Wayside Inn and Mary Had a Little Lamb

We returned to MA for our last week in the States before returning to Africa. On the way there we spent a few days in Maryland again with my sister, Amy, and her family. We got to watch one of my nephew's play soccer as well as test out the snow cones (water ice) at the shop where my other nephew works. I'm all for eating ice cream to show support to our family. We also spent a day at a local farm picking blueberries, blackberries, and nectarines.

Back in MA, two of Krista's friends (Joyce and Lisa) flew in to visit us for a few days. We enjoyed reconnecting with them and showing them some of our favorite places in MA. High on that list is the Wayside Inn, which is a historic colonial inn. Eating there with my dad and Grandma is always on our "to do" list while we're in the States.


After feasting on the great food at the Wayside Inn, we headed over to the Little Red School house on the property. This school house was moved to the property by Henry Ford. It's the school house of the famed song, "Mary had a little lamb."


Silas is showing he's king of the rock in the school yard.


Kira testing out the school supplies and desks.

Brynn drawing Mary's lamb.

Family Times

The day after the wedding, we enjoyed a relaxing day at a park with all of Krista's family. Bethany and Jacob joined us before heading off on their honeymoon. It was nice to enjoy hanging out together without having to take care of wedding plans. Here's a picture of Krista with her brother and sisters.
We were blessed to stay in a house owned by Krista's home church during our time in NC. Aside from being a great place to stay, it also gave us room to host family and friends. My brother, Drew, and his family drove up from Atlanta to visit us our last weekend in NC. Here's Elayna with her cousin, Rayna, who is the same age. We're very thankful for Jacob's family who let us crash their homestead for day to hang out and swim with my brother's family.

Wedding Bells

Krista's sister, Bethany, married Jacob while we were in NC. Here they are with all of their nieces and nephews plus Jacob's younger brother.


Silas and the other boys looked quite dapper.


We thought it was a good opportunity to try to get a family picture. Now you see the behind the scenes glimpse of how most of our family picture attempts turn out. There always seems to be one turkey in the crowd doing something silly that makes the picture unusable. Elayna was the turkey in this shot covering her face with the bouquet.


And here is everyone looking beautiful with their wedding outfits and hairdos.

Who Are You?

We have two nieces who were born while we were in Africa. Anyone who knows my wife knows that she loves babies. That could be the understatement of the year. She couldn't wait to get her hands on these sweet little girls... and they are sweet. This is Amanda's (Krista's sister) daughter.

Here's our other niece, Ben's (Krista's brother) daughter, who we met in NC as well. She entertained us greatly. My personal favorite was the day she started chanting, "I need candy. I need candy. I need candy...."

Our kids adore spending time with their cousins, aunts and uncles. Here's Silas meeting his cousin for the first time.

On our way back from our time in New Hampshire, we stopped at a 1950's style diner. Outside the diner we captured this picture of the kids with Grandpa and Papa. It was special spending a week with both of them at the same time.

Kira's Party

We have Kira's birthday party around her 1/2 birthday since her real birthday is so close to Christmas. This year, she chose to celebrate her birthday with some of her cousins at Chuck E Cheese.

Getting tickets from playing the games and then turning them in for prizes at the end was some serious motivation. They also thought the tubes up in the air by the ceiling were a blast.

Beach Days

All of Krista's family converged on North Carolina for her sister's wedding. We spent 3 weeks there. Naturally, we had to fit in a quick 2 day trip over to the beach. While we have lots of sand in Africa, we don't have much water where we are so the ocean is a special treat. All of Krista's family made it to the beach for some great times in the sun. Silas loved taking on the waves. Here he is preparing himself for the next "monster" wave.



You can't go wrong digging and playing in the beautiful wet sand on the Carolina beaches. Here's Kira playing.


Elayna is always a delight and full of life. She finds so much joy in each new experience.


The kids spent a lot of time hunting for shark's teeth and buckets full of shells.


All the cousins helped bury Brynn in the sand.

Here are Nana and Papa with all of their grand kids.

Summer adventures in NH

We were blessed this summer to be able to spend 6 weeks in the States for vacation and to participate in the wedding of Krista's sister. I'll do several posts to recap our summer and bring you up to date since then. We started off with a bang -- a week of appointments taking care of all of our outstanding dental and medical items that are hard for us to deal with in Africa. Then we spent a week in New Hampshire with my dad, my sister's family, my grandma, and Krista's parents. The kids had fun playing with their cousins, riding bikes, swimming and enjoying lots of fun activities in the area. One of the highlights was going to Clark's Trading Post. Our kids are sitting on the black bear that welcomes you to the trading post as you enter.


Clark's Trading Post is famous for their trained black bears. It was impressive watching them work with the bears. Of course, I would do most those tricks too if I was being fed ice cream like them after each performance.

They also got to ride the Segways at the trading post. The all terrain version could be useful here in Africa.



Everyone loves the blaster boats. You can see the mischievous grin on Elayna's face as she heads toward the side to try to soak me.

The girls had their first experience with rock climbing. Kira caught on quickly and made it up the wall several times.


After a long fun day at the trading post, everyone cooled down with huge ice cream cone.



This area of NH is also famous for it's fields of wild lupines. It's amazing to see whole fields filled with these beautiful flowers.

I know I'm biased, but I think our sweet Brynn in the middle of the fields is even more beautiful than the flowers.


Grandpa treated us all to lunch at the Mt. Washington Hotel. Here are all the kids sitting with Grandpa behind the hotel. The hotel sits in the valley at the base of Mt. Washington. This day it was actually clear enough to see the top of the mountain.


We found this big plastic platform while walking around the hotel. It looked to us like a dance floor, so the girls wanted to try their hand at dancing with Grandpa, Papa, and Daddy. After we danced for a while, we learned that it was actually an artificial ice skating "rink".

One of the items on the kids' "to do list" while in the States was to roll down a grassy hill. Living in a sandy country, there's not much grass around or grassy hills to roll down. The day after we got to Grandpa's house, the kids went out in his yard and repeatedly rolled down the little hill in his yard. Well, this hill behind the Mt. Washington Hotel was a like a dream come true. It was a huge gentle hill plush with grass. They couldn't get enough of rolling down this hill with their cousins.


One afternoon, my brother-in-law, Dave, and I decided to go mountain biking. I borrowed my nephew's bike. About 2.5 miles into the woods, I got a flat tire. We discovered that there wasn't any patch kit in the pouch on his bike. We took turns carrying the bike out of the woods. Our first stop after getting out of the woods was the local bike shop to repair the tire and supply the bike with repair items for the future. We had a more successful mountain biking outing a few weeks later in a state park in Maryland near Dave's home.