Our Family is Lots of Fun

We said goodbye to the 90-year-old great-grandfather today, as he left for Ontario. The American great-grandmother left earlier this morning. I (Russell) was one of those lucky people that grew up with one of my great-grandparents, and to see my son playing with six of eight was very special. We are thankful to everyone, including our team, who let us come and share Jackson with all of his family. We still have a week in Winnipeg as the leaves turn yellow, then it is back to America for the final month of travel. Patience to all who wait for our visit. We are having so much fun.

Furlough 2008: OKC, Stillwater, Blackwell

This is just a quick update while JT sleeps in. We got in Tuesday after a long day of flying. Jackson did so well. He got waaay more sleep than I did on the plane!

In OKC we got to: go to Target, go to church at Mayfair (Jackson's first time going to class!), go to Bunco with the girls, enjoy many meals with friends, get family pictures done and sleep a bunch recovering from the trip. And JT started crawling full force.

Then yesterday we drove up to Stillwater where R's mom works. She showed off the grandbaby and we ate at Hideaway Pizza and did a little clearance shopping at Old Navy.

Then we drove up to Blackwell, R's hometown. We all went out to the Kay County Free Fair. Jackson loved looking at the animals and we ran into lots of people we knew. I had an Indian taco and a funnel cake which made me happy, though today I wish maybe I had only had ONE fried item.

Today we'll hang out at "Grandma's house" (weird to call it that!) and tomorrow we'll go to church here in Bwell before heading on the big journey north.

A Little Stressed

Jackson, originally uploaded by russandval.

I'm going nuts trying to get ready for furlough. Russ and I were pretty good at packing our stuff up and heading out the door. Now we've got an additional person to worry about, a person who likes to take up our time during the day to keep us from getting stuff done and who, just this week, has decided that he doesn't like sleeping that much. Oh and he's got a cold. But we'll get it done and get on the plane on Monday whether our suitcases are full or not. (Anyway, aren't we supposed to leave for furlough with empty bags so we have room to fill them up?)

Several people have asked if we'll be coming their way or not, so I thought I'd post a rough schedule for everyone. I hate making our schedule because no matter what I have to leave people and places out. But we only have six weeks of furlough and two weeks of vacation and I love you all but we need our vacation time!

And this is a rough schedule--there are some travel and personal days I'm leaving out.

Sept. 9-Sept. 12 OKC
Sept. 12-14 Blackwell, OK
Sept. 17-29 Winnipeg
Oct. 1-3 Raleigh, NC
Oct. 3-6 Myrtle Beach, SC
Oct. 11-20 Athens, TX
Oct. 24ish-Nov. 10 Blackwell/OKC

So maybe we'll be near you, maybe not. We really would love to see as many people as we can but we're also trying to be aware of our limitations with the little guy. Drop us a line if you want to try to meet up!