Surprise time...

If you know me in the slightest you know I love surprises.  I love planning them, but love receiving them too.  SO, I've been keeping a pretty big surprise hidden for a few weeks now.  Some have slowly found out, but others have not.  And it's finally time to come clean on the blog/every other social media network out there {although I'm only on facebook.  No twitter/instagram/whatever for me...yet.}.

Back to the surprise.

Are you ready?

drum roll please...

I am back in Oklahoma and actually have been for two-ish weeks.  

Yep.  I'll go ahead and let that settle in for a little bit...

So, why am I here?  Pretty simple answer: my health.  I wasn't recovering as quickly and as easily as we would have liked for me to from mono/pneumonia.  Here's the overall gist of the story:

You might remember that during the months of February and March, I was really sick.  Really, really sick.  I would get better, but not 100% better...and then get sick again.  It was a continuous cycle.  And I was sick about 95% of that time with random illnesses {viral infection/upper respiratory/whatever} that we thought were getting treated.  Well, I never really got better.  And then I got pneumonia.  And then when the docs did my blood work for pneumonia, they saw that I had had mono at some point.

"Mono?!? I've never had mono!!"

That was my exact reaction.  I guess when you have mono, a certain type of blood cell stays in your body and it never really goes away.  So, when they did the pneumonia blood work, they saw that.  We assumed it had been way previous in my life, even though I had never been known to have it.  I got better after getting the correct antibiotics for my pneumonia.  But, my energy levels were still way low. Horribly low.  And they haven't gotten better.  It was at that point that the docs decided that maybe I had actually had mono the entire time I was sick in February/March.  That would explain how my immune system was weak and I got pneumonia.  

So, my PC doc thought it might be a good idea to send me back to the states to recover for a while.  Simply put, it's hard to recover on your own...especially in a foreign country.  It was a continuous cycle of, "Should I stay here and try to recover?  Or go back to the states?"  My mind changed decisions what seemed like every 5.4 seconds.  It wasn't a sure thing that I would be sent back to the states.  We had to get approval from PC headquarters in DC.  They wanted a follow-up chest x-ray.  I obliged...and by 7 pm that night, I knew that I would be stateside in less than a week.

I left Ukraine early Saturday morning, April 28, and made the {incredibly} long journey to the states, arriving in Oklahoma late that night.  I've been in "hiding" since then.  My activities upon arriving in Oklahoma have included: 

*Trying to adjust to this time zone.  

*Resting.  

*Eating more Mexican food and Chick-Fil-A than is probably healthy for a person to consume in a two-week period.  

*Resting.

*Basking in the glory of my giant bed with 15 pillows.

*Resting.

*Slowly surprising random groups of friends.

*Resting after surprising said random groups of friends.  

This is why I've been pretty absent from the blogging world.  And why I've been slightly not telling the {whole} truth in blog posts.  My biggest apologies for that.  I've needed to stay incognito for as long as possible to get some good rest and really get adjusted to this time zone.  Still working on both of those  parts...

I am currently on what is called "Medical Evacuation" which is also known as "medevac" in PC lingo. This is a time period of up to 45 days where I can return to Ukraine without too many hiccups along the way.  Right now, I'm focusing on getting better.  And it's a slow, slow process.  I feel like I take teeny tiny steps each day, and then have a bad day and go 10 steps back.  It's super frustrating because my brain is telling me it's ready to do things.  Walk around the block.  Go to the store.  Eat a meal out.  But as soon as I get home from that activity, I'm wiped out and usually collapse for a few hours.  I'm an active person who likes doing every opportunity that comes my way...and this has been by far the most frustrating part of this entire recovery process.  

SOOOOOOO, now that this is the longest blog post ever {without any pictures}, I'll show you one other surprise that we found in my parents backyard today.  

little bunny foo foo {approximately the size of a hamster}

there are at least 5 of them in the backyard...

My mom was mowing the lawn...and one darted out of some high grass. They are the most precious thing EVER.  Can't wait to play with them more tomorrow...

