Goodbye Philippines, Hello America

Just a warning this will be long...

Let's start by backing up to those pictures that I mentioned I found when I went to do my last post. Way back on June 8 (I had to look at the date stamp on the pictures in order to remember which day) Val, Michele and I took the kids to play up at the playground at Faith. It really wasn't too eventful, but it was the first time that JoAnn played on the swings and I love the picture of Seth. He loved to play in the gravel and dirt under the gravel. It was pretty funny to watch him, but only because I wasn't the one who had to clean him up. The other picture is JoAnn with Abby and Olivia in front of the condo building.
So now lets jump to Saturday June 26. I went with Michele and Val to a pregnancy clinic being held at the old Village Handcrafters place. First Love recently bought the property and Dave and Michele Clinton are helping to start some new ministries there, one of them being a free clinic for pregnant women where they can come see a midwife. It was pretty fun, they come and have a short bible study, get weighed, take their blood pressure, and a few more things to make sure there aren't any major problems. The midwife showed me how to feel for the baby's head and find their spine to know how it is positioned and she also showed me how to use the fetal heartrate monitor. That one I was content to let her actually find the heartrates. I didn't want to terrify some poor women because I couldn't find the baby's heartbeat. Then toward the end Val showed me how to take blood pressure and let me practice on her.
I have said for some time now that I would love to get some nurse's training, purely from the practical standpoint and the clinic just reinforced that idea. Who knows some time you may see Susan Bucher, RN. Well, we'll see, math education and nursing don't exactly have many class requirements that overlap.

The next day we went to the Arthur Center for church one last time and we had lunch with Pastor Better, his family and Jack and Nelli after to say goodbye. This is everyone except for Jack.
It was hard to say goodbye since I couldn't say "I'll see you in ___ months," like I normally do.

Monday and Tuesday were spent packing and running last minute errands and Tuesday night we got together with the Manthe's and the Clinton's to celebrate Olivia's birthday and to say goodbye. These are the girls that JoAnn spends most of her time playing with when she is playing with other kids. Starting with JoAnn and going around the table we have Jo, Olivia, Kenzie, Abby and Bella. I know Jo will miss playing with them, but hopefully she will have just as much fun playing with her cousins now that we live just a few minutes away.
Mylene and Yannah were also there and Isaiah loved all the attention.
Here is Daniel with Josh and Dave and then me with Val and Michele. We all came over around the same time back in 2005, have been involved in many of the same ministries and have had 6 kids born between the 3 families. It has been fun to go through many of the same experiences together over the last 5 years.



Two more people we had to say goodbye to on Tuesday. Ate Ida and her daughter Ruth. They have been a huge help for me around the house and with the kids for the last three years. It will be difficult to not have them around especially since JoAnn has come to really love them.
After we said all of our last minute goodbyes and packed a few more things, we got up extremely early Wednesday morning and headed to Ninoy Aquino International Airport to get on a plane that took us to Nagoya, Japan, then another that took us to Detroit and finally one last one that brought us here to Indianapolis. If any of you have ever made that trip you will know that it takes about a total of at least 21 hours from the time you take off in Manila to the time you land in Indy and it can be brutal. I have had many things like young children, food poisoning, pregnancy, plane delays, etc. make the trip quite interesting, but things actually went quite smooth this time. The kids did about as good as you can expect them to do and Daniel was able to play magical chairs with people so that he could sit next to us (no, the airline did not seat us together when we booked our tickets). Then to make it even better once we got to the airport we had some of the best customer service I've had since we started flying this route. Anyway, here we are waiting in Manila to take off.
This was JoAnn's favorite sleeping position while we flew.
You can't really see it well from the picture, but she was actually standing bent over the seat. I didn't get any more pictures, but on the other side we were greeted at the airport by Daniel's mom, dad and sister Katy as well as my mom, dad, sister and nephew. It was so fun to see so many people right away. Later that night we also saw Ryan, Heather and their kids.

Then after a few brutal jet lagged nights where we didn't get much sleep, we went on Friday to Meridian Hills with Daniel's parents, Heather and her kids to celebrate the 4th. It was so fun we got some good American food, listened to music, saw some animals, had some ice cream and popsicles and ended the night with fireworks. They also had some of those big blow up bouncy things for the kids to play on, but JoAnn preferred the pony rides and popsicles. Oh and how can I forget they had balloon animals too. Here Jo is riding the pony with Daddy and Papa, showing off her balloon animal and then having a popsicle with Eli.

This is Heather holding Isaiah for the first time since he had been sleeping whenever she saw him before.

At the end of the night when the fireworks started I was so excited since JoAnn usually loves them, but she was so tired by the time they started that she was terrified and wouldn't let go of Daniel, who somehow managed to fall asleep during them.

I didn't get any pictures but on Saturday, Matt and Britt came over with their daughter Addison for a few hours. It was so fun to catch up and have the guys take the kids swimming. I have been looking forward to catching up with them for so long that it went by way too fast and I didn't want to stop for even a second to take a picture.

This morning we went to church for the first time since we got back and I loved every minute of it. I think that is always my favorite part about being home, next to seeing all of our family and friends that is. They had a great place to take Isaiah and feed him. It was great they had everything I could have needed for the baby including a baby scale...ha. I couldn't imagine why they had it and sort of laughed to myself, but I saw more than one mother using it. And there was a good sermon from the book of Matthew. As hard as it was to say goodbye to everyone, I am definitely excited to be home. Once again I am caught on that emotional roller coaster.