Three Weeks in Alabama

The kids and I are freshly returned from a trip to see family in the U.S.  For the past three years we've traveled home for Christmas, and while a once yearly visit was great (it's more than many global workers get!), it also made good-byes feel so heavy.  A year feels like a long time when you're hugging your family.  When we look on the bright side, the quantity of time spent with our parents is actually the same or more because when we do see each other, we live together for several weeks, but sometimes we only get to see our siblings a couple of those days.

When it comes down to planning four weeks home and fitting in time with each family and seeing great-grandparents and cousins and friends and church family, the calendar fills up quickly and makes me feel sad.  That's what happened this past Christmas and the thing that pushed K.J. to ask a friend from Delta about an offer he made to us once.  

Through his kindness and the generosity of his and another supporting church, we were able to plan a trip home halfway through the year, and it has made this year so much easier emotionally.  Good-byes at Christmas and when my parents visited France in April were so much easier knowing we'd see each other again soon.  Our kids were really needing cousin time, and a summer trip made it possible to have more of that good playtime they needed.

It's been three years since our kids have had an American summer, and they got to pretty much have it all the past three weeks:  cousins and cousins and grandparents and VBS and friends and swimming and suffocating heat and air conditioning.  It was all such a gift.

We're happy to be back in France with still plenty of summer to enjoy.  K.J. and Ella are off to the International Baptist Convention's youth camp this week, leaving James and I to a quiet week catching up with friends and dog-sitting and celebrating La Fête Nationale this weekend, though I'm not sure I can manage fireworks that don't begin until 11 p.m. with kids.  As it was, I had one of the cousins falling asleep at the 9 o'clock fireworks in Alabama.