We are back!!

Pics: Turi and Bitsu with watermelon on the 4th; Curt and the girls splitting wood at my parents, my Mom and Carmen

Well, I know you have been anxiously awaiting this post :). Finally, after a week and a half home, I am able to sit down and write a bit. Here's the run-down:

Chicago: 5 days. This is where my brother, sister-in-law and nephew (2yrs.) lives.
Ohio: 4 days. We got to see Curt's parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece (4m.) and had a big family reunion and re-connected a bit with the church that supports us.
NJ: 4 days. Just a stop-over at my parents on the way to ME.
ME: 4 weeks.
NJ: 5 days. Hung out more with my family and re-connected a bit with the church and supporters that support us there.
South NJ: 2 days. Hung out with some old friends.
VA: 4 days. Visited some old friends and re-connected with a few supporters from VA.
Curt and the girls drove the 36 hours home. I flew out of DC with Carmen.

The trip was good overall. Carmen (my main concern) did excellent. He still napped well (despite noise and heat in different homes) and slept well at night. In the beginning, he was waking early (4am!!) and not going back to sleep. Finally, he decided that wasn't going to work and started sleeping until 6 again. I thought I was going to die for awhile :). The main worry with him was constantly trying to find a quiet place for him to nap.

The girls did great. They enjoyed the traveling, meeting all their uncles finally (they had never met my youngest brother or the brother that lives in Chicago) and their cousin. Two of the weeks that we were in ME, they spent in NJ with my parents. They had a BLAST. They spent a week at the beach and a week at my parent's house. So much fun.

ME was really fantastic. Curt and I learned a lot about ourselves, our marriage and about Lifelines. We have never really gotten to see Lifelines modeled to us. This summer we did and it gave us great vision for what we want to see happen here at NAU. The main thing we learned about was using the concepts in the book "Changes That Heal" in group. If you haven't read it, we suggest you do. It really challenged us with the areas of life that we haven't matured yet. And we want to bring that to our students with adding God to it, of course. I am personally really excited to use this with my sorority girls. We will start off with the concepts in "Changes that Heal" for the first couple of weeks and then jump right into storying. I can't wait.

More to come 'cause this is long :)