Oh, it's you! Good to see so many of you in the last few weeks! We left Minneapolis and headed on our great gypsy adventure about 6 weeks ago. In that time, we put over 5000 miles on the car and slept in 23 beds. We're finally settled in and are staying with Chris' parents and then my parents for the next month before getting on the plane. One of the best parts of our trip has been visiting all our favorite places one last time. The top picture is from our last trip to Jed and Abe's park in Minneapolis and the next few are from Jed and Abe's park in Carbondale.
Daddy took the boys into the airport when we visited Carbondale. They sure thought it was cool to hang out with Daddy in the cockpit.
Look out, here we come!
We got to have lunch with our friend, Rosanna at Harbaughs. We let the boys blow off some steam outside before we went in. Here is Abe showing off his muscles. When he really gets into it, his little fists start to shake and the birthmark on his forehead makes a funny red 'V'.
Jed playing guitar on a nearby stick. Pretty much any stick he finds becomes a guitar, a light saber, or a lance within just a few seconds.
Here is Jed playing with his friends Elikem and Woelinam. We got to stay with our friends, the Gatos, for two nights. How much fun to watch our boys reconnecting after a whole year. It didn't take long for them to warm up :)
The last few nights we were in Carbondale, we got to go camping as a family. This was the first tent camping we had done in almost 3 years! Sure missed it! Here we are with one of the visitors to our campsite, Miss Stacy.
The boys loved our camping trip -- just running around the campsite and getting filthy. We also had some great hang-out time in the hammock!
Having a hard time getting between the pictures, so the picture above is of our friend, Bella, in St. Louis. She is Tony and Kristen Fantozzi's little girl. They had fun playing on the water table on the hot day when we visited them.
After that, we went to Aunt Amy's graduation. Here we are at the meal before the ceremony. Congratulations, Aunt Amy!
Oops, this pic got in the wrong place. Here's Abe with his muscles again. Jed was watching a movie about David and Goliath the other day. Goliath was saying to the Israelites "No one is strong enough to defeat me!" I looked up and saw Abe doing this at the TV!
Here's our birthday boy! Jed turned 3 at Grandma and Grandpa Adamow's house. They threw a big party for him. Cousin Matt brought a bouncy house and Aunt Donna brought a Strawberry Thomas the Tank Engine cake. Even Grandma Lee, Papa Jim, Aunt Caroline, Aunt Emmy, and Naomi were there.
Poor Abe!!!! He got a double ear infection and this is what he looked like for most of the party -- if he wasn't crying. He got healed up and feels much better now.
Here's Jed with one of his new Thomas hats. He sure had fun at his party!
Here's Abe the day after he got his medicine! Boy, does he feel better:)
Looking for something to drink.
Here's Jed swinging at the ball that Daddy was pitching. He's got a really good swing on a tee, but it's probably going to be a while before he's ready for a fast ball.
Grandma and Jed were putting together his new Cranky the Crane puzzle. This puzzle turned out to be pretty hard and took Grandma, Jed, and Mama to finish.
After our visit with Grandma and Grandpa Adamow, we headed to Texas where Jed and Abe got to hang out with some relatives they don't get to see very much. Here they are on a train ride with cousin, Brandon. (in the black shirt).
Aunt Loie and Uncle Mitch took us to a BBQ restaurant with a petting zoo and sand box out back. Abe and Jed got sufficiently filthy :)
Here they are trying to make a sand castle with Brandon.
Here our Uncle Mitch and Brandon's parents, my cousin, Hannah, and her husband, Eric.
And here is Brandon trying to help Jed play a racing game. Brandon did the pedals and Jed steered. He liked to turn it back and forth a lot, so Mama had to come in and help, too, so he could make it around the racecourse.
Then we moved to Uncle Dave and Aunt Ann's house. Aunt Ann found a football helmet for Jed to wear, but right now I think he was pretending that it was a knight's helmet and that the fan was a shield.
Here's Aunt Ann with Baby Cousin Zoe. Jed and Abe liked her a lot and Jed even got to hold her. When we were around Zoe, we asked Jed "Do you want a baby brother or sister?" and he'd always say "A sister!"
And here's Jed with Uncle Dave fixing his helmet.
We also got to visit our good friends from Carbondale that moved down to Houston. These boys are Heebal and Noah. The house was pretty crazy with these four guys running around!
We had such a wonderful time, though, with our friends Seare and Selam. They were an encouragement to us.
And then the goodbye hug. This was the hardest part about all our journeys. Goodbyes.
We went to visit Grandma and Papa Twidell and had a picnic at the park for memorial day. Naomi, Joshua, Jed and Abe had a great time playing together.
On the way north again, we stopped at our friends Phil and Erin's house. They have a new baby, Joel, and Jed got to hold him, too. When I asked him the brother or sister question this day, he said he wanted a baby brother. I think he'll be pretty excited either way.
After that, we went to Hunky Dory Camp with all our Prayer League friends. Jed and Abe loved running around outside and playing in this tire swing. In fact, this tire swing cured Jed of his fear of swinging. After swinging around in this, he let Daddy give him an underdog in the regular swing. Now he wants to go high every time.
Cute hat picture for this entry:
Then, we went to Southwest Minnesota to a little town called Ruthton to visit a church there. Here we are with Phillip and Joyce who invited and hosted us. They were such a blessing to us!
And here are their neighbors, Leon and Marilyn, who visited with us the night before.
We moved on to Minneapolis. In keeping with visiting all our favorite places (and people), we went to the zoo with the Ekkas. This family is special because we will soon all be in the same country again -- though we'll be quite a distance from each other. Here's Urbas.
And here we are looking at the ducks.
Here are Puna and Jhumpa. They are the Ekka kids closest in age to Jed.
Here's Jed telling us to be quiet -- not sure why, but just thought it was a cute picture.
Here's Mani. The Ekka kids were great with Jed and Abe. I think Mani became Jed's little Mommy and Jhumpa became Abe's whenever we were together.
And here's Abe having fun with the animals.
We'll leave you with this picture taken at our friends, Lance and Heidi's, house. They hosted us for the whole week we were in Minneapolis! Abe loved Heidi's guacamole! It covered his belly, face, hands, place at the table, etc. before he was done.
So, we are just so thankful that we got to take this gypsy trip. In all the miles we covered, the best part was seeing all our friends and family that we love so much. The hardest part was saying the goodbyes. I've been getting kind of down about how often we'll have to say goodbye in our lifestyle now. It's hard to think about doing this over and over again. God taught me something pretty cool, though. Every time we say goodbye, the next thing we do is say hello. We may be saying goodbye to our friends and family here, but soon we'll say hello to the new friends we'll be making. When we say goodbye to them, we'll get to say hello to our family and friends back here again. The coolest part, is when we know Jesus, when we say our final goodbye to this world, we say hello in heaven. So, in heaven we just get to say hello after hello. Isn't God good? So, until the next hello, goodbye!
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