We often pray for people to have ‘journey mercies’, that along their travels God would make things go unexpectedly well for them. Well, one of our hugest ‘journey mercies’ this year (+) in the US was undoubtedly having JimKrisJimmieKaitlynandCaleb for neighbors. We were neighbors 5 years ago in the same houses during the year James was born which is also fun to remember. This year, Kris and I walked most mornings before our families were up to try (however unsuccessfully) to avoid the traditional American waistline. Kaitlyn was babysitter extraordinaire with a ‘super sack’ of surprises for the kids every Thurs. night, and even set up a sticker reward chart for them getting to bed obediently. We all looked forward to Thursdays because of Kaitlyn.

Well there is a season… and a time to every purpose under heaven. So JKJKandC headed back to West Africa this weekend and we got to spend one last day together last Wednesday. Good times were had by all. First a PB&J picnic, complete with Kris’ cookies:

Here we take a self-portrait. Not a stupendous picture of either of us, so I’ll shrink it. =)

Anna tastes chocolate frozen yogurt for the first time. Anna: “Bite! Bite! Bite! Bis” (I would like another bite now please) The urgency of the ‘bite! bite!’ part reminds me of the seagulls in the Nemo movie saying ‘mine! mine! mine!’ =)

One last pose. Kaitlyn has a great future in elementary education I’m just sure of it! =) Thank you JKJKandC for being such open neighbors, such a huge encouragement to us, and for us you are some of God’s ‘journey mercies’ for us. We’ll always remember the super sack, the walks, the blackberries, the water fights, and maybe the pellet guns. =) We’ll miss you tons!

Journey Mercies by Kimberly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International