With less than a week left…

God continues to provide more than I thought or imagined.

• A friend of Hope & Chris Bray is letting us use their car until December. That means we don’t need to buy 2 cars!
• I got an email today that a minivan (kiwi terms = people mover) that we had considered buying was still for sale and their sale price had dropped 2500NZD. So we jumped on it! If all goes through we will have 2 vehicles waiting at our house for us when we arrive! Such provision!
• I got a call from Air NZ on Tuesday to see if we would be willing to change our flights. My stomach sung when I thought about them asking us to reroute through a couple more stops with our kids. Then she said you would have to fly out of MSP 15 minutes early and go through LAX instead of San Fran and then you would arrive in to Auckland 10 minutes earlier and we will compensate you with $500NZD PER TICKET!!! I started doing a happy dance all while trying to remain calm on the phone and pretending that yes this was an inconvenience but since you are giving us some sweet mula I will be ok with it. Pretty delighted that we will have gotten our family to NZ by only really paying for 3 half priced tickets (Bill’s entire ticket is reimbursed). Such a blessing for us during this time as we are bleeding money. ha!
• Yesterday, Laura ran up to her bank and dealt with the details of wiring our funds to NZ. We got them in by seconds, but so thankful for family who is willing to spend their time doing our dirty work.
• Our visas were returned to us last week, but were only approved for 12 months instead of 24 months. We knew Bill and I needed FULL medicals (chest xrays, blood work, urine tests – you name it!) and we had those complete, but apparently the kids needed some medicals as well. Our awesome pediatrician filled out the paperwork within a day and then met me at 7:45am at her office yesterday while I was in Rochester getting Bill from work to sign their pictures and approve everything. I overnighted them yesterday so hopefully we will have new visas approved before we go.

• Bill completed residency yesterday! Words cannot describe how proud of him I am. He has worked SO very hard these last 5 years serving his patients and us all while glorifying God.

Bill came out around 3:30pm with his buddy Jimmy White. Hurray!!

These two are going to miss each other.

I took these pictures of Gonda while I was driving around waiting for Bill to leave. Mayo does a great job keeping its grounds well kept.

The Mayo Brothers – Charles and William.

Happy to have my dewd back. A little less than 3 weeks of JUST weyam and no PAGER! I love you Bill!!

Update: We just sold our highlander so we are now car FREE!! Sold the Passat yesterday and the Highlander today. Unbelievable!!!

Old friends reunite

on monday, june 24th – my dear high school friends Kacie & Erin gathered at Tom & Laura’s house so we could all spend some time together. Erin lives with her husband Troy in Minneapolis and Kacie lives with her family in South Dakota so it is not easy getting us together. There is something special about watching your kids play with your dear friends and I especially love watching our kids play and interact.

Kacie has 3 kids – Sam is almost 5, Lena is 3 and Jacob is 1 (Jacob stayed back in Eau Claire with Sherm to make things easier).

The kids started playing on the deck quickly.

The girls wasted no time before they were sitting in the water table.

The water is high, but the kids still had fun on the beach.

Lily was happily playing catch.

Charlie chucking a huge rock.

The girls had fun with the Hammock.

Ellie.

Sam & Charlie goofing off during lunch.

our attempt at a kid picture.

at least everyone is looking even though they are not all happy.

Malena, Ellie, Sam, Claire, Charlie.

Charlie was in charge of taking the adult photo. Not too bad.

Charlie started clicking like crazy and I had to run save the camera.

So thankful for these life long friends. What a blessing they are to me!

The Butz Reunion 2013

Saturday was the big reunion party and it was a blast.

Suzanne with Grandma.

me and Grandma

the newest addition – Penelope.

Auntie Suz with a still tired Claire.

G. Pops with a post nap slow moving Ellie.

Gathering after dinner to give Grandma a special gift.

 

My cousin Angie created a Quilt Book of all of the quilts my Grandma as made. She has made almost all of us quilts and probably more that are not in the book from when she was younger. We all emailed our pictures of us and our quilts and stories we have about Grandma to Angie and she put it together. it turned out AWESOME!

Suz and a happier Ellie.

The little boys did more racing down the path. Until Eli bailed out and we decided we didn’t want them missing the turn off and catapulting off the stone steps towards the river.

Happy with her book.

Then Jake busted out is guitar and the little girls were loving it.

Ellie.

Claire sat with my Uncle John listening to the music. I loved that the girls were so open about going up to other family members to give hugs or hang out with them.

Then griffin busted out a beautiful song.

love this boy!

Grace did an awesome job too! such a talented family I have!

Charlie adores Griffin! What a great role model he is!

We had a late night because we hung out by the fire for the evening. What an amazing time we had seeing family. It was pure joy to watch my kids play with my cousins kids. As kids we all played together constantly so it is awesome that we are getting our kids together despite the fact that we all live in different places.  what an incredible family I have!

We crashed at my Aunt Mary’s house before we left on Sunday morning. She made us waffles and it was delicious! Then I said some sad goodbyes to Suzanne and Grant (and they were sad they wouldn’t see the kids again before we left) and hit the road to drive to Hudson. Phew! Getting closer to leaving!

this is random, but while visiting my grandma – suzanne and I were going through photo albums and came upon this picture of my cousin grace. I thought she looked so much like claire here! Grace is a bit older in this picture, but still has so many similarities!