Pitiful

Yeah that pretty much is our family right now...pitiful. We are thankful now that Anna is back at home and we can all be together as family but it is still a slow recovery process with lots of medicine and breathing treatments every 4 hours.




And the big girls although they are physically well they are struggling from just returning from a trip to the US and then having mom and sister in the hospital for 3 days, all of these changes and inconsistency makes them very winey and disobedient.



We are praying and trusting God's grace to help us make it through this difficult season of parenting.

USA

So after not being able to make it to Durham to see Sean's family, we quickly changed plans and stayed 2 nights in Augusta with my family to be able to recover from the long journey. The girls jumped right in to where they left off 2 years ago, to the tea parties of course.


Anna was all smiles to be in grandma's house.


The girls loved discovering all the new toys and even put on a concert on for us.


After we were rested we headed off to Charlotte where Gannie and Mac graciously met us so we could have some time with them.


While we were there we enjoyed visiting our home church, Sovereign Grace, and getting Anna baptized.


Then it was back to Appling to see the C-man.


A fun shot with all the grandkids minus Grace who will make her appearance late March.


KK and Anna were instantly in love and enjoyed all the snuggle time they could get. Anna gave some pep talks to baby Grace telling her to come as soon as she is ready.


The golf cart was a big hit, although Ellie could never quite get over how cold it was outside, and was therefore always a little miserable in the cold weather.



It was a whirlwind of a trip (like always) being back in the States but we loved every minute of it and enjoyed spending some fun times with family and friends.

Anna's First Trip to US

Warning this post will be very long and probably somewhat winey but hopefully humorous as well.

We planned months ago that we would make our first post-Anna visa trip to come back to the States to introduce her to family and friends. Already having experience with one country with Ellie and her papers we figured it should be pretty easy, but of course we were wrong. A process that is supposed to take 4 weeks took us 11, which included 2 trips to the embassy 3 hours away, 2 rushed packages, and many phone calls. But at last 3 days before we were schedule to leave we got it!


Then of course on our scheduled day to leave and fly into Atlanta (and then on to Durham) there has to be one of the biggest snow/ice storms of the century. So to make a long story short we left our house at 8am Monday morning and did not arrive in Augusta, GA (not planned destination) until 4pm on Tuesday. We gave up on even trying to get to Durham which was our original plan. Everything that could have gone wrong, did in the Atlanta airport, which therefore resulted for us "sleeping" on the floor Monday and being literally stuck there on Tuesday. Thankfully my dad braved the dangerous icy roads to come and rescue us from the weather and from shear insanity (ie 3 kids, 8 bags of luggage, 1 hour of sleep).
1am sleeping arrangements.


4am


So all that to say the Lord is good, we are exhausted, and I can definitely say this trip has been eventful even though Anna has yet to meet any new friends or family yet.

Daddy's super cool tent made with luggage to help pass the time away.

Our Christmas

The Christmas fun began with a Wall family tradition of sugar cookie baking with Josiah and Abi. It was nice to have some help from the "big kids", not sure we would have made it through the mess and the sprinkles if it wasn't for their help. We then had fun delivering all of our cookies to our neighbors, who think sugar cookies are one of the strangest things they have seen.


We continued the baking fun with a Happy Birthday Jesus cake.


On Christmas Eve we celebrate with all our teammates. Christmas is celebrated here at 12am the night before with lots of fireworks. So after a bad experience last year of trying to sleep while the rest of the country partied, we decided to join along with them this year and entertained ourselves with games and wii until 1am.


The next morning we were up early with the little ones to open all our Christmas goodies.


You know you might be a missionary kid if you favorite gift of the year is your new suitcase which you can not wait to try out in the airport.


Ellie enjoyed opening all the gifts as well and got a new friend, Millie, to play with.


Here we are after skyping with our families and eating lunch, we got to sit around and relax (still in our pjs) and enjoy our new gifts.



Happy New Year!