Wrapping up the USA...

When the calendar flipped to September, we knew were on the final stretch of our time in America.  We soaked up lots of time with family...

Ellie and her Papa

Celebrating Uncle Steve's birthday at Red Robin!

Aunt Rebecca

My favorite Sunday afternoon treat -- a nap on the back deck with a kiss of sunshine through the waving trees...

Labor Day Nathan and Reni made a quick trip to Kentucky to pick up Reni's finished prostheses...

Evidence of his growth!  The old legs on the left, the new ones on the right!

Because Nathan and Reni had never seen Dad's headstone, we made a visit to Pleasant Hill Cemetery...

We made lots of visits to dear friends in Illinois! 

So we couldn't attend an Ohio State game in person, we did our own form of "tailgating" :-)

Ellie's favorite activity at the farm this trip... archery

Gigi has no shortage of games to enjoy on the spacious yard... 

Storms had ripped the string lights down before our arrival in June.  Nathan found a solution to hopefully keep them more stable and we restrung them.  Here's a little peak at the lovely farm house as Mom has fixed it up -- a real haven...

Hannah took me out to coffee one afternoon...

I was thrilled that my friend, Mandy, flew out to visit us from Denver for a few days.  We work together to coordinate the dozens of language teams translating The Chosen.  She's the brains of our group-- she preps and converts all the translated files so the studio can easily upload them to the app.  50+ languages times 16 episodes and that's a LOT of files.  Especially when you consider that most of those files have to be uploaded again to make edits and corrections to errors that weren't caught until they were 'live.'  

We took her to all the Abraham Lincoln sites... because we don't have a lot of other 'touristy' things in Central Illinois... 

I was so happy to see that the Lincoln Museum is still every bit as good as I remember it to be!

Yay for free sites -- the National Park Service didn't charge for a tour of the Lincoln family home in Springfield!

Prairie winds mean that we have a constant pile of fallen sticks and limbs.  Burning those make for  a great excuse to make s'mores! (And yes, we kept a constant set of supplies on hand for this reason)!

Living so close to my Grandpa is one of the best things about making the farmhouse our home base.  We continued our tradition of showing an episode of The Chosen every Thursday afternoon to the residents at The Lodge in Manito where he lives.

Doesn't he look so good for being 94??

One of the highlights of our time was what I hope is a traditional part of every trip to America... attending a University of Illinois football game!  On the way to Champaign we stopped at this general store for ice cream

Forgive the glut of photos... it was a fun night (even though we lost in the last three seconds)!

Reni did NOT want to take this photo with Nathan

We might have been among the first to get into the stadium... :-)

Ellie's favorite part was the marching band...

More visits with friends before we left!

The Bachmans made us burgers and home grown sweetcorn! YUM! 

This was a happy accident -- running into my Uncle Don!  God gave me a family better than I deserve and whom I'm always happy to see and can't see enough -- even the ones who cheer for the St. Louis Cardinals. 

Prairie Sunsets never get old...

I love the change of seasons and there is something about seeing another harvest... this is the soybean field just outside our bedroom window.

Sunday afternoon lunch after church with all the Waggoners!

Reni just adores his cousin

When your nephew is a star golfer (and super photogenic) you take a photo of his poster in the school gymnasium...

We got to watch our niece, Leah, win in volleyball!

So a box with these goodies arrived in August with no note... not sure who they came from, but THANK YOU!  How fun!

Ugh.  Saying goodbye doesn't get any easier...

My expert packer

Thank you to the kids at Daybreak Community Church for blessing us with their VBS offering!  We bought this sports equipment for the new sports field in the village!

Before we knew it, it was airport day!  We are grateful for parents who release us with their blessings.  Below, Nathan with his dad in their matching gaitors...

We got all checked in without incident... 

What you can't tell in the photo below was how relieved we were to all be on this flight!  Our original flight was canceled -- that led to running to three different terminals at O'Hare.  We also had some scares because of the kids' passport expiration dates (we were not able to renew them in America due to extended backlogs).  We were stopped at every leg to get clearance to travel.

Safely arrived in Albania with all our luggage! 

And that is a wrap on September!