And we're back

NO MORE PLANES!!! At least for awhile. You would have thought that as much as the Gardner family hates to fly we would have chosen a profession other than "overseas" missionaries. We had a great time in D.C./Virginia seeing friends and family for a few days. Mollie and the boys did a little shopping while I got to visit the Library of Congress. On display was a Gutenberg Bible, as well as what is left of Thomas Jefferson's personal library that he sold to the U.S. government. I was proud to say that I had read excerpts from several of TJ's books which made me feel smart.

On Tuesday, we loaded up our six huge bags, two kids, a stroller, a backpack, Mollie's crazy huge purse, a laptop (in its case), Thad's backpack, "Blanky", "Crabby", & "Buster" (Thad's monkey), and headed for the D.C. Metro. (without the help of wonderful Aunt B, the Gardner's never would've made it to the airport) .

Let's just say that I can relate to W's experience in this pic. On top of babies, I felt really sick for the first few hours and so Mollie was a soldier in dealing with things. She held Ian for almost the entire flight, and I think she even managed a few minutes of sleep.
We landed on time and were back at the apartment by 10:00. Thad and I went grocery shopping and Mollie finally got to sleep. After I fed Thad lunch he went to sleep on the couch. I finally decided I should get some sleep and of course that was right when Ian woke up. I fed him and then shut us both in his room while Mollie and Thad slept. That was around 2:00 or so. There is a mystery 3 hours of time where no one knows exactly what Ian did. Mollie was asleep as was I. I know he was confined in the room with me, but I have no idea what he was doing. The only evidence of mischief was the 30 baby wipes we found of the floor.

Things are getting better, but we are all jet lagging pretty badly. Please pray for our adjustment to the time here. I'm going to be giving the tour of Vienna to the new staff today, and I'll be preparing orientation stuff this weekend and next week. Pray that God will give me wisdom about what to say. My topic is the integration of world view instruction into the classroom. Yeah, good luck making that exciting right?

I'm going to be blogging a bit more this year because I've found it helps me think through stuff better, so get ready. To quote scripture, you better "Gird up your loins like a man."