An Eventful Weekend at Home

Steve and I headed to Ohio last Wednesday night to spend a few days with family and friends over the holiday weekend. Our first time back in three months, and it felt strange. It was like we were traveling to a completely different world, a million miles away from our world down here. A few pictures to document the weekend:

We got to see our favorite (read: only) nephew, Dawson, who's growing like crazy. He is now seven months old and the most joyful and entertaining baby I have seen. Kaleb (his dad) got him up even though he'd just been put to bed when we arrived...you'd expect a baby to be cranky under such circumstances, but instead he had me laughing the whole time. Hilarious and just adorable, as you can see.

Thursday was full of family gatherings and gorging ourselves on good food, of course. Actually I didn't do too badly--paced myself so that I was pleasantly full but not miserable. I considered this a huge success...though the cumulative effect of the weekend was three extra pounds on the scale :(


Friday night featured a family night with the Kannels, complete with a science experiment! Ben (Steve's little brother) had recently gone on a science field trip and was telling us about a challenge to build a tower with 40 pieces of spaghetti and 40 mini-marshmallows. The winning tower had held 79 pennies on a cardboard platform. Well, that had us curious. So my mother-in-law produced the supplies and Ben explained the requirements. My brilliant husband far surpassed the winning tower--though of course, he has an engineering degree, and these were eighth graders. But the tower he built with his dad and brother held three rolls of various coins plus several extra pennies before it finally toppled!

I've wanted to have a quilt made from my old volleyball t-shirts ever since I saw my friend Brianne's quilt. This weekend, I finally got to pick up my own quilt! Steve's cousin Priscilla agreed to take on the project last winter--she finished it in August but I didn't get it until now. She did fantastic work--it is exactly what I had hoped for and so heavy and warm! I was so excited.

Saturday featured lunch with Jules--it was so good to catch up with her, though of course not long enough--and a Christmas shopping trip with my mom. We had a great time together and enjoyed dinner at the new Bravo at the mall! Yum!


Then on Sunday, we headed to Indiana for another Thanksgiving. Afterward we got to stop and see my newest cousin, Matthew. He's a cutie!

That should have marked the end of our time at home. But it wasn't so. To make a very long story short, my car's minor problems turned major. God was so good to us in that had we not stopped to see my cousins, we might have been stranded on the highway somewhere in the middle of the Indiana cornfields. Instead we were only a few blocks from their house, and my parents were still there. So we left the car and went back home with my family--only to return to Fort Wayne on Monday, load up the car and arrange to have it worked on. We're so thankful for the generosity of Steve's grandparents, who are letting us borrow their extra car until Christmas.

At any rate, we finally made it home last night and it is good to be back. As I remarked to Steve: Funny how "home" always seems to be somewhere you're not. A week ago, we were eagerly anticipating "going home" and remarking how long it had been. Last night, we were anxiously looking forward to "getting home" again.