The Crowsons

We were blessed last week to have some "old" college friends and their children come stay with us for 4 nights and 5 days.

Murphy, Christine, Stephen, and Matthew Crowson are in the states on furlow right now. They have spent the past 9 years serving in Togo, Africa. They will go back in January before they head to Rwanda in January 2009.

What a great family!

We put the poor kids in over-stimulation mode I'm afraid! We had very little down time while they were here.

Wednesday: They arrive from IA. They head straight to Keystone to the Apple store because the computer has crashed. We meet them for dinner at Fridays. Murphy gets a birthday ice cream and sung to even though it wasn't his birthday. :)

Thursday: Sleep in! Boy that was good. Tim went to work but we all joined him there later. We took them on a tour of the office and warehouse at Flavor Burst. It's not that big but we were there for over an hour. They watched our kids for us in the afternoon while Tim and I met with our lawyer (see previous blog about that). Nice relaxing afternoon and a good dinner (if I do say so myself). Tom and Rebecca also joined us.

Friday: Off to the Indiana State Fair. We were there for hours! It was great fun but expensive! and we even brought in water and some snack food. Attending a state fair was "an American experience" they wanted for the kids and we were able to help mark that off their list. We then met Tom and Rebecca downtown and the Spaghetti Factory. We then walked around downtown for a little while. Christine and I brought the kids home and put them to bed while Tim and Murphy went to go pick up his computer. They fixed it - yeah!

Saturday: We went to the Indiana Motor Speedway. We took the 15 minute bus ride around the track. We had never done that before. It was very cool. Then we headed to the Children's Museum. We were there for hours! (*For those of you not familiar with the museum it is the largest in the country and ranked either 1 or 2 for children's museum.) I must admit that I got museumed out! I normally take the kids for about 2 hours and leave - the beauty of having a pass. We returned home just in time for a cookout we had planned in the Crowson's honor. We had more "old" friends, Marianne (Sassi) and Heath Mathias along with their girls, and met a new friend, Jana Treadway, who had been in Togo with them. What a great night!

Sunday: Church. It was a good day! Lunch at Moe's - poor Murphy had so many goosebumps because it was cold in there. They left on Sunday afternoon. We did get a few pictures. Once I learn how to take them off the camera and on the computer, I'll put a few up on her.

We stayed up way to late every night! Poor Murphy and Christine were cold most of the time. Their body temperatures are not used to our weather. BTW, it was 85+ degrees and they were cold. We laughed at them - all in love of course!

Great Times!

Their boys are so well behaved! Our boys had a great time making new friends. We are going to try to keep in touch with them (good writing experience for my boys and homeschooling).

Anyway, this was their visit in a nutshell. It was wonderful to reconnect with them we are blessed to able to call them friends.

Please pray for them as they are adopting from China. What a wonderful outcome it will be but the in between is a long drawn out process.

On a side note: everyone is always welcome in our home! I tease and tell people that I can feed you (might only be peanut butter sandwiches) and give you a place to sleep. However, I can't promise that my house will be clean! We love to have house guests! We've been blessed with a nice size house and enjoy using it! So, if you are ever in the Indy area and need a quick PB&J sandwich, a place to sleep, and a quick shower - look us up but please ignore my housekeeping abilities (or inabilities as the case may be).