Arrivals and Grace Periods.....

We have finally arrived in K-town! Sami says it all in this picture, we are all taking lots of cat naps and trying to re-adjust our time zones. We are in the hotel for 30 days and the kids start school on Tuesday. We start German house hunting next week also.  Thank goodness we have time to adjust and sleep!

For those of you who do not know, Eric's retirement from Active Duty was denied.  Although initially it was a shocker, we have come to embrace the path God has laid before us, whatever it may lead too.  We received orders back to Germany, and basically had two months to prepare for what usually takes 6-8 months of planning.Our hope is that this blog will be a means for us to keep in touch with friends and family.  It is the easiest way to post pictures and happenings in a mass way.  We hope you will leave comments and let us know what is going on stateside.

The past month has been crazy, and all the problems we were having lining up the flight with hotel availability in Germany was really stressing.  Getting our household goods packed and our car shipped just seemed impossible in the timeline we had in front of us.  But as God is always one step ahead of what we think we "know", we had no idea that in the coming days G'pa Brown would fall ill so quickly.  Amazingly, the flights that were booked out a month ahead suddenly had an open slot for a family of five AND a hard to come by animal slot. 

 We reluctantly changed it, not knowing at this point that we would soon find out about G'pa Brown. (As a side note, our military friends are probably wondering why we had such difficulty getting slots to fly, and it is because if you are coming to Europe, you automatically fly the contracted Patriot Express now, no more civilian flights!)

Looking back, we know God opened up that "Grace Period" for us, to be able to go to Indiana, and say goodbye to him.  Even though we were not able to attend the funeral, Eric was able to have closure by saying his goodbye and G'pa fully understood.  

So.....to G'pa Brown, we know you are finally home with God, G'ma and Denny....Thank you for instilling honor and compassion in everyone that knew you, and we will all miss you dearly.  And thank you for watching over our travels, as you and Eric spoke about:)