African Farewell

well...just a request for prayer here...sent aaron off to africa this afternoon for the next few weeks...for those of you that receive our newsletter, there's a prayer calandar on the back for specifics. but if you could pray for safe travel there and back, safety driving through dangerous territory there, good health, and of course that the message will be heard and received by those there! on a personal side...he has the remnants of a concussion and a broken face so avoiding injry during the games is on my mind! thanks!

Pirate Incompetance

well, after more problems, i am officially an ECU Pirate for grad school. and i learned a valuable lesson of more incompetance. i sent the applcation off the end of october and asked when i would hear back. to which i received the reply..."there's no set time limit" ok, i took that as..."stop asking questions, we'll tell you when we're ready" and here is the lesson i learned...be annoying anyway because nobody does their job well enough to make sure everything happens correctly.

so i called yesterday (cause i was tired of waiting) to find out i was accepted on november 2nd (about a month ago)...that's 4 days after i sent it...very quick, i know. BUT NOBODY FELT THE NEED TO TELL ME! apparently the admissions office forgot to send the letter and in that time period, class registration came and went and all the health classes are full!!!!!

so now i'm accepted but have no classes to sign up for so i might as well have waited till next fall. so i'm gonna try to call and bring my "new york" out and get myself into some "full" classes since it was not my stupidity that made this happen. sheesh. sometimes i wonder why people are so dumb. why is it so hard to do your job? i hate to think i'm the only smart and capable person left in this world, but sometimes it feels like that.

Thanksgiving in Disney

well...the group shot above is the latest faro sibling pic from the final four thanksgiving weekend. messiah once again made it to the final four so of course, the whole faro clan packed it up and followed them there! we had thanksgiving at our house early in the day and then we drove part of the way down that night. we did the last few hours friday morning and made it in time to see the girls beat tcnj in the semi's. had some time to check into the hotel beore the next game...unfortunately, the boys lost in the semi's that night to trinity. it was a good close game but couldn't quite seal the deal. i don't think any of us considered what we would do if that happened...but we made the best of it and had a good time anyway.

regardless of the outcome, we were there to be with family and support brett. and thats what we did. friday night we tried to hit the hot tub but it closed so we played games instead. during that time we learned some important things like ben's lack of geographical genius, and aaron's unappreciative nature. the conversation started by talking about collecting bottles or caps or something at the rhino's stadium to earn pepsi gear. we brought our dvd's down in a travel case that apparently came from that history. and the following convo came out...

aaron: "yeah all that time there and you get crap like that" (referring to the case)

ben: "hey! i stood out there for hours collecting those to get you that. and i got amy a towel and got nothing for myself!"

aaron: right, yeah and its awesome"

open mouth, insert foot.

anyway, we took some time on saturday so hang out at bretts hotel with him and took part in the fairytale called disney. the pool was pretty incredible and the boys had a good time there.

we then went to the girls game. they lost in the finals. and we hit the road from there...all the way back to charlotte by 1:30 am. it's lots of driving but its also lots of quaility family time...and we're looking forward to the next few years of thanksgiving trips to continue the tradition. we don't know what we'd do on thanksgiving without it!

Battle Wounds

so aaron played in a 6v6 soccer tournment yesterday. i get a call on his drive home that went something like this...

me: "hey! how'd it go?"
aaron: "well, pretty good...we lost in the finals but...blah blah blah...soccer"

me: "oh man...oh well"

aaron: "well i just want to warn you, i got hit in the face pretty good"

me: "seriously? how bad?"

aaron: "pretty bad. i have a concussion"

it went on a bit from there but i'd like to draw attention to the fact that he went on for a while about the soccer like it was the main agenda. look at the pictures of his face again please...how did that not make the top of the list of things to tell me?!!? the pictures don't really even show how bad the swelling is...i couldn't get a good camera angle. as far as the signs of concussion, he was rough last night but its feeling a little better today. good thing he's tough. but he did cough up blood today so thats probably not a good sign. feel free to shout up a little prayer about that.

so we're gonna try to convince people that his face is the result of the pita slaps from the night before (if you don't know what i'm talking about see the previous post)

Left-Right-Center!

well...we had some good times friday night here at the Faro house! we had the casey's, the koontz's, and the ross's over for a night of games. we love games. we started out the night with krokinol...i have no idea how to spell it. and that was fun but then we pulled out the left-right-center dice....always ready for a good time. in the pictures below are the consequences for being the one left with a chip. let me just say, if you haven't played this game...you need to. it is so much fun if you play with good sports and people that know how to have a good time. so for your viewing pleasure...

the first consequence went to lani downing a tablespoon of texas pete without anything else allowed to subdue it for the next three minutes.

and the next...heidi getting sprayed at close range with the cold hose for five seconds

andy having lauren rub peanut butter all up in his hair


me having to give every player a free shot with the ping pong ball at my bare stomach (luckily i didn't get hit much)

aaron had to let everyone hit him across the face with a pita..yes a pita (apparently one of the more humiliating ones of the evening)

then aaron again got an egg broken on his head (which dries similar to cement if you didn't know)

then andy comes up short again and had to get his bare feet soaked with the hose and then run to the front of the neighborhood sign and back with no shoes (i still would have hypothermia if i lost that one) no picture though :-(


and then lani again...had to brush her teeth with the electric toothbrush with dishsoap on it...for a whole 2 minutes!

well, notice you didn't see sam, lauren, or brian getting the brunt of the consequences...they lucked out this time but their turn will come!

blog-stalking

so once again, i've been scolded for not blogging since my puking incident. i'm not complaining...i'm glad that there are a bunch of people that look forward to the updates...i just unfortunately don't have much to write about these days.

i'm still waiting to hear back from ecu admissions. i was trying to get ready ahead of time if i get accepted...so i've been researching a bunch of scholarship opportunities through the school. in doing so, i've encountered lots of imcompetance and that is probably my biggest pet peeve. (p.s.- i don't know how to spell that and its probably wrong) the website lists a bunch of scholarships but doesn't say ANYTHING about them other than the name of it and the amount. So i e-mailed them asking quite a few questions so i knew which ones were still available, i was eligible for, blah blah blah...so three weeks later, (and more phone calls and e-mails) someone finaly e-mailed me back and says, and i quote "i can't help you with this" and thats it. mind you, that was the scholarship contact person listed on the website. you can't help me, or you won't help me...that was my question. so i ask someone else...and he e-mails me back a week later with the link to the scholarship page that started this whole debacle. so now, about a month later, i still don't know if i'm accepted or if i can even apply for a scholarship. there's probably nothing more annoying to me than people who either can't or won't do their job well. ugh.

but other than that, there's not too much going on. aaron and i are just trying to log a lot of working hours to get ready for later when he'll be in africa and then we'll both be gone for the holidays. makes for some long days, but thats life, right. on a good note, my parents will be down here for the beginning when aaron's in africa and the jillian is going to spend the last weekend down with me! its gonna make those three weeks way easier to handle! gotta love being loved!

on another side note...joe torre has gone to manage the dodgers...and he took don mattingly with him. as sad as i am that he's gone, there are way worse teams he could have gone to. i might have to become a secondary dodgers fan. so joe girardi is the new yankee manager and i was a fan of his when he was a player so it could be way worse. and in recent yankee news...more confirmation on why i hated rodriquez as a yankee. is a recent interview he names the red sox as his prime option for after the yankees. if there are any true yankee fans that like a-rod, they have now been set straight. no true yankee wants to go play for the red sox. i hope he goes...they deserve eachother. sorry john.

well hope this satisfies you blog stalkers until we have more news worthy things to write about!