Holiday Weekend with some of our Travel Group 8

Our travel group made some great connections. That might have been due to the fact that we'd connected via the Holt yahoo group, our blogs, or just that we were pretty awesome families. Of course, we wanted to hang out again sometime so before we even left Ethiopia, Ryan was planning a gathering of midwest families. We gathered for the Independence Day weekend with two of the families who were in travel group 8 with us.

Our weekend didn't have a huge agenda. We ended up having to adjust plans due to the rain events but we still had fun. The first afternoon we hung out in the yard chit chatting while the bigger kids jumped on the trampoline and got to know each other. (Travis and Joseph belong to Shonda)

Later that afternoon, we took our city-dwelling friends to a local dairy where they got to experience all kinds of new sights, smells, etc. Some were more willing to try new things than others:

(Michelle who doesn't blog yet but has an amazing life to share)

(Betula is Michelle's daughter)

(Betula and Judah)

I didn't add a picture of a certain (ahem) family who stayed at the end of the barn so they wouldn't get splattered with green nutrients. But they did - that is, get splattered and then stand away from the cow's hind end.

After all those who were interested milked, petted, and learned about dairy cows, they headed out to check out the baby calves. Having recently been fed, they weren't hungry but the little kids tried their skills anyways:

Bethany, my quiet and shy child (yah right) plomped herself right down on a calf as if she was riding it. The calf didn't mind much until she started to pretend like it was a bucking bull and not a bull calf. After some entertainment with the baby animals, the kids were off to the hay mow:

where they ran, jumped, climbed and played all over. Ryan got some really cool pics with the light sneaking in between the boards of the barn on the back side:

From there we headed to The Shanti in the big town of Gunder. No pictures there, at least not on our camera. Maybe Michelle will send me the one that shows the population of the Gunder Metropolis and I can add it in. Needless to say by time we got there, kids were hot, hungry and mine at least were not so willing to sit long to wait. After supper we headed back home for some 4th of July entertainment (I would never admit to having illegal fireworks) of our own:

It was fun to see how much everyone's kids have changed. We've been home two months now and we've seen lots of change in the kids. It was great to see the children from Ethiopia again. It was also a blessing to meet and have our bio children all interacting.

I'm looking forward to the next time we can gather our families together. Maybe next time more of travel group 8 can make it. And hopefully some of you other midwestern families (ahem, Tesi) can make it as well. Thanks to those who were willing to travel up our way to hang out for the weekend!