2020? Where the heck did THAT decade go?!

I'm reading Nobel laureate Kip Thorne's classic Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, a book which has to be read slowly and re-read slowly to wrap one's head around the concepts contained therein.  I'm starting to feel that my frame of time must be warped somehow, that those years with everything they contained must have been compressed in some way; surely I'm not ten years further in to the future.... Yeah, OK, I just checked the birth certificate and Google Calendar, and yep, it happened.
Man, what a decade!  Started off pretty normal, dinking around, having fun, enjoying life

grandkids coming along,

kids making progress in life, 

and then BOOM!!  The message came through loud and clear that it was time that we were supposed to do something else, so I burned the operating-room shoes

and we headed to Bogota.  You know, like Colombia.

I became internationally certified in Toilet Repair.

And we learned to enjoy new things.  Mostly.

Yeah, that's a big crunchy ant, and it wasn't even on a dare.

And whether I liked it or not, I learned a lot about dengue fever, tuberculosis, head trauma, and other things having to do with keeping missionaries healthy.

We kind of got used to how things were done in South America.

And we came to appreciate and enjoy beautiful Colombia.

Big, BIG mistake.  It has been said, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans."  He must have been giggling uncontrollably, because about the time we were getting OK with and looking forward to our second year helping the missionaries in Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, we received a new assignment, and after a brief interlude back in the States to re-pack, 

and check on the grandkids,

we headed for Huancayo, Peru.  That's HUANCAYO, and no, neither we nor you had ever heard of it.  We spent three wonderful, 

terrifying, 

beautiful, 

not-so-beautiful,

hot,

cold, 

and incredibly rich years in the Peru Huancayo Mission, coming to love our 451 missionaries and the thousands of local folks we came to know.  And then we came home, and unpacked,

and fixed stuff that had worn out, 

or needed some help,

and she showed the gardens once again who was the boss.

Luckily they hadn't moved the beach,

and we got to go to some cool places, 

and we played with the grandkids (when did they get that BIG?).

The dinking around continued,

I went back in Scouts, then back out of Scouts, 

we got to see some more cool places,

Christmases came and went,

grandkids got HUGE,

and they started stealing cars,

and then, - Wait.  What?!  That was it?!  The decade, with missions and elections and births and deaths and gladness and sadness and growth and all the rest was done.

I need to call Kip Thorne, though I'd better hurry because in that decade he turned 80.  There's just gotta be some kind of time warpage going on here.  So much happened in so little time.

We hope that your decade was as rich, and that the next one works out as well.

Dave & Paula