The road to Kansas: Part one

Emmy and her favorite teacher, Miss Christine,
& Miss Mary Ann. Somehow, she knew she
wasn't going to see Miss Christine again.

In all our recent updates, one post I've failed to get around to is sharing photos from our adventures between our old home and our new one!

Her last day with Miss Amy & Miss Jamie

Emmy went to school a couple of extra days the week after New Year's while we had the packers and movers there.  Here are a couple of photos from her last two days of school. Her teachers also had the kids make their Brown Bear, Brown Bear books and the last pages, when you see the Teacher and Children, had photos of all her teachers and each child in the class. Such a great memory for her!

The movers packed up the truck on Friday, January 6th, which is also when Emmy came down with the stomach bug. Yuck. We were camped out at Mary Ann and Joel's during this time and they were gracious hosts and we were so glad to be on familiar turf, but it's just hard to be sick when you aren't "home."

Sick Pickle.

We still managed to make it, though, to the baptism of our godson, Henry, that Sunday.  What a special day!  I also failed to ever post anything back during my fall updates about sweet Henry's birth, so I have failed him in my blogging as his godmother. :) 


So, here are a couple of photos from our first time meeting Henry on October 19th, the day after he was born!

Meeting Henry.  Lisa is the most beautiful new mom ever! Lucas wasn't too bad looking, either. 
But of course the sweet baby was the star!

I'm one day old!

Such a good baby, he slept until he was sprinkled

Back to Henry's baptism, we headed to Greenwood to celebrate with Lucas, Lisa, Will (our first born godson), Henry, and their family. Emmy was feeling MUCH better on Sunday morning and she and Will had a lot of fun playing. Too bad they both got a little loud during the service. At least they were well behaved for the baptism itself. Except, as we were standing at the front of the church, answering all those important questions the priest asks you, Emmy looks at me and says "Mommy, I'm ready to go to the nursery now." Nice.

But then he didn't like the water.

Henry did so well!  He slept through most of the service, until he had to be handed to Nicholas for the actual baptism, and then he wasn't too fond of the water.  Isn't he the cutest thing?

After the church service there were special refreshments during the church's usual social hour so we got to spend more time with Lucas and Lisa's family and some of our other friends who made the trip.  It was a fun day! We headed back to their house afterwards to let the kids take naps but before nap time, we had Emmy and Will sit down so we could take pictures of them in their cute church clothes. They were hamming it up!

We are going to miss living only an hour away from these boys and their parents.  We won't talk about that now because it will only make me cry!
Here are a few more photos from the day, including the cute photos of Miss E and Mr. W.

After Henry's baptism, we returned to Augusta to the comforts of Mary Ann and Joel's house, where MA (at the time about 14 weeks pregnant) was stricken with the stomach bug, and a few hours later I fell as well.  Poor Emmy I think was over it, but it made her gag reflex so sensitive that she would throw up while eating so we three spent that Monday doped up on phenegren and zofran, drinking broth, eating popsicles, sleeping and praying this would go away and not infect Charles or Joel.

Charles spent lots of time at our house patching holes and getting it ready for the renters.  Time was not on our side, so in the end we hired a painter to paint the kitchen cabinets and hall, our lovely housekeeper, Patricia, came and gave it a once over, our handyman came to fix some plumping concerns that proved to be above Charles' skill level, and we hired a landscaper to do some yard clean-up we simply ran out of time to do. Whew. Good news is we left Augusta knowing a lease had been signed and renters were moving in the following week. Yay! It was very, very hard to leave, but after all we'd been through the last few days, we were just ready to be done.

We headed to Mom and Dad's and set up camp there. Emmy and I left a few hours ahead of Charles and it was a relief to be done with that part of the journey.

 The next morning we headed to Spartanburg for a visit. We had lunch with my old boss/professor/mentor and her husband and they gave us a delightful tour of some of the new areas on campus at Wofford and caught us up on what's been going on.  We walked around campus, of course let Emmy look at all the fountains, and visited with a few other folks that I used to work with and we knew from our days as students. It was a great time!

 That afternoon we headed to Eric and Erin's house. Erin was due any day with baby Nora and we stayed with Stella while she went for a haircut.  The girls had fun playing and then we all had dinner before taking our very sleepy girls to their respective beds.  Erin was having some contractions during dinner that gave her pause and I told Charles on the way home "she is having that baby tonight." Sure enough around 11 pm she texted me that they were heading to the hospital and baby Nora was born the next morning! Yahoo!  More on that later, and happy 2 month birthday today, Nora!

Unfortunately 2 year olds move too fast for a good photo, with my camera,
but these two were being so silly and playing in Stella's bed. Too cute!

The next morning (Friday, for those of you struggling to keep up, it makes me tired remembering all of this!) we got on the road for a trip through Atlanta to Rome.  We stopped at Jane and Jeremy's for lunch with Jane and the boys.   I got a decent shot of Shepherd, Emmy, and Jasper together after lunch. Aren't they adorable?  I need to get Jane's copy, because of course her fancy camera and fancy photographer skills snapped a far better shot than my iPhone!

After lunch we said our good-byes and were back on the road again, this time a short drive as we continued towards DeeDee and Granddaddy's and detoured for a very short visit with some Army friends who were in the process of moving that very day!  We stopped at their new house just to hug necks.  David was Charles' Brigade commander and he and his wife, Sharon, have been mentors to us. Their girls are wonderful and their oldest daughter, Caitlin, just graduated from Wofford last spring.  It was nice to see them, even for a few minutes.  Their beautiful youngest daughter, Grace, has been very sick the last year and they have really been through a lot.  But their faith and strength is amazing!

Then it was time to hit the road for the last leg of our trip, next stop Rome!  More to come in part two...