Hola

When my last post was entitiled "adios,amigos!" 

I was referring to leaving the Dominican Republic, not the blogosphere...

but,alas this trip back home has only served to confirm my suspicion.

It's basically impossible to write about life while simultaneously living it...

in America...for me,at least.

Things were not nearly so busy for us back in the DR and one of the benefits of this was more time for writing.

I'll just have to keep trying to figure it out,while refusing to replace writing about life with the simple beauty of just living it.

How absurd would it be for me to not enjoy the actual living of the life that God has given me because I am stressing about the pressure to document it?

And yet perhaps some of you mommas feel this way too?

Scrap booking,picture-taking,blogging,journaling mile stones,whatever...all precious things, but the felt need to accomplish these things in the midst of creating these memories sometimes has the power to steal the memory right out from under us.

Anyway, so here we are...as you probably guessed by now...

BACK IN AMERICA!

Our trip went great. 

The layover in Miami can get a little lengthy,especially because you know that the flight home is under 2 hours which generally means while you spend $100 on a slice of pizza and kink your neck trying to make sense of the muted news, you could have been home 5 times already.

A little tiring, but,alas...

We were home!!!!!

To say our welcome home was sweet is an understatement.

Our family and friends went above and beyond to make sure we knew that they were glad to have us back.

It was the simple things they did for us.

Sweet smelling candles that reminded me we're coming home my favorite time of the year...

Our small group left us signs and our favorite candy...

My family left roses...

They all worked together to clean 2 months of dust from my house for hours on end.

Our family and friends even worked together to stock our kitchen upon our return. I don't think I've had that much food in my pantry at one time for a long time.

They even put air fresheners all over our house to be sure there wasn't a we-haven't-been-here-for -2 months musty smell...isn't that nice?

The morning after our late night arrival, we went straight to our favorite breakfast restaurant to enjoy our welcome home from part of our family. 

It just doesn't get any better than that.

We missed them all terrible. Noah and I have both sides of our family living in the same area with us so were beyond spoiled when it comes to that.

And the festivities continued... on in to that evening, when we met with our small group, who prepared a big meal and childcare so that we could catch up and reconnect. 

Since then we've been spending time with our nearest and dearest, trying to soak up the moments we missed so much in our time away.

The boys miss their friends and the beach in the DR, but they are so happy to be back with neighbors and the back yard creek.

And cousins.

We've been trying to get some quality time with all of our peeps, while also starting our new school year, unpacking, re-acclimating, HaitiLove/support raising, and counting down the weeks before we meet our precious new baby.

Only about 6 more weeks!

I'll try to update soon with pictures of the baby shower, the new school year, and all those big memory makers.

Until then, I'll just keep trying to enjoy the memories while making them!

Thanks for all of your care on our behalf!