Old Friends

Where to begin? We had such a good time with the Bontragers last week. It was so good for all of us to be around old friends. And it was nice to be able to show them a bit of our world. Of course, the boys were in their heaven too.

They got here Tuesday evening. We put the boys to bed at a decent time. Evan woke up several times during the night. The first time he was wet. As Kendall and I were helping him, Eli eagerly got out of bed and said, "Good morning, Evan!" as he breezed by him to go out toward the living room. Unfortunately for Eli, it was still the middle of the night and he still had to wait a few hours to start the day with Isaac. Also unfortunate for Eli was the fact that he was heaving into the sink at 7 am. I was quite unhappy about that since our fun was just starting and the Bontragers still had lots of vacation left. Not a good time for anyone to get sick. But we prayed and others prayed and that was the end of that.

Eli and Isaac spent hours playing outside in the snow on Wednesday. That day we went for our winter picnic. We had hot ham and cheese (burnt, of course), s'mores and hot chocolate. (Thanks to Jodi!) Thankfully, it wasn't too cold. We came home and most of us took naps. Then it was back outside for the big boys.

Thursday- Thanksgiving Day! Jen made her famous hearty hotcakes for breakfast. The guys took the big boys sledding (or sliding, as they say up here). We also made a very nice Thanksgiving Dinner. My first ever. Unfortunately, dinner was not all that we envisioned it to be. J It included whining, pooping and puking. So we skipped the going around the table saying what we were thankful for and put all the kids down for naps. (We were quite thankful for naptime.) Then we adults sat around and had our coffee and yummy pumpkin pie. We were all refreshed after naptime and ready to move on. (Except that my youngest son couldn't seem to move on from his exceptional whining. That never ended and only intensified as the week went on. He put on a spectacular and amazingly frustrating show pretty much the whole time we had company.)

Kendall and I were sad to see our company leave Friday morning. It was so good to be with Jen and Ben. We've worked hard at making friends the past 5 months. And it has been rewarding for the most part. But there's nothing like old, comfortable friends. I think Eli best expressed our feelings about seeing them leave. I kept trying to prepare him for their departure. He would just answer, "I know" and didn't act too bothered. We stood at the window as they loaded up in the van. As the van pulled out of our drive, Eli didn't say a word. He just turned around and walked back to his room. I followed him after a bit and found him lying facedown on his bed. He wasn't crying. He was just lying there. I knelt down beside him and started rubbing his back. He turned his head and looked at me sadly. We didn't say anything. And that's sort of how our Friday was- rather gray and heavy.