes:

Day 1: Thursday, January 15, 2009


Kara Cornelio picks up at at 3:00 a.m. and off we go to SFO. In Atlanta, we had our last hamburger and I lost my travel pillow. Seven hours later we arrive in Lima at midnight. We saw lighting storms in the far off Amazons.

Day 2: Friday, January 16, 2009


We had to stand in the hot immigration line for one hour. We picked up our luggage and met up with the Harding's and my cousin Janette. Our group was a total of 10 people, Jesse, Nate, Wendy, Kelly, Kevin, Janette, Maggie, Buff, Donivan and myself. We check into our domestic flight and then wait another four hours for our flight to Cuzco. We tried to sleep but ended up talking and playing cards. We finally arrive in Cuzco at 7:00 a.m., head to our hotel, drink some coca and finally fall asleep at 11:00 a.m. We woke up couple hours later had lunch/dinner, paid our treking fees, ran some errands and went to bed.

Day 3: Saturday, January 17, 2009


We went to the local artisan market, bought some trinkets, walked down to the "local" mall to buy Janette hiking gear. Jesse was cursed by a little boy who wanted to shine his shoes and then told him he would be here the next day. We went back to the hotel and rested (the high altitude really takes it out of you). Later that evening we had our hiking briefing and met our guides, Marco and Franco. Had a delicious dinner and went to bed.

Day 4: Sunday, January 18, 2009


After breakfast, which consisted of bread, jam, mate de coca, fruits and coffee, we headed down to the Plaza the Armas and saw a cool parade, then went to a Maranatha church. Church service was very nice, but REALLY long even for me. After church we had lunch and took a taxi back down to the local mall to buy Janette socks. Headed back to the hotel, played cards, took a nap, packed for the next four days of hiking, had dinner and went to bed.

Day 5: Monday, January 19, 2009


At 6:00 a.m. we took our last "real" shower for the next week, had breakfast and headed to our bus that was going to take us to Kilometer 82, the beginning of the Inca Trail. A couple hours we arrive in a little town called Ollaytantambo, purchased walking sticks and then back on the bus to K82. At K82 the porters packed our gear (food, tents, etc.) for the next 5 days and off we started on our hike. Saw our first Inca site called Q'anabamba, then Patallaqta. We couldn't walk around in these but they were really cool. Hike was nice, rolling hills, llama sacrifial mounds, mummy tomb and not too strenuous. Arrived at our first campsite, had dinner and feel asleep.

Day 6: Tuesday, January 20, 2009


Didn't sleep that well day before. Today was a short 4 hour hike but a hard one, started at 9,842 feet and ended at 12,460 ft. People were really feeling the altitude, thankfully Jesse and I didn't. It was a beautiful hike, jungle, river, giant mountains. Words can't explain. Camp was at over 12K feet high, I felt a little dizzy and had a tiny headache. Jesse and I guzzled coca tea and took a nap after lunch. We could see Dead Women's pass or Warmiwañuska or at least her boob. Before dinner we play a new card game, Chilean head, let's just say our guide Marco didn't like Chileans. After dinner we saw the beautiful Milky way, I sniff some special liquid and went to bed. I kept on having nightmares of Jesse choking me, but it was actually my body reacting to the low levels of oxygen not an Incan spirit. Once again didn't sleep that much.

Day 7: Wednesday, January 21, 2009



Long, hard but very cool hike day. Made it up to Dead Women's pass, but just before we inhaled some even more "special" black liquid. Let's just say, Jesse and I were the first ones to make it to the top! Very beautiful sites at the pass at 13,828 feet. We made it up in 1.5 hours. For the rest of the day it was all down hill on the real Inca steps. We didn't have lunch for another 7 hours later so we were pretty tired. We saw two other really cool Inca steps especially one that we had to climb up some really steep steps. We finally had lunch and after another 1 or 2 hour hike we made to our 3rd campsite, Phuyapatamarca. It was really cold here, but an awesome site we were surround by glaciers, jungle mountains, and Inca sites. Had dinner, filled up our hot water bottles to put in our sleeping bags and went to bed.

Day 8: Thursday, January 22, 2009


Nature called at 6:00 a.m. so we found nature's toilet and then Jesse and I waited for the fog to disappear and it did and we saw the most beautiful site ever, I seriously wanted to cry, once again words cannot explain. Had breakfast, and started our last hiking day. We saw Phuyapatamarca which was and astrological Inca site. Learned about Inca's sacred foods, potato, corn and coca. First half of day was really slippery, steep downhill stairs. After lunch we saw our second Inca site of the day, Wiñaywayna - Forever Young, my FAVORITE site. Took pictures and video, and then started off on the trail again to the Sun Gate. The second part of the day was much flatter, but when it had it's uphills it was steep. One part of the stair was named "Gringo Killer Stairs" which had men on all fours crawling up some very vertical stairs. You would think after that there would be the Sun Gate at the top, but no, only more flatter stairs. Finally we made it to the Sun Gate, took pictures with Machu Picchu in the back ground.

We made it to Machu Picchu in the afternoon, but we couldn't go in until the next day. Took pictures again and then rode a bus down to Aguas Calientes, found the restaurant where we were going to spend the night, had dinner, checked emails and then went to bed.

Day 9: Friday, January 23, 2009


Did not sleep again, woke up at 4:30 a.m., made it to the bus at 5:30 a.m. and back to Machu Picchu. Our tour guide Marco, gave us a very good and different tour for 2 hours and then we could explore on our own. Lots a pictures and lots of fun, but a couple hours later we were very tired. Head back down to the town for lunch, surveys, and then to catch our train back to Ollaytantambo. Train ride was relaxing and then we met our bus driver to Cuzco. Made it to our hotel, took a wonderful shower and then had dinner, ran some more errands around the city, and then went to bed.

The next days will be describe as the second part of our trip to the Amazon Basin. Hope you liked reading.

One Last Update

We're going to Peru tomorrow, so probably we won't be updating during the next two weeks. Maybe that won't be too different from normal, but yeah, we'll be in Peru.

People have known for a while now that I'm going, but they're all asking about it now and they always ask the same kind of thing: Are you going to build a church? An orphanage? Homes? Even a guy in Krav, who I've never talked to about mission work or any kind of spiritual thing, asked if I was going to build a church. Now I'm somewhat happy to have this reputation, but I do feel a little guilty telling everyone I'm just going on vacation to have some fun. I almost feel like I need to make some kind of excuse for it... anyway, that's my thought for the day.

New Years

It's been a couple of months since any update here, sorry about that. There's not much to report, Melissa and I are going to Peru next week, we'll hike the Inka Trail to Machu Picchu and spend a week in the jungle.

Yesterday I applied to take what's hopefully the last test I'll ever have to take. Assuming 'The Board' accepts me I'll be taking the Professional Engineer exam in April.

Yes!

Only 4 more days of working for the Man!

Melissa

The Christian Book Store

I have had little use for the Christian Book Store, their selection of Bibles is small, they have way too much Thomas Kinkaid stuff, to many wierd home stuff, a crappy music selection, and don't get me started on 'christian living.' Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a negative post, Melissa and I sifted through the used book section last week and *that* place is a gold mine. They have real Bible studies, books of J. Vernon McGee's 'Through the Bible,' books on practical discipleship, and all sorts of good stuff for between 25 cents and 2 dollars. We loaded up and it's been good reading so far, I highly recommend you check it out.