I'm so in love with these beautiful children!!

After a long, long day of travel, we made it to Tennessee on Monday. We flew from Minneapolis, MN to Milwaukee, WI. Our flight was delayed in Milwaukee, which caused us to miss our next flight. I give glory and praise to the Lord that this did not happen on our trips to Africa, but it still was a challenge entertaining two little kids in an airport for five hours. Malia walked all over the place, and said 'Hi!' to everyone she saw. Of course, everyone loved her. A stranger came up to me and told me she had seen me chasing my little ones for quite some time. She told me how beautiful Malia was and what a blessing adoption was. She could tell I was a bit tired and starting to show that I'm pregnant, she encouraged me that she had 4 kids in 5 years and told of the blessing they are today. :o) Of course now her kids are teenagers/young adults. When we finally got on our plane, the kids slept from Milwaukee to Atlanta, GA. We were on standby for a connecting flight in Atlanta, and we basically ran through the airport to get to our gate. We had seats on the plane and were able to hop right on. Unfortunately, our seats were not next to each other, and I drew the short stick. Nick and Kaleb each had their own seat, and I was stuck on an inside seat with Miss Peppy (as my Grandma calls her). She ate animal crackers and tried to share them with everyone around. We were near the back of the plane, and she greeted everyone with a "Hi!" as they deplaned. Praise Jesus, our luggage actually made it to Nashville with us!

We have spent the past two days fellowshipping with the Green Family. Oh how we love them. It still amazes me that we spent less than a week with them while in Africa, and they feel like family. Hopefully they feel the same ;-), but we sure feel like we belong here!

Yesterday we had the extreme pleasure of visiting with our friend Sallee Couch. If you recall, we traveled with them on our first trip to Africa, and they adopted the precious Samson Jude. Sallee found out shortly after brining Samson home that she had ovarian cancer. She has truly been through so much in the last few months, and again, it feels like she is a part of our family. God blessed all of us with the fact that she was feeling GOOD! She had her third round of chemo on Tuesday, and we were worried she might be feeling sick. We had the best 2 1/2 hours of conversation. We were bummed her kiddos and husband weren't home, but we are crossing our fingers that they make it to the reunion festivities on Sunday.

I cannot say enough about all the kiddos. Our Kaleb and Kaleb Green are BFFs. They play so nice together! Little Kali Green absolutely adores our Malia. She holds her and follows her all over. Bennet came running out to the garage before we even got out of the car. Have I mentioned how grateful I am to God for bringing all of these dear people into our lives? I have a hard time finding the words to tell you how special they are in my heart. Gatlin Green is as sweet as ever. She and her friend Jessie have been super helpful with Malia. In case you didn't know already, the Greens' are super musical. They have done a lot and continue to do a lot in the music industry, particularly the Christian music industry. Gatlin, I just have to say, can BLOW. I have got to see if Wendi can help us upload a song of her singing. She knocks my socks off.

Today we have enjoyed time in the pool and are going out for pizza tonight. We are super pumped for tomorrow to see Dan the Man, his daughter Tigist and the rest of his family. We will also be moving over to Rick & Amanda Flores' house for the rest of our trip. I hear we are having a date night tomorrow! More to come...

We spent the last 24 hours with my mom, grandma, aunt and uncle. While the kids didn't do much sleeping, we all had a great time. We spent last night at "Great Evelyn's" as Kaleb calls his great-grandma, and then traveled to my aunt and uncle's (June & Jim) cabin today for some fun in the sun. This was Kaleb's first time fishing, and he caught his first little sunny only a few seconds after dropping his line in. He is hooked (pun intended :-) ) on fishing. He caught 7 fish today and was even brave enough to touch one. He also loved the boat ride Uncle Jim gave him. Malia was a wild woman, as usual. When Kaleb caught a fish, she grabbed right on to it. She loved the boat ride, too, and fell asleep in Grandma Rosie's arms. We enjoyed our quick get-away, and are starting to look forward to our fast-approaching trip to Tennessee for our adoption agency's annual reunion. We will definitely post more about that later!