Christmas Week

We safely arrived in Michigan a week ago, just barely. Our flight was delayed out of LAX by two hours thus projecting that we would miss our connecting flight in Cleveland since our original layover time was only 55 minutes. The holiday backup due to weather was already evident with long lines of disgruntled passengers and delayed arrivals. The Lord was very gracious to our family because when we landed in Cleveland at the time our 2nd flight was to depart, we called the information line and found out that our flight was delayed due to incoming connecting passengers. We prayed that we were those passengers! We ran like an insane family through the terminal not even bothering to put Luca in the stroller. When we got to our gate it was indeed our family they were waiting for! If they had not held the plane for us we would have either had to have Munga & Gramma make a 6 hour drive to pick us up or wait until 7:30pm the following day to get our rescheduled flight out to Grand Rapids. We are thankful for the Lord's traveling mercies!

We had a wonderful Christmas celebrating with family. It was the first time in 5 years that we have celebrated Christmas Day with Jonathan's family. It was indeed a white Christmas. Samuel enjoyed shoveling snow with Munga, while Emma & Luca's snow tolerance was very short. Sled rides were taken up and down the covered streets but the weekend rains melted a lot of the snow thus detaining the hill sledding for the time being.


We went to a Griffins Hockey Game the day after Christmas and Samuel really enjoyed that. Luca and Emma found it fascinating for about the first period. Emma was very concerned about the players going into the penalty box for being "naughty" and wanted to see their angry faces. Samuel was insistent on cheering for the Red Wings. And Luca was happy to take 2 periods to devour a bag of popcorn.

Our departure is only 2 weeks away and the packing has begun in full force. Currently we have 5 bags packed and are hoping that our 10 bag limit will be sufficient, but we'll see if extra bags are needed soon enough. Thank you for your continued prayers for us as we wrap up our time stateside.

We found out 2 weeks ago that our house in Leini' got flooded. When our colleague, Brad, checked it out there was no standing water but a watermark of 7 inches in our garage was evident along with some moisture and dampness in our office. We are thankful the major items seem to be okay, but we'll find out more of the extent when we get home. They are just things of course and all things considered it could have been worse. Spring cleaning will come early this year it seems!