Finally an update!!

I can't believe how time gets away from me these days!  Here is a quick re-cap of the past few months....

*After returning from Ethiopia, I tried desperately to capture the holiday spirit of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  If any of you have ever gone a mission trip and found it a bit difficult to re-acclimate back to American culture, you will understand the difficulty of trying to re-acclimate in the thick of the holiday season.  Frankly, I think I probably went through a bit of a spiritual "funk" of sorts.  Serving God in the midst of such extreme poverty conditions and loving on the least of these takes you to such an intimacy with God and returning home to "normal" just seems weird.  It truly took a couple of months before I felt like I was back in the groove spiritually.

*In January God began speaking to me about moving our family back to my hometown where my parents still live.  Not that I wouldn't love to go back home but I just was unclear as to the timing of it.  Life was finally beginning to settle down.  We prayed and prayed for clarity and discernment on making this decision.  I would have jumped at this prompting a few years ago but now we had kids in school (one in high school and one going to middle school) as well as my younger ones.  How would this effect them?  I was also in the thick of getting a vulnerable children ministry going at our church.  Why would God choose now??  He did affirm us quite clearly though that this was exactly what He was telling us to do.  I have learned first hand repeatedly through the last few years that I desire for my heart to be obedient to my Savior no matter what.  So, we began the overwhelming task of preparing a house to sell with 5 children, 2 dogs and a guinea pig!!  We finally got the house on the market in April and had multiple offers on it within four days......wow, did God ever show up big!!  We traveled to the new city the next weekend, found a house there, and had a contract on it.  Through much work, stress and tearful goodbyes, we were unloading in our new house two months later!

*Through the chaos of the move, I went through a bout of kidney stones (boy, not fun), a couple of rounds of stomach bugs and unfortunately my dad developed additional medical issues.  I definitely needed to be here for my parents.

We continue to dig through boxes, work on updating the house and trying to settle in.  The summer has seemingly slipped past us and we are now preparing for heading back to school.  I typically don't enjoy heading back to school because I miss my kids being home but I think this time will be different.  I think we are all ready to jump in to a normal school routine and meet some new friends!

Thus, my life has been in a bit of a whirlwind the last few months.  I hope to now be able to keep things a bit more updated!!  Thanks for your patience.