Long time, no post!

As many of you have noticed, it's been awhile since I blogged last. We have been out of the home since the beginning of the month. Travel has been interesting--more so than usual! Our first hotel we were supposed to have two adjoining rooms. We had two rooms but they were five doors apart. Also, the hotel was supposed to have a crib for Lydia, but when we got there we were informed that they never have cribs...not really a good place to have a FAMILY education conference! This led to a lot of confusion and early nights for us. I think I went to bed at 9 or so a couple of times. But from there the trip looked up. We were blessed with relative health, only one small 24 hour virus and a couple of colds. The kids had a great time in the their classes. Even Lydia seemed to love playing with the other babies. We also had a great improvement in name recollection this year. Last year, all of the kids' teachers were simply called teacher and the other kids were just called girl and boy. Lydia was lovey with all of her teachers and has done better not "having" to have Mama all the time. Big plus for Mama!
But for us the best time was the middle week of our trip with the blessing of great worship time and preaching. One of the highlights that week was the day we Lydia dedicated. It was a great moment knowing that all of our friends were committing to pray for her and us as she grows up. After the baby dedication, the kids (including Isabella and Elijah) got up to give a little concert. They were so cute! Last year only Isabella was in the concert and she refused to sing. But this year both sang and sang with smiles and all the motions! Elijah likes to sing the song "I have a friend, his name is Jesus J-E-S-U-S." Well, his spelling skills are still developing, so he spells it "S-U-S-U-S." Isabella who started the week out only swimming with her floaty, now splashes around without it. (Yes, this is still just the kiddie pool, but we felt it was a big step!)
Once we finally finished all our meeting, we headed back to Bangkok. Tim and Elijah then flew back home and we girls stayed in Bangkok for Isabella to have her tonsils out. With that done, we just waited around for her last two appointments so we could finally get back home. We were suppose to fly all the back on March 8, but as some of you have heard it didn't quite work out that way. We arrived in Kunming only to find out that we had no flight to Nanning. I was really upset. To make a really long and confusing story short, they decided to bump the flight up from 8:20 to 5:30. Not very convenient for me considering I wasn't off the last plane at that point! Oh, well, it's all over with!
And we now have only 18 days until we climb on another plane to head back to the States. I'm a little overwhelmed considering we have not been on US soil in over 2 year. I am anxious to see how America has changed and how we have changed. I am also interested to see how our kids react. Isabella only remembers bits and pieces, and Elijah remembers nothing. Lydia of course has never been! We are really hoping that it will be a very relaxing time of rest and rejuvenation! See you all soon!