Much love, this time from America :)

Lyd

Happy Birthday, Pops!

I feel like all that I've been writing the past few days has been birthday posts! And I'm still not done!  For a couple weeks in March and a couple weeks in May, there are a LOT of my friends/family birthdays to celebrate. And, when my parents came over, I got to grab some old school pictures off their hard drive.  So I'm also excited to share a lot of those {horribly awkward and embarrassing} gems.  Amy Carruth, you better be glad that I didn't have their hard drive when it was your birthday. That's all.

So, today is my dear old Dad's birthday :)  Which of course means, it is time to dig out the Frost family picture collection!  I never realized until I compiled all of these pics that he has a lot of plaid/checkered shirts.  Just wait, you'll see.

I always wanted a dalmatian as a pet...that barking toy was the closest thing I've gotten :)

hanging out at the zoo

Disney World!  Really cool overalls, I know.

First school dance at Norman North--semi formal, freshman year

before the Tim McGraw concert! :)  

Mom and Pops

After a dance recital 

At the Orange Bowl--2005

Prom 2005

Graduation Sunday

Jeremy, Mom, Pops

Hanging out in NYC!

I must have missed the memo on alumni sweatshirt night...

Boomer Sooner baby!  "Howdy y'all! I'm Big Tex..."

Welcoming a new Frost in the family :)

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam...

Only in Oklahoma!

When we moved to Oklahoma during the summer of 2001, I realllllllllly wanted a dog.  A toy poodle to be exact.  We got said dog maybe in November 2001 when she was just a few weeks old.  This was supposed to be "my" dog.  But, Pops has a love for animals that is pretty unique.  She is now {and probably always has been} "his" dog :)  He lets Missy outside approximately 284592 times a day.  He gets down in the floor and plays tug-of-war.  He takes her for walks around the block where she wakes every animal in a 5 mile radius.  He changes her water and refills her food at the drop of a hat.  He worries {and kind of obsesses} over whether she's okay when they go out of town. He will sit uncomfortably for hours reading or watching a movie...as long as Missy is comfortable in his lap or arms.  But all in all, she's still his loving pup.

puppy Missy :)

her favorite spot

Are you catching on?

Christmas sweater time...

It doesn't have to be our dog either that he always loves on.  Hanging out with Jeremy and Tina's pup Gracie here.

Or a big ol' ball of fur known as Roxie, who is our friend Gillie's guide dog.  

I also found a slew more of Team Hobart pictures.  If only I'd had their hard drive back in January for this post.

Pops, hope your birthday is one for the books :)  Enjoy your day МНОГА (a lot), and know that I'm thinking of  you!

Happy happy birthday, Pops!

P.S.  Happy wedding day to my SIL's sister, Kim and her fiance, Mike!  Can't wait to see pics from the special day!!

Yes, Mike really is that tall.  A whopping 6'8" or something like that?  Pretty cute couple, yeah? :)

Kittens, inspired by kittens!

For those of you who don't know what the title of this post is referencing, you need to watch the following youtube video that went viral a few years ago: 

Some of my favorite quotes:

"AHHH!"

"AHHHHH!"

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"I'm her mom!"

"Nooooo, she's not!!!!!!"

"La lalalalala la laaaaaaaa!"

"Bow wow chicka bow wow chicka bow wow"

"I have to go potty!!!"

("move down to his feet...")

"psssssstttt"

So, today, I was greeted with a surprise in my small entryway of my apartment.

4 teeny-tiny, itty-bitty, black and white kittens!!!

they are less than one day old...showing you my finger so you can see how tiny they are.

look at the tiny paws!!!!

 

I realize that I sound like the little girl in the viral youtube video.  Apparently, it's easy to talk like that to kittens.

I wish you could really see how small they are.

I've gone out to check on them at least 10 times today.  The last time I went out tonight, there was an older woman (not quite yet babushka status) feeding the mama cat.  This was the first time I'd ever seen her in my apartment complex.  Her name is Elena and she's super, super sweet.  She told me I'm always welcome to come up to her apartment on the third floor and pointed to which apartment she lives in.  Might have to make her some snickerdoodle cookies and take them to her!

