Ticket for 3

Mark, Reesie and I headed back to Michigan for the funeral after a big 7 day stint in our new home. It was this baby girl's first plane flight and she was a total peach.

We were so happy to get to our sweet Grandma Betsy. There truly isn't a more kind and gentle spirit. There's just not.
Ok, the cousins got a little rowdy during the 10 hours at the visitation...and my mother in law who is never short on energy was happy to lie down on the floor and take a picture of us. I love how this turned out!
A church basement meal. Which, I feel is a tradition that will be lost on future generations. There is nothing like church ladies serving up a nice church basement meal. Complete with lemonade and potato chips. Mmmmm.
It was a blessing to have some of our wonderful friends come support as at the visitation. (I didn't have my camera in time to get the afternoon visitors!)
My beautiful sister-in-law.
Turns out we were a little hungry before the funeral. Thankfully we were able to break into the basement stash.
The two DeKorne children and the spouses who were lucky enough to marry in.
The Jack Jr. fam and Grandma (minus lots of precious kiddos!)

I mean really. Look at these skinny beautiful people. Hope my kids get some of these genes!
Reese and Oma
Aunt Joan and me comparing the two youngest grandchildren. They were the same height despite being five months apart!
And this pretty lady....who was a total saint and absorbed another kid for a couple of days, hosted us in her house, and allowed us to swiftly deplete her entire Diet Coke supply.
We had the classic "mechanical problem" on our flight home which left us sitting in the back row of the plane at the gate for TWO hours. With a ten month old. Who doesn't sleep. I think this picture pretty much sums up how we felt about the whole thing.
All joking aside, while the conditions of our trip home were so sad, it was wonderful to get to be with our family and extended family and share in this together. Such a blessing to have such a great group of people to support each other and Grandma Betsy.

Grandpa

As a child born to later in life parents, I never had the privilege of having a grandfather in my life. When I came on to the DeKorne scene the better part of 8 years ago, that changed, and the world's most quintessential grandfather became my own.

On January 9th, we lost this wonderful man, the only man I ever got to call Grandpa. He was wonderful to us, to our children, and to everyone he met. While I wasn't around nearly as long as the "real" family, I feel incredibly blessed to have known him, and been witness to the love story he shared with his beautiful wife of 64 years.

Jack Sr., Jack Jr., Mark, and Ava
Precious people!
I LOVE how Ava is holding onto his finger in this picture. He was so sweet with our girls.
Meeting baby Reese.


We're so thankful we lived in GR while we did. We were fortunate to share many meals, holidays, birthdays, and weekends together at the lake. Grandpa Jack set such a wonderful Godly example, and will be terribly missed.

I'm having a party over here.

Today was one of those mornings I wanted to have a real vibrant pity party. I talked to a friend from Michigan on the phone this morning and she said "hello my dear" and it made me so miss having a group of close friends. Several old friends were getting together today and that makes me so happy, but also sad that I'm not there. And almost more sad that my kids are missing out on being with friends-and will end up having no memory of even being friends. I also wanted to party that I've been eating super healthy for almost a month and only lost a few pounds. That we lost Mark's grandpa. And party about the fact that my sister tried a new recipe last night and instead of tasting it I had to read her email about it. I really wanted to have a big old huge party of pity.

It's not that today was even bad. It started out raining, but I went to bible study, and then had plans to go to lunch and shop with my mom and sister (in love). I had a fun day ahead-but I was still mad. I had really cool visions of me flailing around on the floor sobbing and throwing a tantrum like one of my kids** do. Or curled up in the fetal position. Or eating out of a container of Ben and Jerry's. You get the idea. I got to bible study and looked at all the people who knew each other. I wanted to yell at them. I AM FROM MICHIGAN AND I HAVE A LOT OF FRIENDS THERE AND THEY CALL ME DEAR. I fought back tears the whole morning. Yes, it's sunny here and not frigid. Yes I am by family that I ADORE and truly cherish getting to be close to. But it's still just. so. sad.

But as so often happens, the Lord took my face in his hands. I was reminded of a song that used to play on the christian radio station: "Life is hard. The world is cold. You're barely young and then, you're old. But every beating heart, has always understood. Life is hard. But God is good."

And I remembered it's true. God is good. He is allowing this time of trial and sadness and difficult things we are going through that I'm not even going to begin to blog about-and it will grow us. And we will be better for it. And we will learn things. And our character will be more refined. In the midst of the tears and tantrums, the skies will clear-just like they did this morning. And I truly believe something beautiful will come in the end. Even {worst case scenario} if the end is heaven, it's still coming. And God is still good.

I've cancelled the party. (Not before having a cream cheese, bacon and turkey sandwich, plus potato chips mind you-but it's still been cancelled.) The Lord has given me my infinitely wise sister in law to lunch with, brother to lead my husband in bible study, parents to be with and cousins/nieces to love on. God will provide all our needs. He said so. Maybe even some friends who call me dear. Thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness to us. We are so excited.

**Names omitted to protect the guilty.

Since we've been gone...

We've gotten to have family dinners with our local family. Pretty sunsets outside Grandma and Grandpa's house!

We've had lots of dance parties.
Family breakfasts...
More dancing!
We got to hang out with some great friends from college. (getting sad how long ago college was!)
Kate and Reese
There's nothing like static electricity to make a fun Saturday night!
Kate, Beth, Baby Fiona (coming soon), and me :)
The boys, Beth, and handsome Keller.
Beth and Reese!
My brother's church had a big grand opening and we were excited to be here for it. Got all dressed up in our Sunday best! Love them holding hands walking to the car.
And walking in with their Daddy...
I left my camera in the diaper bag and the lady in the nursery took this picture of Reese because the chairs made her eyes look blue. Love those eyes!
Fun to have family in the lobby of church!
The progression of these pictures made me laugh. Maybe we'll get a good one next time!

And then, it really happened.

I still kind of can't believe it, but it did. The house we loved was emptied of all our belongings. (except for the kid below, we emptied her a few minutes later.) And we began our journey.

You'd never know a huge red door was there. :)
I sure am glad my best buddy went with me. He makes everything fun. Don't be intimidated by our sweet suburban setup, below. The Griswolds called. They want to hang out with us.
We started off well. Everyone was excited to go.
Had some nice stops along the way.
Beautiful sunsets...(don't those arches look cool? :))
But then we started having a fair amount of this.
So we were glad to get here, and be greeted by the cutest girls around.
:)
Funny story: We got the girls in bed around 9 and continued to unpack the car and get settled. At around 11 Mark was missing something and wondered if it had mistakenly been put in the girls' room. We turned the corner to go sneak in and look and saw the light on in their room. (2 hours after they had been put to bed and not napped for TWO days in the car.) This was what was in their beds. The absence of children.
And this is what we found. Ava was completely dressed and Kaiya had apparently decided to go with a costume change when we found her. Not pictured: the dirty diaper Kaiya had ditched at her own will and the skid marks all over the carpet where she had been sitting to put on her pants. I only took one picture because obviously we were trying to pretend like we were really upset.

Of course in reality I've never been more amused yet in my parenting career. I love that my girls have fun together-and I guess there's just a little learning curve when sharing a room for the first time. A wonderful memory of our first night in a new place. :)

See ya next year!

Our last night in Grand Rapids was spent with our good friends celebrating New Year's Eve. The girls had a fabulous time.

So did their mamas.
And their fathers. Oh the fathers.
We had ourselves a good time. Complete with some of this...
and some of that. (What IS that??!!)
Great to see you 2011.
Praising God for a wonderful 2010, and looking forward to new ways to serve Him in 2011.