Road Trip #2

We arrived safely in Longview, Texas, in the eastern part of the state late this afternoon. Jon's sister and family live here and we are enjoying getting caught up since we haven't seen each other for many years. Joshua doesn't even remember the last time he was with his cousins. But he is already calling Jasper (6 years old) his best friend. They had a great evening bouncing on the trampoline even in the rain.

But I need to go back and get you caught up on the trip from Amarillo. Saturday was rather uneventful. In the afternoon Jon needed to run 9 miles for his marathon training but we couldn't figure out where he could run. We finally stopped on the side of the road, which had a wide shoulder, and Jon ran for an hour and a half down the road. Joshua and I found a parking lot and watched a movie on our portable DVD player. After picking Jon up we headed to the Dallas area.

We spent two nights with our friends Beth and Pat Andrews who live in Arlington. Beth and I were math majors together in college and have stayed in touch over the years even though their family has lived for many years in the South Pacific. On Sunday we enjoyed time with our friends Philip and Sun (Kristen) Homer and their three kids. Joshua was thrilled to play with kids his own age. He even got to go swimming with his new friends while Jon and I visited our friend June Hathersmith. What an awesome day. We ended it back with the Andrews talking for many hours over a delicious meal.

Monday morning we headed to Houston and had a very uneventful drive to our friends Teri and Andrew Adair's home. Teri and I first met at Trinity Presbyterian Church and have stayed in touch for almost 20 years even though their family lived in Central Asia for many years. It was great to get reconnected with their family. Unfortunately we didn't get bug spray on Joshua quick enough and as of tonight he had 16 mosquito bites on his legs -- poor kid.

This morning we went with Teri and Gabrielle (5 years old) to Houston's Natural History Museum. They have a butterfly exhibit where you can walk among hundreds of butterflies. It was very cool. Then we got to see huge dinosaur bones and an exhibit about drilling for oil (what a surprise). :) We headed toward Longview at about 12:30 and again had a safe drive, although we saw three vehicles whose drivers couldn't say the same. Leaving Houston we saw a van completely engulfed in flames. Half way along on our drive we saw a semi whose driver had not calculated the height of his load and had rammed into a bridge that crossed the road. About 20 miles from the end of our trip a semi was completed flipped on its side. Wow! We thanked the Lord for safety and prayed for the drivers each time we passed the accident scenes.

Thank you for continuing to pray for us. We'll be with the Burklins till Friday morning and we're hoping it won't rain the entire time. They seem to have had rain in Texas for about 2 months.

All for now.

Sheryl