Happiness

Hey Kids!  I'm still alive, in case you were worried. Obviously, I've been a little absent lately, but I have good reasons. 

In other news, over the past couple of years, I've been trying to make a list of 1000 things I'm thankful for.  Not surprisingly, I got the idea from the book One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  I started reading it, but never really finished it.

So, I'm going to give you my "excuses" for not blogging while adding to my list.  (Note: you can view bits and pieces of the list if you click on the "1000 gifts" tag over to the right, or click here.  Random numbering throughout posts indicate items on the list.)
 
156) Kelly, my big sister.
 

 
It was so much fun to have her come and visit!  We had a fantastic time traveling to Germany and Switzerland, than tourisiting it up in London!  We saw so much and did so much, that I have a HUGE backlog of things to tell you faithful readers about.  It is quite overwhelming to try to process what we saw and did and what I thought and felt into blog posts.  And what do we do when a task is overwhelming?  Avoid it, of course!
 
 
157 & 158) Ariel and Jan
 

 
So much fun to see them!  You can read about them here.
 
 
159 & 160) Callie & David

Callie and David are friends from college.  Callie and Kelly were basically besties in their time in the physics program at good ol' TU, and Callie and David are now living in Geneva and working at CERN, so naturally we went to visit them!  More on that visit later, but for now, I will just say they were fabulous hosts and I had a really great time.  And I ate a lot of cheese. And chocolate.


161 & 162) Mom & Dad

It's not everyday you're living in England and your folks come to visit, but it happened!  I had such a good time with them.  As my mom said "You get to have us to yourself!" And indeed I did, and I relished it. Ok, I had to share them with Tim some, but that's ok.  As a chronic sufferer of middle child syndrome, coming just 18 months after Kelly, I didn't have my parents to myself  a lot.  It was a major blessing.


163 & 164) Leah & Janice

My friends Leah and Janice are visiting this week!  Leah studied here for a semester 7 year ago, and Janice is her mom.  I am so glad they are here, and I can't even count the times this week that I have just looked at the two of them and experienced a wave of happiness they are here.  Sadly, they're leaving on Monday, though.


165) Big Time Timmy Jim

You may or may not know this about him, but he's fantastic.  Having all of these visitors requires me to visit a lot of different places and be around a lot of crowds which is taxing, to say the least.  He knows how draining it is, and he is very kind and supportive when I get back from a day spent near groups of screaming school children at museums, obnoxious groups of teenagers touring, and stupid people in general.  I like him.

The excuses end here.  This last one has nothing to do with why I've been negligent of the blog.

166-197)

And the obligatory silly picture...

I know you may count more than 32 people in this picture, but I can explain:

1) I'm really bad at counting.
4) I tried to exclude the people I listed previously on my list in this post, so as to avoid duplicates

My birthday was this week, and Steve (our friend and the youth pastor at our church) of course remembered.  Tim and I work with the youth, so Steve thought it would be nice to send us a picture.  I was so happy I almost cried.  Also: major wave of homesickness.  Major. 

Having said all this, I have so much to tell you, and no more visitors scheduled, so I will try to catch you all of on my adventures and maybe a few misadventures.

Thanks for hanging in there with me, have a fabulous Easter, and I will talk to you next week!