I got my nails done for Ukrainian Easter tomorrow!  Lyuda came over to my apartment today and tried out a new painting kit that she got as a present from my mom.  This means that I got some pretty flashy/groovy nails for Easter.  Lyuda and I checked on the cats a few times as well and she told me the word for "kittens" in Russian.

I taught Lyuda the word for "bling" after she explained that they needed some glitter on top...

Word of the day:

kittens--котята {pron.: kahteeyah-tah}

Long post today, but too much to tell.  The last bit is a crazy video of the Norman tornado that happened yesterday afternoon.  It begins to get interesting around 1:18.  This guy caught the actual formation of a tornado in perfect view.  He then realized it was coming a little too close for comfort.  

  

More tornadoes are expected all over Oklahoma today.  As much as I hate tornadoes and am glad I'm not there, it is not easy to be 5800 miles away and wondering if everyone is okay!  Yesterday's storms uprooted a lot of incredibly old and large trees.  Praying that everyone stays safe today.  

The last bit of news for today is that it's a dear friends birthday :)  

Since this is our "friendship" picture on facebook, I decided it was too good {and truly captured both of us} not to post for your birthday pic, Darren!

You might remember this post here about Dare Bare.  I'm still on the lookout for a certain picture of him and Kyle in high school.  Another day, another post.  Stay safe Norman, and happy birfday Darren!

lions and tigers and spiders...oh my.

With the weather increasingly getting warmer, I found the first spider that made its way into my apartment today.  I hate spiders. I detest them.  If they choose to come into my home, they don't live for very long.  And unfortunately, one of the things that comes with living on my own is that I have to kill spiders.  Lydia.  Has to kill spiders.

If you know me in the slightest, you know I'm not a fan of bugs in general.  But, spiders, I can't handle.  Between spiders and stinging insects (bees, wasps, hornets, etc.), it's a close toss-up.  However, the latter don't usually tend to get in your house.  I'm not sure where my fear of these things came from...but still at the ripe age of 25, I squeal like a 5 year old if I see one of these tiny terrors.

Up until I moved to my own home in Norman, my dad always came to the rescue with a shoe quick in tow.  He was keenly aware of the "spider scream" and came running as fast as he could to save me from it.  If I happened to be home alone, I would generally tend to asphyxiate the thing with a can of hair spray.  I can't stand squishing them--grosses me out.

Then, I moved over to my lovely little college house on Sunrise, and had roomies.  My lovely roomies over the years (shout-outs to Stephanie, Allison, and Gracie) also knew of my hatred for these creepy crawlers.  If no one was home when I found one at that house, I typically put a red solo cup on top of the creature until one of my lovely roomies came home and disposed of it properly :)  thanks for humoring me guys.  I owe you one.

There was the time (sometime during college) when an interior design project was due and my room was a disaster.  I had clothes strung about in every corner of my room, and in the 5 minutes that I was home, happened to spot a GIANT spider dart under a pile of clothes.  Allison tried to help me find it, but to no avail, the thing got away.  I called my good ol' Pops in a panic and informed him he needed to come find the thing.  ASAP.  He found it, after moving piles and piles of clothes.  And lo and behold, I wasn't exaggerating that time.  It was a big one.

There was also the time that I walked into my boss Cathy's home.  She was not home when I got there, but I saw a peculiar thing in the den: a big kitchen bowl turned over on the floor.  I called her to ask what it was.  She quickly asked if I had moved it.  "No..." I answered.  "Okay, don't touch it.  We have to wait til Wally (her husband) gets home."  My mind immediately pictured a monstrous tarantula under the bowl.  I calmly asked what it was...and Cathy didn't want to tell me!  After much persuasion, I came to find out it was a snake.   They often left the back door open so that the dogs could come and go as they pleased...and apparently a nice little garter snake decided to come in when no one was looking. HA.  A snake, I was fine with.  Giant spider?  I would have been out the door and waiting for Wally to get home.

