Family Time Back Home

...your children will be like olive shoots around your table. 

Psalm 128:3

 

 Breakfast yesterday morning. Look at these olive shoots! God is good.

We made it Back Home safely and are enjoying AH, being a whole family, and visiting with the rest of our family! Talking with the girls at breakfast, the pregnancy-and-childbirth analogy continued, to rather corny lengths...EG says that the 14 hour drive here was the pushing and then we all decided that arriving here was the birth - a home birth, of course. We had a happy laugh over it all.

So many thoughts and feelings swirling around: intense, glorious, nervous, bittersweet, joyful emotions!

Thank you, friends, for the wonderful comments. Such a blessing you are. We are so grateful for your prayers, too.

I have lots of mercies to list - oh, it is heavenly to be in the country at the very birth of spring! And so much I want to say and share...in time, I hope, in time!

For now, here are some photos of the trip itself and what we've been up to this week:

 

 Trying to get us packed up is complicated, especially when I'm taking school for 4 along with us! As I tried to organize my thoughts, I put the kids' responsibilities out for them to see and handle.

On the long drive: CA always cracks us up with her sunglasses. The road trip was not her favorite thing this time...our old enemy Miss Behavior was in the car with us, too.

Cuties at a gas station/bathroom stop. BB took these.

 

 I heart ALL kinds of flowers and am so happy to see purple weeds blanketing the ground!

Dad and BB had a nice morning chat on Sunday - Ethel the Cat joined them (Lucy her sister was elsewhere.)

Last night, we had an informal birthday party for AH and EG (our only spring birthdays). ALL the cousins were able to be there at BB's mom's house. It was happy chaos.

I don't think we have ever made the trip Back Home in spring since we moved to Texas six years ago. I took this season for granted while I lived here! So, the fact that we got to take all the girls out to the botanical gardens and zoo today was the biggest treat ever - plus, it was half-price day at the zoo. Our kids had never (in their memory) been to a real zoo or gardens. It was a happy day. Pics to come!