Day 69 & 70

My birthday on Saturday was fantastic.  Planes was fairly cute, though Amelia didn’t quite sit through the whole thing peacefully.  Levi, however, was entranced and doesn’t understand why we can’t go back.  After the movie, our amazing hosts treated us to lunch at a hibachi restaurant.  We had fun watching the kids watch the chef prepare the food and perform his fancy tricks.  Plus, it was delicious.

Amelia took a nap for most of the afternoon, I got some rest and the boys did…something.  They were in the house, but I don’t think we did much of anything.

After mac & cheese for the kids, we put them to bed and said goodbye for a REAL date night.  Our first stop was a Tex-Mex restaurant for dinner, followed by a short walk down the block for frozen custard.  Finally, we went to our second movie of the day.  Two theater showings in one day must certainly make up for the fact that I haven’t been to the theater since early 2012, or even possibly 2011!  We saw Elysium, which was a little less relax-and-enjoy-the-movie and more intensely-stare-at-the-screen because what’s going on is terrible, but it was pretty good.  We crashed into bed at 2am.

Sunday morning we woke (sort of…we were tired) and headed off to church with our hosts.  It was a great service and even the kids did okay.  After church, our hosts’ small group held a party, which we promptly crashed with our presence (pre-arranged crashing, however).  We got to meet the families and talk to them.  One in attendance with a five-week-old also named Amelia, but our Amelia was not a fan of her daddy holding any little baby.  I think we may need to warn her for the next three months about what’s coming…  It was a fun afternoon of food and pool.

After we headed out to Fort Worth, about an hour away, to see some friends of my (Lisa’s) parents from long ago.  It was fun to catch up and talk to them – they have spent their lives as ex-pats in countries around the globe and most recently are taking an unexpected “vacation” since they were living in Egypt until a few weeks ago.

We hung out with them for a while then went to their church’s evening service, where we got to present our ministry to the congregation.  The folks were so welcoming and loving in receiving us and our ministry.  Thanks to Aurora Baptist Church for the great evening!  We drove the hour home and headed pretty much straight for bed.

Amelia’s cold is now just a really stuffy nose, which caused her to sleep terribly last night, thus disrupting our sleep and we completely forgot Matthew had a morning meeting.  At the get together on Friday night, we met an adoptive grandma who works at MAF’s retirement company, dealing with the MAF accounts.  She suggested us coming to the company chapel Monday morning.  It was a great idea to make an appearance at the place that helps MAF missionaries have a retirement plan!  So, Matthew planned to go…but the long night of frequent wakings caused us to oversleep.  He did make it, though, just five minutes late (the rest of us had already planned to stay behind) and got meet lots of people at the company – what a fun connection!

We finished packing and took off toward our next stop: northwest Arkansas!  We decided to split up the drive and make two short drives out of it, plus use this evening to get some work done.  We drove into Oklahoma, right into a major rainstorm and flash flooding, but I think we’re okay now.  No tornados or anything!  We’re at the hotel, Matthew is on a business call and I’m, well, blogging.