The biggest spider I've ever seen in the wild was actually in Mexico during the summer of 2008.  On the Juners summer mission trip, we stay with a family in Mexico.  We had been gone for a few days a little bit further south in Mexico.  When we came back that day, we were in dire need of showers.  The guys and girls shower rooms backed up to each other and we often times sang songs back and forth through a small opening in the wall.  So, as Brooke, Taylor, Amy, and I got into our respective showers, there came a VERY loud squeal from Amy's curtain.  I had already been in the shower a few minutes and had killed my normal parade of mosquitos that loved the humid bathroom.  Amy's squeal was quite shrill and came with a few choice words if my memory serves me correct :)  but, it was well deserved.  For in her shower, was a wolf spider. And holy cow those things are big.  I quickly grabbed my towel and scurried out because I didn't want the thing to corner me in MY shower.  All of the girls were screaming and finally the boys came running to see what the fuss was about.  Even they were a bit scared to kill this thing.  As Amy described it to her mom, if you put your index fingers and thumbs together and make a circle, that was the size of this thing.  Eventually, the family that we stayed with came running and one of the twins killed the the spider.  Needless to say, we were a bit more careful at getting in our showers after that incident :)

The other spider memory I remember came with a minor tragedy in the Frost family household.  It was early December, sometime when I was in high school or college.  My parents are already probably laughing as they think of that day.  My dad's movie group was coming over.  We had gone to Lowe's or Home Depot that day to get a real Christmas tree.  I wanted the biggest one mom would allow.  Pops' job was to hold up a tree and turn it around while my mom and I inspected it.  We finally found the one: giant and full and absolutely perfect.  After barely getting it in the car, we lugged it into the house (not an easy feat) and set it up in the living room.  I was so excited to start decorating it but there were some leaves and other things close to the trunk of the tree.  In the process of getting out the dead leaves, two jumping spiders hopped onto the wall.  I squealed, Pops came running.  In the meantime, one of my dad's friends had arrived for the movie group.  Rhonda, an avid animal lover, didn't want us to kill these spiders.  I informed her, "Sorry...they come in this house, they die."  I understand that spiders are great for the environment...blahblahblah.  But, there are plenty more in the wilderness where they belong...and not in my house.  During the process of removing the dead leaves, I found what looked like an oddly shaped acorn.  I showed it to my mom, and Rhonda inquisitively looked at it as well.  They both realized what it was, but I'm pretty sure mom couldn't have contained Rhonda's excitement if she tried.

Our perfect Christmas tree (think Christmas Vacation style) was infested with spiders.  And in fact, the nice little acorn I found?  A spiders egg.  Full of 1000+ tiny little spiders.

Rhonda wanted to open the acorn and my mom quickly saw how hysterical I was about to come.  She gave her a ziploc baggie and asked her to do it outside.  Sure enough, the amount of teeny tiny spiders was a sight to see...and one that sent me over the edge.  I was hysterical (laughing as I type this at the memories it brings back).  Screaming and crying and wanting to be as far away from the tree as I could.  Sweet mom had to take the tree back to Lowe's/Home Depot and explain that her grown daughter couldn't handle the wildlife that came with the tree.  The young salesgirl laughed and told my mom a story that I would have totally been able to handle: a few years earlier, a family brought a Christmas tree back because a LIVE POSSUM was attached to the tree trunk and playing dead.  Possum?  No problem.  Spiders?  No thanks.

At least Ukrainian winters are good for something: I haven't had to see one spider in 5+ months :)

P.S.  My family invested in a nice fake tree after that experience.  No real trees for Lydia anytime soon...

The many different lives of PCVs...

I've found that some of my best times of brainstorming future blog entries comes at inopportune times. Sometimes I'll make a note on my phone, or try to ingrain the idea in my brain, but it usually never comes to fruition.  As I was just cleaning up my kitchen, a topic flickered through my head.  I finished doing the dishes and decided to sit down right now and type it up.  I'm also {highly} procrastinating going out to run errands like I need to.

