Grandparents, Part II

Well, we made it into Port on the airplane, and said goodbye to my parents.  A few minutes later, David's parents, Matt K, and Pastor Nathan drove up to pick us up.  It was great to see them again!  They dropped us off at the US Embassy and took Orrin to do some errands.  We went and turned in all of Cassia's citizenship and passport paperwork.  It went really smoothly and we got in and out in about and hour and a half.  It was a crazy feeling to have most people talking English to us!  I kept telling myself NOT to try to talk in Creole...we were in the US Embassy, by George! :)  At the end, they told us we can pick up her passport in (Lordwilling) 6 weeks.  After we get that safely in hand, we hope to buy tickets to come home in May!  Can't wait to see everybody!!

Port was crazily empty...not many were venturing out, I guess, and the public transportation was on strike, so we made good time getting through town.  We went to Dumay to spend the week with mom and dad and a work team.  Mom said that the kids had been asking about Orrin.  Was he coming??  I was really blown away by this.  They remembered his name after a whole year??  Wow.

Grandpa and Grandma with the kiddos!

Grandma and Orrin enjoying the view out the back.  Couldn't have picked a better location to build the guest house!!!

Beautiful rainbow!

We had lots of people to help entertain Orrin through the week!  Matt was showing Orrin how to make a paper airplane.  He thought that was pretty sweet!  Orrin still talks about Matt, and wonders where Jessica is, and sings "Ring Around the Rosy."  Must have good memories of the week :)  He also got to ride on the tractor with Grandpa like last year!

Another source of entertainment for Orrin (and headache for Mom) was the food cabinets.  Right there at eye and hand level, and there were soooo many snacks!  He "needed" a lot of snacks that week...or at least that's what he said!

Roslyn came out to see the kids one day.  It's really neat to still have that relationship from back when we came the first time, 6 years ago!  Roslyn's English was better this year, and so was my Creole, so we were able to communicate a little more.  We were glad to see her again and find that she's doing well.  She has one more year of school and then hopes to go on to Nursing school.  Good for her!!

One evening we sang out on the front porch with the local guys.  It was beautiful singing - they have some singing talent in Dumay!!  We sang songs in English, but they seemed to be doing good with it.  A lot of the young kids are learning English.  Some learn in school, but others just say they have a book they read and practice it with their friends.  It's amazing how much they know and how dedicated they are.  We enjoyed talking to them (in English and in Creole :) ) and spending some time together.  The neat part about coming back to Dumay year after year is meeting the same people again and again.

We also attended "Nathan's Birthday Party."  It will forever life in infamy as a capitalized occasion, as it lasted FOUR hours at the church one night :)  Orrin of course only made it through about an hour or so, and so we got to leave early.  Back at the guest house, I tried to start making supper, thinking that everyone would be back soon.  But combined with a stove that was out of gas, a 2 year old, and a baby that was crying and puked all over, I didn't get a lot accomplished.  David finally came back, and tried to get a new gas tank hooked up.  Still no one was back.  Surely it would be soon....  Around 9pm everyone finally came in.  It became quite the event to talk and laugh about as no one had expected it to last quite that long, and the whole group couldn't just slip out because we had been seated way up front :)  Ahhh, memories....and microwaved brats at 9pm...ugh.

Grandpa and Cassia

Our team...Brooke, Jessica, Heather, me and David and kids, Molly, Myron, Jared, Ryan, Josh, Dad and Mom.  Also Matt, but he left Saturday before the picture was taken...  We really had a super nice week with our group of friends and family from Forrest!  So special to see everyone!