Back to Africa

Hello again! Hope you all are well. We have landed back in Africa and after 4 sleepless nights, we're hoping for a good night.

Once again, the girls were great on the flight. The Lord has just blessed us over and over again on these flights with 3 happy girls. Olivia slept for all but 4-5 hours again. Samantha watched movies on her screen until midnight and then slept soundly through the night and Kaitlyn watched movies for not quite as long and then slept soundly through the night as well.

All was well until we realized we were landing an hour late (due to delays in Atlanta) and our connecting flight was already "closed" when we landed. Thankfully, Brad had one boarding pass (how you only get one when there are 5 tickets--I don't know--but that's an Atlanta airport thing also) and one of the airport staff took it and took off at a run ahead of us. Meanwhile, we're running as fast as little legs will go, with Olivia on my back and Brad loaded down with carry ons and a car seat. Our "angel" returned for passports, etc on two different occasions and took off at a run again. We met him at the ticket counter (where one of our friends that happened to be on the same flight was already being told they couldn't put her on the connecting flight to Lusaka), received our boarding passes, were pushed ahead of the metal detector line and then we were off again.

The "angel" took flight and ran (I really think it was an actual mile--equivalent to running to terminal E in Atlanta or walking to Cary Woods from my parent's house) all the way to the gate and gave them our boarding passes so they'd hold the bus that takes you to the plane out on the tarmac. Then he returned and told us we could walk the rest of the way, which happened to be about 50 yards at this point. As we took the elevator down to the bus level, the only sound in the elevator is 5 people out of breath, with Olivia looking around wondering what all the fuss is about.

We settled on the SAA (South African Air) flight and all fell asleep for the last leg of the trip (about 2 hours). When we arrived, we filled out the paper work for our missing bags (they didn't run as fast as we did) and headed home for a not so good night's rest. By this time, it was mid-day in Alabama so I rotated through each of the girls' beds (well, Olivia snuggled in mine) throughout the night to snuggle them as they tried to sleep.

Samantha's been sleeping since night 2, Kaitlyn since night 4 (yesterday) and we're hoping for Olivia's first full night tonight. She has had croup on top of jet lag so we've spent a lot of wakeful hours with her. She seems to be doing better today so we're hopeful about tonight.

Well, that's all for now. We plan to start "easing" into homeschool tomorrow--beginning our phonics/spelling/reading/writing program. Next week will be our first official week. I'd appreciate every single prayer I can get. I spent 2-3 hours at a freind's house today "training" so it's time to begin the process.

We pray you are all doing well. We love you.
Zookeeper