Feeling of Home, by Kevin

Trent,  Shel, and their kids arrived Saturday for their family vacation. We drove to the airport to greet them with smiling faces, fruit juice, Coke “Light” for Trent, cookies, and chocolate truffle mints (Milan’s, our new favorite candy) in-hand, just to find out their flight had arrived early and we’d missed them. Not to be outdone, we ran back to the car and starting driving toward their rental car company building (a place we’d just happened to catch a glimpse of a week earlier), hoping we still remembered where it was.

We found the rental car company. Success! Or… maybe not. Grrr! We’d just missed them, “by maybe one minute” according to the guy at the front desk. So I ran back to the car and starting driving like a madman. We did not drive an hour to the airport just to miss them. They were going to eat our snacks.

Jodi texted and left voicemails on both their phones, .20 cents a minute be darned, to tell them to pull over if they got it. Problem was, I hadn’t asked what their car looked like. Oops. After cruising through several 40 kilometer/hour zones at over 100 kilometers/hour we saw a little white minivan that had just pulled off to the side of the road. Yay!

Now eat our snacks.

It was so great to see them. It felt really good, kind of like maybe we aren’t quite so far away, after all. It was really, really good to see them. 

After we’d spent some time talking, Shel, Trent, and co. left for their fancy-schmansy hotel and we went to grab some lunch. We found a little german bakery/restaurant off the side of the road. It ended up having a fun little park (with a tramp and pirate ship, even), some places to take pictures (those painted boards with a hole cut-out for your face), and good food. Except that we ordered six “normal” waters and they brought us six bottled waters. We sent them back but then they didn’t bring us anything to drink. It’s okay. We kept the glasses and grabbed a big jug of water we’d brought with us (our new trick is to fill big containers half-full of water, freeze them on their side, and fill the other half with water before heading out for the day). All-in-all, it was a great, little restaurant.

Today, Sunday, we arrived to church thirty minutes early, just to help set up, etc. It took a lot of work to do that. Showers, breakfast, church clothes laid out, all done the night before.

Shel and Trent got to church right after it had started so we didn’t get to sit by them or talk to them until after the meeting. It was a great Sunday to have them, though, because I had been asked to introduce our family (in Spanish, of course) and bear my testimony (which I did by singing Lead Kindly Light, acapella, in Spanish, booyeah, I’m awesome – except that my singing voice isn’t so awesome, too bad for that captive audience! Serves them right for coming to church.) and Jodi had been asked to play a musical number. She walked up to the pulpit beforehand (the Branch President looked really confused) and told everyone, in Spanish, that she didn’t know how to speak Spanish so this musical number was her testimony. And that she was nervous. She played a really cool piece by Bach called Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, which she had been practicing all week long. She also played the accompaniment music throughout the meeting as well as the prelude music. It was neat to have Shel and Trent’s fam there.

We had to leave after Sacrament meeting because I’d committed to taking the Starwalt’s (the family that’s letting us rent their house for the next six weeks) to the airport. We drove home, Jodi started on dinner and lunch, I quickly loaded a bunch of our bags into the car (so Jodi could unpack while I drove them), picked up the Starwalt’s, and drove them to the airport.

We're so excited to finally, after three weeks, fully unpack and settle in. There's even an extra room for me to set up in for my office. So, so great. We haven't taken many pictures yet but here are a few from Autumn:

Tonight Jodi had invited Shel and Trent’s fam, the Johnson’s, and the Blanchard’s (24 people, including us) over to our house… that we’d just moved into this afternoon and we’re still unpacking and organizing. She’s so great. Never a dull moment.

Dinner with everyone was awesome. For a good while, I just sat back, watched, and listened as everyone just talked and talked. It felt like home.