Life in America

I confess that I've been avoiding my blog...and Facebook..and maybe even certain people that I feel will want to hear or talk about our leaving New Day. I think for the last 7 months, all we really thought about was dealing with the emotional goodbye of leaving. We never really thought about the arriving and all of the adjustment that comes that is so different from a 5 month furlough. So let me just say, our kids are doing amazing, Blu and I are processing a lot, and I struggle right now to find even the words to say about any of it. A lady came up to me in church today during the greeting and said, "I know this must be extremely different for you. But it's going to be ok." Right now, this is what we know: His promise still stands. Great is His faithfulness. We're still in His hands. This is our confidence - He's never failed us yet.

Our last family photo on the land.

On our last night at New Day, before walking over to say our goodbyes to all of the kids and staff, we climbed the tank stand as a family to watch one last sunset.

August 2nd and on the airplane!

The kids were a great help with our 30 bags!

We only had one crazy experience. In Livingstone, we were there 2 hours early and the first ones in line to check in our luggage. But dealing with 30 bags and a third world airport, things did NOT go smoothly, which meant the plane had to wait 20 minutes for us and when we got to the tarmac, the pilot was standing down on the tarmac waiting for us and screaming at Blu! It was horrible, and then he stormed off into the cockpit to fly the plane. Very reassuring.

Blu needed a nap after all that.

In the South African airport, we all got massages, pedicures, or manicures!

Cason's first pedicure - his face!!

It was great to see Paw and Bmaw..and Chick Fil A!

After a 3 hour trip, we arrived home to Lake Brownwood!

All sorts of treats were waiting for us!

'Merica! I unpacked a lot of my keepsakes - my baby bowl makes a great ice cream bowl!

When in jet lag and you can't sleep...you put your kids new bikes together!

The boys didn't have that problem!

Our first Wednesday night back, Blu spoke at FBC Bangs about us leaving New Day, and the church did a pounding for us! We were so blessed.

The kids have enjoyed their 2 weeks of summer in the pool, out on the boat, and Caedmon even got some time in the shop building 1x1 platforms!

We were blessed to get to see our nephew AJ get baptized at Victory Life Church!

And...what's been keeping us the busiest this past 2 weeks is our house remodel. So to explain things a little, Blu is taking over his family's business, which is building high school One-Act Play theater sets for schools all over the state of Texas. (For instance, right now we have 6 orders in the works for schools in Frisco, Allen, Carrolton-Farmers Branch, Odessa, and San Antonio.) When his parents offered the business to Blu, it included their big house, so we moved in and they built a bunkhouse nearby. (I'll have to post pictures of it - the interior is literally magazine-worthy!) The house they gave us is incredible, but I wanted paint colors that were more my style, and the upstairs needed some work to fit our family. (It was previously a huge loft-type space with 2 tiny rooms.) So we put in a new stove downstairs, repainted the whole house, extended the 2 rooms upstairs for the boys, and built a new room upstairs for Cambree. It was a ton of work, but it came together nicely (thanks to help from grandparents and Home Depot!). I will post complete pictures soon, but for now, here's a look!

This is how the upstairs started!

Bmaw is the queen of mud and tape!

Painting our master bathroom the morning after we got here!

The laundry room!

We redid the upstairs floors by hand - it was a ton of work so we'll do the downstairs floors some other time!

Done and so worth it!

Installing the new stove/oven!

Caedmon's little cubby - almost done!

Cambree's gorgeous room!

Cason's cubby - almost done!

We converted a closet into an office for me!

A sneak peek of some of our downstairs decor!

Our "family command center" - ready for the first day of school!

So in the midst of all of this, Blu had a pretty nasty sore/bite of some kind that kept getting worse. Every day around 5pm, he'd have fever and just lay down on the couch. His sore wasn't healing, but we finally made him go to the doctor. Turns out...it was a brown recluse bite! (Do you want to see a picture of it?? You might want to scroll down fast if you don't want to see it!)

He got 12 shots, is on tons of antibiotics, zinc, vitamin C, and has had daily visits to the doctor. They said if he had come 12 hours later, he'd be in the hospital. He will not be in the lake or pool for a very long time. Poor guy was in some PAIN! He goes to the doctor again on Monday and Friday, and hopefully that will be it!

The kids had their first youth group activity - a trip to Abilene to Prime Time Entertainment for bowling, go karts, and laser tag! They stopped at Starbucks afterwards and our kids had never been there and were a little bit overwhelmed! They are excited to be in the youth group at FBC Bangs though and have some friends there already!

So that's what has kept us busy lately. School starts tomorrow, our house is pretty much done except for some wall hangings, so this week we will focus more on business and settling into our new life and routine here!