A Tale of the Travel Day (in photos)

  The adventure started in Grayson, GA, as Andrew and Hilary so generously offered to drive us to the International terminal at Hartsfield in Atlanta.  We left their house around 6:15pm.  About four minutes later, Liam was already out, and slept all the way to the airport.  (Note: This wasn't a good thing.)













After we got there, the slow meltdowns began.  Liam was grumpy about being woken up. Eli was tired. The British Airways check-in line was about 3.2 miles long.  We were SO thankful to have good friends who waited with us and helped with the kids!   We spent a while in line desperately trying to find the children's Benadryl we packed for the journey.  We searched every bag... but never found it.  You can see below how frazzled Ginger was, how unamused I was, how tired Eli was, and how patient Andrew (and Hilary) were!

 Once we got to check-in, everything improved.  Never-Shy Liam made a new friend, and we found out how accurate the Wii-Fit was to weigh all of our bags.  ALL of them were right on 23.0 kgs - the max allowed without overage charges! Whoop whoop!

We were a comical sight with our many bags, pregnant waddle, and sleepy boys; but we made it to the gate, got pajamas on, and life was good.  The boys were super excited about being on the plane and it wasn't long before they were asleep.

 BUT Liam didn't sleep super great.  So he was awake a lot (as was Ginger, who had to walk around often - y'know, being pregnant and all).  She watched two and a half movies, and Liam got to see most of Monsters U again.














Not surprisingly, Liam was tired through border crossing and customs, and kept wanting to lay down.  Eli was a trooper, and kept trying to help.  God was gracious to us through customs - the line was rather long, but after waiting only about 5 minutes, an agent approached me: "Are you with the pregnant lady?"  I am.  "Follow me."  She led us to the front of the line, and we were through pretty quickly.  Hooray!

Eli's picture to the right is his first official picture in England!  The picture at the bottom is the 4 metric kilotons of stuff we brought on the plane.
... And now the REAL adventure begins!

Figuring it out

One of the challenges in this move is helping the boys to understand not just where we're moving but WHY.  Though Eli wasn't initially too excited about the idea of selling our house, they've been excited for some time now about moving to the land of Mary Poppins, and where they can see "that big clock tower."

On our last night in our house, I opted to read them the first story of Abraham (or Abram at the time, for purists).  We talked about moving with your family to a country you've never seen, just because God wants you to.  We talked about how it's scary and exciting and hard, all at the same time.  But Abraham did it, and we're going to do it, because for some reason God chose him (and us) to do something that would help more people know about him.

So at the end, I asked them what they thought about us moving to England to "go tell military kids about Jesus"...  Liam said: "Hey Dad!  We could call England - Canaan!"   Well... that's not quite as figured out as I hoped, but close enough. 

And I told Liam: "That's a great idea... but we're not really going to do that..."

Leaving

To pack up one's family for 3 (or more) years to head overseas, leaving a place you've been for a decade is quite the emotional process.  It's tough to know "how" to say goodbye to people.  Do I act like "Oh I'll see just see you soon"?  Or is it "I may never see you again"?  Or "Wow, we've shared a lot of life together"? Or... or... or...

Some farewells were more tearful than others.  Some we just pretended it was another day.   Some we didn't get to do at all.

We were blessed to be able to get to see almost everyone "one last time" over the course of July and August.  Our travels took us to Louisiana (above) to Tennessee and to as far as Columbia, Missouri to see all our our family members. Friends threw us get-togethers in Thomasville, at church, and even two in Atlanta the weekend we were leaving.  And we even got to eat our last meal in T-ville at our favorite place with some of our favorite people.



God has used this process to reveal to me how gracious he has been in our lives.  We have been blessed with countless dear friends and family members, about whom there isn't enough room on this blog to write about.  It's been humbling to hear from these folks how much they love us, appreciate us, and will miss us.  It's almost kinda shocking, actually.

It's a great picture of what the body of Christ is about.  He has showered his unconditional love and grace upon us, welcomed us in, and made us a part.  We don't deserve it, we can only be amazed at what we've received and live in thankfulness out of it.  In a similar way, we don't deserve the family and friends we've received, but as we go forward - even though we may not get to see them as often - we know we are a part of their lives and are thankful for them.