A Night I'll ALWAYS Remember

Friday was the BEST night I've had since coming down to Honduras!

A few weeks ago I was talking to Jeff, Andrew, and Lacey about how worn down everyone in the group seemed to be getting. Jeff had a brilliant idea of throwing a dinner for everyone as an appreciation for all of their hard work. I loved it, so we started planning...

A few weeks later the simple dinner turned into an outdoor affair -- complete with white lights, table clothes, an awards ceremony, and a surprise volunteer video.

Doesn't this look like it was taken in Italy?

Jeff and I hauled the big wooden table from his house through the streets so we would have enough seating.

I took a very brief video of the scene complete with the music I had playing in the background, because I never want to forget this moment:

AHHHHHH! Words can't come CLOSE to describing how I felt seeing this scene! It was truly the most beautiful dinner party I've ever been apart of!

(Em and Theres -- seeing this gave me the same feeling I had when I was sitting in front of that fireplace in the cabin we rented in Tennessee. Remember how happy I was that night?)

Proud of our work...

The spread: homemade pasta alfredo (prepared by Andrew), fresh out of the oven garlic bread, salad, raspberry wine, raspberry lemonade, beer, and cake for dessert.

Here is the beautiful salad Kandice helped me throw together. I'm so proud of it! Anne brought over some poppy seed dressing her mom sent in a care package and it was perfect. Almost tasted like a salad from Olive Garden :)...

Look up love in the dictionary and I bet you'd find this photo...

After we finished eating dinner we tried to take a group picture. I think this was the best one of the batch...

I love, love, love these people!

Next up: Awards...

The categories for "Best" awards were as follows:

• Best Smile
• Best Laugh
• Best Personality
• Best Comedian
• Most Helpful
• Best Dancer
• Best Athlete
• Best Cook
• Most Creative
• Best Dressed
• Most Outgoing
• Best Hair

And the "Most likely to..."

• Drive a semi-truck
• Be on a talk show
• Break a world record
• Invent something
• Take over the world
• Become President of the United States
• Deface public property
• Own twenty cats
• Write a book
• Rob a bank
• Go streaking
• Own a gas station

We also had each person write a sentence about everyone else in the group. Then we read them all and tried to make them flow as a paragraph about the person. Some flowed better than others, but I thought all of them turned out really great. Some people wrote funny sentences or inside jokes and others more serious sentences. Jeff and I took turns reading each persons...

Here's a hysterical video of Jeff reading part of Andrew's. I told him who ever could do the better English accent would read it, and Jeff won. We enjoy making fun of Andrew's accent and "Brittishness", but we do it out of love :)...

My paragraph says:

Bridget - The perpetual smile and ray of sunshine

Is a pranking button-pusher.

Bridget is someone with an amazing energy and an absolute zest for life that is inspiring.

She loves everything about life, sometimes to the point of near implosion from joy!

Bridget's laughter gets carried through Juticalpa like the dirt into our homes.

She knows how to talk to anyone and never stops dreaming, she holds on to that feeeeeeeling.

We've known you for 232 days and out of those 232 days there was only 1 day you didn't have a beaming smile on your face, that was the day you broke your camera.

She's beautiful on the inside and the outside...we can't wait to meet this woman's future family.

"Enthusiastic" and "unable to be discouraged" are not strong enough to describe this superstar from Indiana.

Bridget, thank you for being you!

*I'm so blessed to be working with such sweet people!

After the paragraphs had all been read we handed out the "Best" awards...

Mary receiving the best personality award...(I know we're cheese balls for posing like this!)

I won the award for most outgoing...

Then we gave out the "Most likely to..." awards

For this category I was nominated "Most likely to take over the world". Watch out!

After we finished handing out all of the awards we showed everyone the video we made. Jeff put together this hysterical intro that I wish I would have gotten on video, but here's a clip:

Each person had a clip of a song that we thought fit their personality and eight pictures -- two "cute" pictures and six funny ones.

To end the night we watched "Plane, Trains, and Automobile's" on the projector under the stars and white lights :) :) :) :)!

This picture makes me insanely happy...

It's all about the little things!

I'm am so grateful I got to have a night like this with all of the volunteers. It was a beautiful evening filled with so much love and a lot of laughter.

A night I will truly never forget!

I've been saving the quote below for a special blog because I love it so much. Every time I read it makes my heart really happy...

Even after all this time, 
The sun never says to the earth, 
"You owe me." 
Look what happens with 
A love like that. 
It lights the whole sky.

- Hafiz of Persia