Turning the page to 2013

Since my last post, much has happened around here. The biggest news is that Erin has left AND arrived in Rwanda. I put up a clock so that we could always know what the time is in Africa. I will probably post a weather button as well. I like knowing all that I can about my girl. She made it safely. She is excited about it. She created her own blog so that she can post things and keep us a little updated. It is: erininafrica.blogspot.com if you would like to check it out. I am not sure how often she will be able to post things. When she arrived, they were out of electricity. So for 24 hours or so, we hadn't heard whether she arrived safely or not. That was a test of faith. But on Monday, on our way to the Great Wolf Lodge, Jacob A. sent me a text telling me that we had heard from her. She had posted on facebook that she had arrived and that didn't have electricity. The group had gone to a restauarant that had wifi adn electricity to be able to post something. The cool thing was that Jacob told us she wanted to skype us and wish Elizabeth a happy birthday. So while driving down the road, we were able to skype our daughter in Africa. Crazy!!! I can't tell you much about her trip only because I could hear her and I didn't know that she was typing things to us. I only know what she has posted. The next big thing is that Elizabeth has now turned 8 too. We celebrated both her and Ri's birthday at the Great Wolf Lodge. It is somewhere that I have longed to take our kids. Mark is not a big fan of those kind of places, so he has always shot the idea down. He finally smiled at me this last time I asked and said... go for it. Then he added that he was hoping it would scratch my itch and he would no longer hear about it. :( After watching the kids faces yesterday, it makes me sad that we may never do it again. They loved every second of it. Unfortunately, Jacob could not go with us because he did not want to miss school. It ends up he missed it anyway because he was so sick (flu). Mark felt miserable most of the time, probably with some virus. Emily came with us and was such a delight... but her knees hurt so badly that she was in pain most of the time. Both Mark and Em suffered through the waterpark... and with smiles most of the time. Elizabeth was finally able to do all of the watertubes! (except for 1, she was 1/2 inch short). The lodge had a MagiQuest for the kids to participate in. It is a type of "hunt" where they get a magic wand and have at least 8 or 9 "quests" to conquer. They have clues for each quest and have to use their wand to "find" the things they are told to go find. Once they find all the items from the quest, they have to go back to a wizard and get their next quest. We spent 2 hours Monday evening running all over the hotel. The kids had a blast. Mark and Em hurt to badly to be a part of it. But the kids and I had so much fun. Yesterday, we spent another 2 hours trying to finish our quest, but the something made our wand stop working, the quest shop was shut down for the moment, and Mark was pretty weary... so we stopped the quest and left. Here are some pictures from our adventures at the Great Wolf Lodge: