Michigan by way of Missouri?

     When we finally summoned our courage to tearfully leave our beautiful Texas family, with the goal of heading to Michigan to visit my sister Melissa and Ethan.  We headed north to Missouri to visit with some dear friends. 

    Paul and Rhonda have been called by God to volunteer at a camp for disabled kids called Camp Barnabas.   They invited us to come see the heartwarming work they are doing there, and it was incredible to witness.   Paul runs the waterpark there at the camp, and does many handyman tasks as well.  We took part in meals with the campers, and it was so neat to be accepted there among such special people.   An incredible experience overall, and it was great to catch up with some of our RVing friends.  Here are us and our hosts enjoying the slide at the waterpark:

    After our visit with Paul and Rhonda, we pointed the nose towards Kentucky for a couple of reasons. We wanted to visit with Staci's family in Paducah, and we wanted to spend some time learning more about the Creation museum and The Ark Experience. First we stopped and Rob and Missy's and Butch and Susan's compound.

Visiting with Carol was super fun, and I even helped get her truck fixed up a bit while we were there.  Justin came down from Idaho to join in the fun, and it was awesome to see him too.  Miri and Derek came briefly, so it was quite the righteous family gathering!

We then meandered towards the Creation Museum, which was quite overwhelming with information for a one day visit.

We bought a 3 day ticket for the Ark and Creation Museum, but ended up spending two days at the Ark, as it was even more engaging than the Museum and had mostly the same information in it.  It was quite the impressive structure too!

Well, we were headed to visit Melissa after all, and we eventually made it to Michigan and stayed in one of Thousand Trails campgrounds, which was not very impressive, as it was full of mosquitoes and lots of rain happened, closing the main drive into our section for 24 hours or so.

Luckily, Melissa talked us into going a bit further up the "thumb" of Michigan to stay with Jack's family, and we had a much better experience up there.

Stay tuned...

Summer in Northeast Texas

In this episode, we are off to Texas again, this time to remind ourselves why we try to stay away during the summer months.  As it turns out, Courtney and Alexander had a tree blow over during a storm which narrowly missed their house.   This family truly is blessed, as this tree could have easily crushed their house.  Let the chainsaw work begin!

After a week or so of sweltering chainsaw work, and many gallons of sweat, this tree was bucked up into reasonably sized pieces small enough for their friend Willie's tractor to haul. Thanks for the save, Willie.

We had a wonderful time, and Elisheva really enjoyed visiting Gramma in the camper!

We even were able to get away and visit with our high school friends Eric and Jennifer. We stayed at their house on the lake for a few days and they even took us out on their boat on Cedar Creek Lake.

During this wonderful visit, we received the amazing news that we were going to be proud grandparents once again!  Elisheva got to make the announcement at church one Saturday with her new shirt:

We were able to be there during Elisheva’s birthday,  and we all went to the Dallas Aquarium in Celebration.  She REALLY loved seeing the undersea life in person, and we all had an excellent time there.

This was an incredible trip to Texas, and well worth enduring the heat to make it happen. It was such a blessing to be  with family and present during some special moments in their lives. These moments are priceless and will be cherished forever.  We will be back as soon as possible for sure!