Late last night as I lay in bed (quite bored out of my mind), I decided to sign onto facebook chat.  I never use fb chat but decided to see if anyone was online.  One of my sweet high schoolers (Rachel) messaged me and even said, "Whoah! You're on facebook chat?!"  Ha.  See...I never get on that thing!  But as I looked through the people online...lo and behold, my favorite curly red-head was on!  I couldn't believe it.  The red-head I'm talking about is Mr. Darren Downing Gore. 

One of my last nights in Norman before leaving for the PC...

I met Darren when I moved to Oklahoma in 2001 and no matter the distance between us, I can always count on a good chat (and a good laugh) when I talk to him.  He has a rather hectic schedule right now because he is going to Physician Assistant school at Baylor and going through rotation's at the moment.  So, I was super excited to see him online at a time where we could both chat for a minute.  Turns out he never uses facebook chat either, so was it pure coincidence we both happened to be online at the same time?  I think not.  Somebody up above was looking out for us :)

I wasn't planning on making this a picture montage, but Darren and I have been on many an outing together and well, some of these pics are just too good not to be posted.  This is totally not the direction the blog post was supposed to go today, but I'll get to the point in a minute!  Let's call this a decade of Darren, shall we?

Probably gonna kill me for some of these, but I'm 5500 miles away, so he can't do very much :)

Darren, David, and Mark--circa 2001 BASIC retreat 

Anna, Darren, Lydia--circa 2002 choir tour to Florida

bored on the charter bus...who knew that a person could fit in the overhead compartments?

Yep, he'll definitely be mad about this one.  This was sometime during high school at youth one night. 

Dinner theater 2005--Darren, Karen, Lydia, Swenson

Prom 2005--Bert, Lydia, Amy, Karen, Anna, Rose, Darren

Graduation 2005--Darren, Rose, Amy, Lydia, Kevin (Darren's brother-in-law!), Anna, Swenny

Choir Tour to Disneyland--2005

Disneyland 2005--Darren and all of his girls :)

 

Mission trip to Seattle--summer 2005

Lady Liberty, Darren, and myself--summer 2006

 

Birthday celebrations--2007

Tacky Christmas Party 2007

Opies Reunion--2008

Happy New Year!  Love Amy cheesin' in the background--2008/2009

Mexico 2010

My hot date to Jacey's wedding--2010

And last but not least, he came to surprise me at my going away party...we're both doing the "Darren smile" :)

So, that photo montage was completely off subject, but I had fun finding all of those pictures on my external hard-drive and on my laptop.  Back to the topic of my chat with Darren!

Darren has a friend from college (Katie) who happened to leave for the Peace Corps about a month or two before I left.  She is currently serving in Tanzania, Africa, as a teacher!  The story for how I came across the fact that Katie was leaving for the Peace Corps is somewhat creepy (or really creepy as Darren would inform me).  I went to post something on Darren's wall in early 2011.  Katie had just written a note on his wall informing him of her blog and that he could follow her service through that.  She didn't mention the PC once in that post, but the lingo was some of the same PC lingo that is used worldwide.  I found her blog and facebooked her...never having met this girl.  Okay, okay...kinda creepy on my behalf.  BUT, I love reading about her adventures in Tanzania and thinking how utterly different every PC experience is.  

Katie must have a sense of humor very similar to Darren's because anytime she posts something on facebook, I typically laugh (or gasp if it has to do with an African animal encounter in her house...).  One of her more recent posts on facebook said: "not too happy about this bat that has taken up residence in my pit latrine...".  Wow.  She's fighting a bat in her "toilet," while I'm fighting to keep my apartment semi-warm with temps still in the negatives.  

You can find Katie's blog here, with the most recent post detailing a snake encounter in her house.  Oh, Ukraine...I'll take your cold weather any day over the bugs and animals of Africa :)

Darren is probably shaking his head at the fact that I would post all of this, and I hope Katie isn't too weirded out since I have never actually met her.  BUT, what else could I write about on a Sunday afternoon?  Congratulations if you read all the way to the bottom.  Молодец!  Or good job... :)