Afternoon with those crazy people who are brave enough to be friends with us....

Well, yeah... so we got the whole gang together for one last...uh... get-together...before we leave.
Roches, and Schultzies.
So for those of you who don't know our (very) good friends, this is an introduction. Meet the Roches and the Schultzies, who have put up with our family for many years, the poor people. They are a huge part of what has made me who I am today... so, uh... blame them.

Now, I gotta esplain something about these pictures: I had a cold yesterday. Sooo, I look like I'm crying in all the photos. And I'm not. Not in all of them. Only in the last few, after we had group prayer and, thanks to Calli's prayer, I ruined what makeup I had left. In those I am crying. But in the rest I am merely the victim of a slight cold.
And yes, I feel better today, thank you all for wondering.

Well, the cameras came out right away, to make sure we all actually had documentation of the fact that we did know each other. Below is Calli (Roche) playing with Olli (Schultz)'s camera....
















then, Quinton playing with Olli's camera...
















and finally, Olli's camera back in the hands of it's rightful owner....















Of course, we had to get some photos together.. again, to prove that we know each other...

yeh... I'm crying in that one.
















And I dunno... something about this one just really captures our personalities..... :D
















Ok, so it's REALLY hard to hold the camera out yourself and get good photos, especially with my camera which is on the larger side.

After the required session of seeing-whats-new-on-each-others-iPods (I am so buying some songs by The Wedding, Olli!... and August Burns Red wasn't half bad either...and whatever Underoath song that was...eh, back to mah blog post...) and some quick xbox challenges, we headed to my room and played Taboo. Which is... well, you know what Taboo is, you have this card with a word on it and a bunch of words related to it, and you gotta get your team members to say the word without using any of the other words on the card. yeah, fun game.

Jemmi was enjoying herself...
















Annnndddd we also did a short round of arm-wrestling... I, uh, lost to both Calli and Quinton.

Below is Abel Schultz and Mark Roche...
















So finally at the end of the afternoon, Lynnie Roche suggested a group prayer... thanks a lot, Aunt Lynnie! I dunno for SURE, cuz it was kinda dark, but I think you could count the dry eyes afterward on one hand...

And the mandatory group photos:

the kiddos... ok, ok, I'll name them again, here we go, from left:
Acacia, Calli, me, Abel (in front), Olli, Quinton, Ed, Jemmi















and the mums and dads, of course:

eh, from left we have: Jill and Peter Schultz, Lynnie and Mark Roche, and dad and mom.
















Twas a fun afternoon, and the other photos are (as always) in my picasa album... or in the slideshow in the sidebar to the right...and there are also some in Olli's picasa album.

So, it's kind of caught me off guard how hard this whole goodbye-to-Fiji thing is... and then I realized that I've never actually done this before. See, I was pretty young when we left the states, so it wasn't too tramatic for me... more of a big adventure than a goodbye-to-home. And since then, I've only ever said goodbye for short times, or to people I'm used to being away from, or to people I've only known for a short time. So this is the first time I'm saying goodbye to home, and to really good friendships with some years of history to them, that I am used to having nearby and seeing every week or so. Anyway, I've been having a good cry every once in a while, mixed in with the excitement for this next "big adventure."

God's still in control, though... and it's a good thing, too!