VISITING FRIENDS in ARLINGTON, Texas

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Friday evening we picked up Jedidiah (my brother) up from the DFW airport. He flew in after spending two weeks at a missionary kid re-entry camp (he is an MK from Bosnia) in California and will be starting college in East Texas. We all spent the night in Arlington with the Bowdens. I was a nanny for this family 12 years ago and hadn’t seen them since. Now the “kids” are all grown up – two in college and two with “real” jobs. We had a fun time Friday evening reminiscing (we didn’t get into bed until 2am). They had so many stories of travels abroad. Mr B looked at me and said, “You started all this traveling.” I was clueless and asked him to explain. “While you lived in our home, you told so many stories of traveling and it really inspired us to let the kids go…and they have.”

Saturday we hung out at the Bowden’s club where Ryan participated in a tennis (or as Tyler says “tennis- see” – like the state) camp wearing flip flops (true Paraguayan style). Then we all hung out by the pool. A high school buddy of Jeff’s, Jason Owens, came to visit with us. At 4:00 Jeff and I went to a wedding of one of his residency classmates, Mandy Dykstra. While at the reception, we were able to visit with two other of his classmates, Heather Harshman and Martha Rodriquez-Ruiz.

Bowden family


Ryan playing tennis


Jeff with high school friend, Jason


At Mandy's wedding with residency friends

AMONG BEST FRIENDS in Hurst, Texas

Friday, July 24, 2009

Proverbs 17:17 - A friend loves at all times.

The older I get, the more I cherish my friendships. God has given me 3 best friends since high school (one of those has been my best friend since 6th grade). During and after college we all married, moved to different towns and started our families (I always lived the farthest away!). We tried to get together as often as we could, usually to help celebrate new arrivals. No matter how many months (or years) we spend apart, we always pick up right where we’ve left off. We always bring up the same ridiculous stories of school days and laugh till we cry.
Today we got our families together at Alexis’ house. It was so much fun relaxing by the pool, eating Ashley’s grilled burgers, introducing them to terere, watching the kids play together, and catching up with friends.

This is what Lauren wrote to us before we met:
I have been thinking about how much our lives have changed and the struggles and blessings that we have all been through since we were all together. We have struggled with moves, changes of jobs, financial insecurities, deaths of loved ones, illnesses, hospital stays, premature births, spiritual warfare and cancer (to name a few). We have also been blessed with moves, new jobs, new babes, spiritual warfare, new homes, new brothers and sisters added to our spiritual family, and the blessing of seeing God is action throughout it all (to name a few). I would love if we could have a special time of prayer tomorrow. Nothing super structured or anything. But just a little time set aside to thank God for all we are blessed with and that we can all be together again.
Looking forward to seeing y'all!

And that is exactly what we did. After a day of playing, we prayed together. What a blessing great friends are!

fun in the pool


Showing off


Best friends


Here's the whole gang

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE....

July 23 we celebrated Uncle Steve’s birthday with a cookie cake after lunch. Jeff and I took him out to dinner that evening.



July 26 we celebrated Uncle Jedidiah’s 18th birthday and his high school graduation. We had a great time visiting.

SCOTT FAMILY

What a joy it is to be with good friends! Wednesday morning we had breakfast with the Scott family at Cracker Barrel.

QUOTABLE QUOTES

In the airplane:

Joshua: “I thought I’d be able to see planets and stars while in the airplane, but I am glad that there is a bathroom.”

Micah asked to go potty a lot just so he could flush the airplane toilet and watch the “oooo, blue” liquid flush down.


In the airport in Miami:

Ginny: “What is that?”
Mom: “A water fountain.”
Ginny: “Wow! I’ve never seen one in real life. Can I try it?”

Ryan: “People keep speaking English to me and by the time I realize what language to answer back, I have to go.”


At the Grandparents house:

Ryan: “Grandma and Grandpa must be rich. I see so much carpet here.”

Ginny: “I thought this was a mansion but then I saw that the back yard was small.”

Joshua: “What is this?” (pointing at the microwave).

Ryan: “This will save me tons of time.” (when I explained that when he had dish duty, all he had to do was rinse and load the washer. The dishwasher was a real novelty for all the kids).

None of the kids believed me when I told them that they can now flush the toilet paper down the toilet. Not throwing the paper in the trash will be a hard habit to break.


Around town:

Ginny to Ryan: “Are those mailboxes? I’ve never seen one in real life.”

Ginny in the pool: “Watch me dog peddle.” (doggie paddle)

Ginny: “Mom, what’s a Wal-Mart?”

Thursday Jeff’s mom, Ginny and I were in a car accident. We crashed pretty hard into the person in front of us, but thankfully no one was hurt. After a few second Ginny said, “Why aren’t we moving?” I looked back at her, “Honey we hit the car in front of us. Didn’t you feel that?” Ginny answered, “Oh, that’s what that was? I thought we just went over a big bump.” Ah, my girl is very use to our bumpy dirt roads!

Ginny (when we saw a dog running across the street): “I thought you said there were no animals in American, Mom.” (what I said was that there were no chickens and horses and cows roaming the streets.

JULY NEWSLETTER

Our July newsletter is out, mailed and delivered thanks to the help of kids. We set up an assembly line and got to work assembling, folding, stuffing, stamping, and licking (we are thankful for Jeff’s parents who do this for us while we are in Paraguay). I was the last station. My job was to close the envelope and inspect the final product (stamp right side up, address label straight). What a sweet time it was for me to pray for each of our supporters by name. We are so blessed by each of you who send financial support each month, pray for us regularly, write to encourage us, and send us care packages.

We usually send out our newsletter to those on our e-mail list and to those whom we have physical addresses for. This time we want to send as many as we can via snail mail because we are including a family picture. If you haven’t received our newsletter/picture and would like to please leave your address in the comments section or send us an e-mail.

Our cell numbers while in the states are: 254.760.1554 or 254.760.2860

LOST (not the TV series)

Joshua's tooth has been really wiggly for a while now but he refused to pull it (or have Jeff pull it) until we reached grandma and grandpa's house. last night Ginny (accidentally?) kicked him and...out it came! He is the first of the McKissick kids to lose a tooth a in the US...an honor he is proud of!

Wiggly tooth


Lost tooth