Rest and Relaxation

Greetings from Phoenix! Our trip was long, but well worth the effort. After a four hour ride to the airport, sixteen hours in the air, and five hours at London’s Heathrow Airport, we arrived in Phoenix exhausted but elated. Not surprisingly, our first stop on the way to our rental house was for hamburgers. Our first week here was a flurry of visitors, including my mom, Chris’s brother and grandpa, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. We celebrated Chris’s grandma’s ninety-first birthday with a lotus flower candle from India. They are a bit frightening, but a lot of fun. Chris spent the second week here in John Deere meetings while the kids and I rested and spent time with Gramps and Grammy. Chris and I squeezed in a date night at the end of his conference, which was great fun. We took Anna and Max to a local fair before Chris headed back to India on the 24th. His trip was uneventful and he made it back safely. Our third week here was spent going to the dentist, the doctor, and the photographer. Sadly we are into our fourth and final week here in Phoenix, but we are making the most of every minute. Anna and Grammy went to the Arizona Museum for Youth today while Max and I did some shopping. Tomorrow we are having a belated birthday pizza-party for the kids and we are having a girls’ tea on Friday. It will be so hard to say goodbye on Monday, but Daddy is waiting in India, so that should make the long trip bearable. We do have a nine hour layover in London, so keep us in your prayers! We would like to thank everyone who came to visit us in Phoenix and send our regrets to those who could not make it. We missed you! Our upcoming plans include a trip to Germany for Chris the first week in April and hopefully a trip to see our friends, the Perry’s, in Australia in June. Our next trip home will probably be this Christmas, which seems like a terribly long time from now. I will post new information once we return to India. Until then, take care and know that we are thinking of you.