The past two weeks have been filled with family time - family departures, family arrival, and family visits.
Monday Oct 8th my brother, Scott, his wife, Amber, and their 3 kids Reagan (6), Garrett (5) and Everett (11 months) got on a plane to embark on their journey to move to Pretoria, South Africa.
I am very lucky to consider Scott and Amber not only part of my family but also very good friends. "Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance: they make the latitudes and longitudes." (Henry David Thoreau) The Earth definitely feels a little bigger with them being so many miles away instead of just ten minutes and saying goodbye at the airport was hard and we will miss them a lot but we are excited about this wonderful opportunity they have to share God's love and grow themselves. 2+ years is a long time for us to go without seeing this Thomas family (even with the advanced technology we have with Skype and Google Talk) so we are really hoping that we get the chance to go to South Africa in the next year to visit them. The main thing holding us back is the approval of Stella's doctors that she is healthy enough to visit a 3rd world country (we've received one YES! so far but we have many more to go.)
A few days after we said goodbye to the Thomas family we got to say hello to David's mom, Cathy, who came to visit for a few days. Stella loved seeing her Nana and spending some quality time doing some fun activities. We really appreciated that she brought some of the cooler Seattle weather with her and we were able to spend time together outside.
We enjoyed getting together with Stella's Nana and her Aunt Laura for lunch
We had a great day at the zoo
Nana took Stella in the petting Zoo area and Stella loved to touch the goats.
We tried San Tan Brewery and Stella showed Nana how she likes to drink water and taste food (she loved to taste their cheese dip for their pretzels)
The weather was even nice enough to enjoy a morning hike at Usery Pass
It was such a blessing to have quality time to spend with each of these family members and to make some new memories since we don't get to see each other every day. Stella's life has definitely taught us to cherish the moments that we have with the people that we love and we are thankful to have these people in our lives - they are a few of the many people that helped us to get through the days we spent at Phoenix Children's Hospital and we are lucky to call them family.
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