Idaho or Bust....

Yes, today Heather and I pack up to head back out to MAF headquarters again in Nampa, Idaho.

"Wait a minute, I thought you weren't supposed to go back until February?!?!"

That was our original plan, until we found this out......take it away Elise!

Yes that's right, Elise is going to be a big sister! Little baby Lundholm is due in May. We are very excited! And clearly you can see so is Elise. Well I don't think she really knows all that is wrapped up in that little phrase "sister" that we taught her to say. I think come May she may be changing her tune just a little bit! But we'll see!

So back to the story....what does that do with us going to Idaho early? Our little peanut is due at the beginning of May, right at the end of the two and a half months of training that we were planning on doing then. Fortunately, the last two weeks are a stand-alone training that they run twice a year, called the Non Technical part (as opposed to the technical training of flying and maintenance). So graciously, MAF allowed us to come to the non-technical training that starts October 8.

So we're heading out to Boise in the morning for two weeks of preparation for living in a different culture. We will learn things like cultural adaptation, cooking from scratch for Heather, a two day marriage seminar to help give us tools to help our marriage overseas. If you think of it, pray that we learn this training well, and that it sticks well in our minds, because there will be several months between the training and our actual departure for Indonesia (which will hopefully be around June, after the baby is born.) Once we get to Indonesia, it will be very handy to remember the things we will learn over the next couple weeks.

A few hair-oriented pictures....

Elise with some serious bed-head

Mommy gives Elise her first ever pony tail

Happy Kid......

What types of things does Elise think about all day? Just ask her! Her response might be "A sucker!" She has, well let's call it an intense liking of succers that stems from a little dance class that Heather has taken her to in St. Joseph. I got to sit in on the class once and watch, and after each activity the teacher did with Elise, Elise would exclaim "A Sucker?!!" So today as we drove down to Indiana from Grand Rapids, we got her one.

A sucker and a chip. Hog heaven for Elise!

Another activity that Elise really likes now is loading things into grocery carts....and then un-loading them. She was very excited that our friends Dick and Donna who we stayed with the past several days had a miniature grocery cart. She would load up things, then distribute them....to anybody who was around. This morning she work up and the first words out of her mouth were "CHECK OUT! CHECK OUT!" The day before I set up a little counter for her to check out at. She lucked out at the Grand Rapids Children's Museum where they had a whole kids play grocery store.

And they had little tricycles for her there too! Complete with helmets.

Back in Grand Rapids

Today we were treated to an old Grand Rapids favorite when our friends Linn and Sharon took us to beautiful Meijer Gardens.

Linn and Sharon


We took Elise to Meijer Gardens about a year ago before we moved away from Grand Rapids. She was only several months old then, and this time she thoroughly enjoyed herself. What was her favorite thing there? By far it was the little kids door to enter the Children's Garden. She loved it! She went through it about 30 times, and we couldn't tear her away from it! We got a lot of pictures of that, and some other fun things there.

Cousins...Basket Rides....Road Trip!

We had a great Memorial day get together, with much of the Kisker clan present. We had all the "cousins" together at one time, and it made for a good photo opportunity!

You can imagine how hard that photo was to set up! Not too easy. Cute kids! Some of them are cousins, some are third cousins, but we'll just think of them as cousins.

Then Elise got a basket ride. This is something mommy started doing with her, and she recruited me to do one while she snapped a photo.

I think we should tie a rope to that thing and let the good times roll!

Tomorrow we are beginning a three week ministry partnership road trip up to Michigan. It's last minute packing and preparations, like we're used to. We're both not big on getting things ready way ahead of time! But I guess it works! We would appreciate prayer for traveling to go well, and for us to be close as a family and content as we step out for a few weeks. We are really excited to see our Grand Rapids church family again, and some good friends who are scattered on the way there and back.