Heidi and I spend a weekend or week every summer with her sister Sally and family. Before we had kids, it was our way of having kids in our life and watching them grow. Some of my fondest memories are with Sally and Gary's kids; Shannon, Drew & Jessica. Some years they come to Colorado, other years we go to them in the Chicago area. Also, they own a nice cozy cabin near the Dells in Wisconsin...a great time to swim, boat, fish and catch up on summer reading. The kids are a blast to hang out with!
This year, neither family could make the entire trip to one another's state of residence. Due to other things going on, we had only a four day weekend available to us this year. So, the wives put their heads together and came up with a plan to meet each other half-way. One family would go west while the other would travel east. The half-way point for us all happened to be Omaha, Nebraska! The ladies reserved tee-pee camp sites for us at a very nice state park just outside of Omaha on the Platte River.
All-in-all, it was a great time. Anytime our two families get together is a great time. This was the first time that the new cousins met each other, too! They loved each other!
Our numbers are bigger now and when you factor in Jordan & Holli, we swelled to 12 this year. Our friend, Mayme, came down from Iowa, so we were 13 total. Imagine packing food, clothes and sleeping bags for 12 for four days! The girl's did a great job and we only ate out the one planned time, Saturday night. Amazing! The 12 passenger van we bought a couple of months back is turning out to be a wise move. It was a lot of fun to transport everyone together, everywhere we went. Gary joked that all we needed now was to mount pop-out stop signs and flashers to be a school bus.
When Sunday came and it was time to go, everyone was sad. The kids really bonded well with their new cousins and of course, we never want to leave the Gary & Sally +3 bunch. But, all good things must come to an end and we pointed Fred (the 12 pax van) towards the west.
On the adoption front, most everything is done for our adoption of Rimma +1. Yesterday we were interviewed and we submitted out I-600's to the USCIS. They sent us to get fingerprinted so all is completed now. All we are waiting on is the 171 as a result of yesterday's work, sending the whole dossier to Ukraine, and Rimma's one year wait period to be over. Our first adoption took a year and a half from start to finish. We got the paperwork done this time in two months. It's amazing what a little experience and a cooperative adoption process can do. We are definitely on the fast track this time. We may even have to slow everything down to wait on Rimma. Our facilitator has instructions to have our SDA date on the day she becomes available. Pray for this to happen for us all. And, continue to have Zina in your prayers and thoughts.
All photos courtesy & by permission of Mayme B.
~ Felix ~
