Well it's been a little over 24 hours since our arrival and so far, so good! It was an amazing drive through Arkansas and west TN - lush and green, lots of trees and beautifully paved roads. We arrived to Michael & Bonni's house just after 6pm and were welcomed by lots of excitement and wonderful smells coming from the kitchen. We were thrilled to find out that Michael's mum was visiting as well (Granny Julia) - the last time we saw her was many years ago for the wedding, but she has proved to be a mighty prayer warrior for us during our miscarriage...she is a delightful English woman! So for those of you doing the math, the ratio of kids to adults is now even. We shared a wonderful dinner together and started the process of exploding our things into our quarters. The kids seem very excited to have Abby around...although Abby may have been a bit overwhelmed, she handled it very well.

After such a high excitement evening, we were definitely all ready for sleep. Abby was excited to bunk up with ALL FOUR KIDS, taking the term slumber party to a whole...nutha....level. As the adults hung out downstairs having tea and chatting, some took turns going up to the room to give the kids their "final" warning to settle down. Eventually, they all got to sleep...however, everyone except Abby was up at 5:30am...

Today was all about errands. Bonni was nice enough to let Abby stay and play with the kids while I ran around town getting electricity turned on, checking out the apartment, picking up mail and generally getting reacquainted with the streets around town. Although seeing the apartment was great, I'd have to say the highlight of the day was seeing Abby run around with the kids outside in the huge grassy area. They are having so much fun! They found caterpillars, ate Popsicles, played "Family" with the baby dolls and probably alot of other things that I didn't get to see.

Another great highlight from the day was the return of the circus tent. This was a small little play tent that you can crawl into and play around with. Well, yesterday a gust of wind blew the tent away - and since nobody was around at the time, nobody knew where it blew to! The kids were devastated so they prayed and asked God to please return the tent to them. Well, today in the afternoon there was a knock at the door - a young fellow who lives quite a ways down the road had seen the tent as he was coming home on the bus from school. When he arrived home, he hopped on his bike and rode down to the house to ask if the kids had lost their tent because he had seen one just like it down the way in a field. The kids were ecstatic! Bonni went to the field with the boy and fetched it. The triumphant return of the circus tent was a huge answer to prayer...proving once again that God DOES care about the little things and wants to bless us with the desires of our hearts.

Looking forward to tomorrow - we need to look for some furniture bargains for the new apartment since we either gave away, sold or threw out most of what we owned back in CA. Stay tuned for more adventures...

love from the 'boro,
k