One Year Anniversary of U.S. Citizenship--3/31/10

Hi Everyone--

We've had a blur of activity over the past few days... Chelsea has had massively long track practices, followed by either dance or 4-H stuff in the evenings. Emmy finished five sections for AWANA tonight so she only has four more sections of verses to complete and finish her book. She's planning to say all of them next week to be done-- yeah, Emmy!! Ellie-Kate had a great time playing with AJ at church tonight. She really loves to be with other kids, and she just received yet another birthday party invitation. At two years old, she's clearly the social butterfly of our house :) Britti is working on her thesis and preparing to leave for an eight day visit to Grandma B. and Great-Grandma in Indiana.

Speaking of flying, at this time last year, we were settling into our hotel room in St. Louis after flying for more than 20 hours and back over the International Date Line from our trip to China. We arrived in Chicago around 4:30 p.m., and Ellie-Kate became a U.S. citizen. We were exhausted, but the moment still seemed anti-climatic. So many people crowded the immigration area, and we couldn't even take a picture to preserve the moment. Still, we filed and processed the paperwork, pressed through the lines, and headed for our domestic flight to St. Louis. Our precious little girl was a U.S. citizen, already "our's" but one more step closer to finishing all of the necessary details and paperwork. Once in St. Louis, we walked slowly through the nearly empty airport and checked our phones. Finally, we could do so without incurring international charges. One funny story-- we called Lindsey, our house sitter, and she told us that Emmy had been reported as a missing child by her school. In spite of all of our notes to the school throughout last year (and almost everyone in greater Athens knowing that we were in China), someone at the school reported Emmy as missing! (Needless to say, we called the school right away on the next morning to straighten out the mess...) We took a cab to the Millennium Hotel for my conference, met Abbey (my assistant) who had wonderfully and graciously already checked us into our room, went upstairs without anyone seeing us, and tried to get some sense of order... Even though it was now around 11 p.m., the girls were still on China time (around 11 a.m.). After our time in St. Louis, they were almost back on schedule... A year later, I'm still trying to get over the jet lag:)

Hope that everyone enjoys a blessed Easter week-end! Praise God for all of the many blessings that He has provided to our family :)

More soon--

Christie