Sooo...

Fun at the Elkhart County Fair

At the Renton's Pond

Evie chillaxin with Peter Renton

Evie smiles!

Da Gurls and Afi (Ariella's Dad)

A girl has got to have a trendy hat, okay.

Sick and Cranky.

So, I took about a month sabbatical from blogging. Not intentionally, but sometimes it just seems like when you have the most stuff to write about, you have the least amount of energy. We just recently returned from what should have been a six and a half hour (one way) road trip to Nappanee, Indiana to visit our friends the Rentons. Obviously with children, things tend to take a little longer. We drove during the day to get there, and that didn't work so well. The laptop that we were planning on using to play movies conked after about 1/2 hour and Genoa slept for a total of 1 hour during the whole trip, which ended up lasting about 8 hours.

So on the way back we figured maybe we should drive through the night, so the kids could sleep. Apparently Genoa thought that only applied to Evie because she didn't fall asleep until about 1 am, and was absolutely hysterical for probably about 3 hours straight.

The good news is, Evie slept through it all, God bless her. Toddlers and cars are just not a good mix.

The transition to life here in St. Louis is multi-faceted. In one sense, it has been a huge relief to be able to take a break from work and the busyness of ministry, and just enjoy our extended family that we haven't seen a lot in the past few years. It also somehow feels just a little bit like failure, or maybe backtracking. I think we are both realizing that we had great plans about our glorious future serving God, and those dreams didn't involve moving back in with my parents and being jobless. It makes me laugh how far off I always am with my guesses about what is coming around the next corner!

I am intensely enjoying my family right now. I feel like I did in grade school when we got more than one snow day in a row. Stolen moments of fun and relaxation, that you know can't last forever and you feel a little guilty for having, but you are gonna live out for all they are worth anyway. I think I need a cup of hot chocolate now.