We had fun visiting our friends Kevin and Elle in Chicago. They are expecting, and due in several weeks! Elise woke up pretty early in the morning (much earlier than anybody else) so I took her on a walk. We paused for a couple timer shots (above)

Elise loves those toys! We are staying with some friends in Grand Rapids who have three grandkids. So they have lots of fun things stocked that Elise has had a lot of fun exploring. Perhaps the funniest is the battery powered frog, that Elise will bring to you and say "ON!" And once you turn it on and it starts hopping towards her and sticking out its tongue, she will run away. It's a very love-hate relationship.

We are heading back from Grand Rapids towards Michigan tomorrow. It has been a very good time here spending time with old church friends. Elise has had a blast with all the kids she has gotten to know. We have really enjoyed getting an inside glimpse of different families lives. It was very fun sharing out ministry with our church last wednesday night too. For me it was definitely a first, speaking for any length of time infront of a lot of people. It was definitely good to start on "friendly turf" with that kind of thing.

Wednesday Night at Christ Church

Our home church in Grand Rapids were very kind to let us be the main speakers at the fall wrap up for the Wednesday night get togethers this Wednesday. We're going to get to share about our ministry and show some pictures and video of how airplanes are helping out in missions. If you're in Grand Rapids we hope to see you there! There's a barbeque open to the public starting at 5:30, then everyone will go inside for some songs, our presentation, and some prayer afterwards. Christ Church is at 2500 Breton Rd SE Grand Rapids.

Mother's Day

I had to put some of these mother's day pictures on here. There's a few more recent ones too!

Home...Thankfully!

In case there's any friends or family that are wondering if I ever made it out of Farmington and back to Missouri, I want to say praise the Lord I am back home! I will spare the details on the car, which would take like ten pages, but on Tuesday, the third establishment that I took my car to looking for answers determined that indeed the car's computer was causing the transmission to malfunction, and the computer was bad and needed to be replaced. But they went ahead and un-plugged the computer from the transmission so it could shift on its own without computer input. Man! Had I only known that was possible two weeks ago! I was outta there so fast! I had never been more excited to leave someplace in my life!! The car did fine all the way home. I spent tuesday afternoon driving through the beautiful high and winding desert roads of New Mexico, headed towards Albuquerque. I spent the night in Santa Rosa, New Mexico and got started very early the next day in hopes of making it home in time to see Elise before she went to bed that night. As I made it into texas, any types of hills, plateaus or mountains gradually went away, as did the desert red dirt and plants, and it was replaced by green farm pasture lands and rolling hills. Eventually the hills went away and around Amarillo it was unbelievably flat. As I made it North from Oklahoma City up into Kansas, the trees, rolling hills, and green grass began to intensify. So did the smell of that grass. It was amazing! Going up into kansas there were some amazing cattle farms with cows scattered across thousands of acres of what I described to Heather as a "cow heaven" with amazing rolling hills of grass, streams, even some trees, and a special bridge for the cows to cross above the highway if they wish! When I left missouri five weeks ago everything was brown and the trees were sticks. Now as I made it into Kansas City and on up to Saint Joseph, I was blown away with the fluffy green trees, and very green grass everywhere, and the smell of it all! I was sad to leave the beauty of the west, but was met by a whole different kind of amazing natural beauty out here!. The best was when I pulled into the house, and Heather and Elise were in the kitchen. Elise was standing there in her diaper and let out a scream of excitement, kept saying "Daddy! Daddy!" and even asked me for kisses throughout the evening. It's good to be home. In a way I am thankful for this whole thing because it gives me a perspective of how much of a blessing it is just to be together, and how blessed we are when things go smoothly.

Grandpa's Week

We remembered my Grandpa Mueller as my mom's side of the family gathered last weekend for his memorial service. Many aunts, uncles, and cousins came. It was very good, and very sad. A friend of the family performed the service and did a wonderful job. There was a military honor guard present at the service as well to honor Grandpa's service in the Army Air Corp. I gathered some pictures into a couple slideshows. The first are some photos from Grandpa's memorial itself. The second slideshow is mainly of the Cousins, Elise, Isla and Logan, who were all three together for the first time last weekend. We went outside at Granny's house on the golf course near sunset. Even baby Audrey, my cousin Tiffanie's baby got in on the action!