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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Home for the Holidays - USA 2014

 Our time in the states over the past 2 months has been really fun and really busy.  It has been especially fantastic to spend the holidays with my family and have a white Christmas!  I thought I'd post a few pictures of fun things we've done in the last few weeks.
We went to Bentleyville in Duluth.  It is a huge walk-through Christmas lighting display village.  It is free to go there, and they give out hot chocolate, cookies, marshmallows to roast, and popcorn (and we tried them all!)  We went on a night that wasn't too cold, I think it was actually just above the freezing point.  I'm glad we went when it wasn't any colder because after an hour of walking around, even being all bundled up, we were freezing.

 We took a self-guided Christmas tour of Glensheen Mansion in Duluth.  There was a tree in pretty much every room.  We walked around the grounds outside and down to the boathouse on Lake Superior after the inside tour.  JP was happy to see a lot of books in French on their many bookshelves.
 Here is JP perched upon a gigantic Belgian horse.  It was his first time ever being on a horse!  We got to go on a sleigh ride over the fields and through the woods just north of Duluth.  The horses wore jingle bells. :)

JP's first snowman

 There hasn't been a ton of snow yet, but we had some on the ground with a warm enough day for it to stick together, so JP made his first snowman!  We got to go visit some friends at their farm in the country.  The pictures look dark because it was at dusk - the sun is already setting at 4:30pm here!  We are waiting for some more snow to fall so that we can try sledding.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

what we've been up to

Wow, we have been so busy that I haven't blogged since October.
So, here is a little bit of what we've been up to:
In October I worked hard to get our house and us prepared to leave the country for nearly 6 months.  If you've taken a 1 or 2 week trip you know that it can be a lot of work just to get everything together, sorted out, and organized for that.  Well, packing up and preparing for 6 months is no small task!  There are some friends staying in our house in Mali and taking care of our dog while we are gone.  So I could leave food in the fridge and not empty that out, but there were other tasks to do to make the house ready for other people to stay there.

Once we actually left the house, we went to Bamako for 3 days before we flew out.  It was a busy and stressful few days before we got on the plane.  JP had to go to the Spain embassy to see if he would get his visa so he could actually get on the plane (he got it a day and a half before we flew) and he didn't know until the last minute if he would be able to present his Master's Thesis or not.  The night before we left he got the call saying that he could present in the morning!  So 14 hours before we went to the airport we were sitting in a room at his university for him to present his thesis.  What a relief when that was done!  I had been worried that he wouldn't be able to present and that he'd have it on his mind for 6 months while we are in the states.  It is so nice to not have to think of that anymore and to just be done with it!  And of course I'm very proud of JP who now has a Master's Degree in Public Health.
This is me helping JP with his special robe that he had to wear when he presented his thesis to the jury.
 Once we were checked in at the airport we both felt amazing relief and calm.  The last few months had been very stressful with finishing school and moving and preparing our trip, and it was amazing to know that we were done with all of that and could just relax.
We spent time on vacation in Spain on the way to the USA!  It was the first real vacation that we've ever had!  I have some pictures from that on my facebook page, here's a link: SPAIN PICS

We arrived in Minnesota just in time for the first snow storm of the season.  It was JP's first time seeing snow.  He says he likes it so far, and he is staying warm with the long johns and other warm winter clothes we bought for him.

The 6 weeks that we have been in the states so far have been very busy.  There is so much to do!  We have stayed at my mom's house part of the time and at a friend's empty house part of the time, so we've been driving 30 minutes back and forth pretty often.  This week we'll be moving out of the friend's house and staying at my mom's until we leave for our big road trip in January.

Here are some of the activities we've kept ourselves busy with:
visiting family and friends
sharing about Mali in 5 groups (9 total presentations)
a short road trip to visit friends and share
seeing my new baby cousin in the hospital
shoveling snow
shopping on Black Friday
joining the Christmas choir
Christmas party
going through the things I have in storage at my mom's house (a few plastic bins)
cutting down and putting up a Christmas tree
JP learned to make wreaths and drive a backhoe (what a day!)
visting Bentleyville in Duluth
seeing the Nutcracker ballet (my mom won tickets and gave them to us!)
attending a Christmas music concert
going running to prepare for a 5k, it's hard to breathe in the cold!
dentist appointments
eye doctor appointments
chiropractor appointments (my back is feeling better now! there is no chiropractor in Mali)
sending out cards and letters and setting things up for our support raising efforts
trying to watch a few movies (but I am usually falling asleep before the end!)




Ok, so that is some of what we've been up to.