Travelogue: Bluegrass Visit

I'm finally getting around to sharing photos from the last week of our northeast road trip!  We have so many wonderful friends in central Kentucky, sadly we didn't get to see everyone we would have liked, but we were grateful for the ones we did... dear friends, all.

First up was the "D" family!  Phyllis and Dan facilitated the young marrieds Sunday school class that Nathan and I attended at church as newlyweds in the fall of 1999.  Later on, their youngest daughter "C" and Ellie became fast friends in Sunday school, growing up together in the church nursery!  They're just three months apart in age.  While Ellie has been doing very well with transitions, there were real tears when it came time to say goodbye at the end of the evening.

Sunday morning (Mother's Day) we were privileged to share at five different Sunday school classes at Northeast Christian Church as guests of our friends, Kevin and Amy.  We were hopping, but the challenge was fun and it was neat to engage with such a different variety of folks in each setting! Thank you, thank you, Amy for setting all of that up for us!

We were then treated to lunch afterwards with Amy's extended family (I think there were 22 of us in the group??).  During this visit as well as during our visit back in January, we were pleased to reconnect with Amy's parents whom we hadn't seen since college days!  If you can't tell, Reni conked out during lunch and had no interest in smiling nicely for a photo!

Sunday evening we got to have dinner with our friends, Mark and Carrie and their two children.  Several years ago (way before kids) our church offered something called Summer Supper Sixes where you could sign up to be matched with two other couples in the church.  Each month during the summer a different couple would host supper at their home.  That's how we got to know Mark and Carrie, as well as Mike and Becky (Becky is in a photo down below).  Mark and Carrie's oldest (who somehow escaped getting photographed) is the same age as Ellie.  I guess dressing up like a princess wasn't his idea of 'fun.'  Ellie and M changed their clothes at least half a dozen times!

Look!  We got a house call!  To the RV!  Only a special doctor makes housecalls anymore.  You guessed it, our favorite pediatrician in the whole-wide-world, Dr. Taylor.  We met for lunch and afterwards Ellie asked for some special attention to a splinter in her finger, unfortunately Dr T didn't have the right tools for a splinter, but she could check out Ellie's heart and lungs!

We also got to see our friend and Reni's former PT, Ms. LeeAnn!  And our dear WGM missionary colleagues, Larry and Joy (retirees from East Africa).

We were thrilled that our visit overlapped with the monthly gathering of Wilmore adoptive families.  I was having so much fun talking I missed a ton of folks with my camera.

Then, when our visit to Kentucky got extended an extra day while we waited for Shriners to get something needed in Reni's size before they could cast him, we were pleased to enjoy lunch on a beautiful May afternoon with our friends, the Gouges.  Such happy memories.

Before we knew it, we were back on the road again, a place that these kids are very well accustomed to now.  Just today Ellie asked, "Did we meet the WHOLE world in our RV?"