Picture time

Caleb is 2 months old now!!!

Happy Caleb

Proud big sister

Hannah rode in the wagon with our gifts from Caleb's baby shower. The church in Houston blessed us with a wonderful shower. Thank you, Champions!

Friends from Furlough

It was so wonderful to see Steve and Lindsay Cloer and their cute son, Joshua. Thanks for driving from the Dallas area to see us, Cloers! And thanks for all the laughs. It was great to reminisce about our time together in Memphis. We always treasure our time with you.

Here we are with Kurtis, Whitney, and Elijah Rutz. We have known Kurtis since our time at York. It was great to meet up with them in Cheyenne. Thanks for driving from Colorado to see us, guys!

While we were in Canada, we had a mini-reunion of some of Craig's friends from Great Lakes Christian College. Pictured above are some of the attendees: Megan, Kendra, and Amalie. It was fun seeing everyone with kids now!

Hannah enjoyed spending some time with Hijiri Straker in Japan.

Here is Hirotaka and Mamiko. It was great to see them since we hadn't seen Hiro since we graduated with him from York College in 2001. They live near Tokyo so we were able to spend a day with them there in June.

Good friends from York, Ben Berry and Joel Osborne, took us to Matsushima for a day. Thanks for hosting us in your home in Sendai, Ben and Joel.

Pictured above are Michiko, Hijiri, and Jonathan Straker. It was great to see their family. We had a great time with you guys!!

I realized that I have posted gobs of pictures of family time during our furlough, but have neglected to show some of our really good friends. Here are just a few pictures of some special friends from furlough. We have been blessed to see some wonderful friends and think about the good ol' days... It's a blessing to have such great friends around the world.
Maybe during our next furlough we can see some of you that we missed this time.

Fun with Family

We flew out of Denver on Thursday for Houston. We now have lots of luggage, thanks to the generosity of many people. It was nice to be greeted by 3 men in Houston who graciously helped us load it all into the church bus. (Yes, we needed a bus to get all of us and our stuff to our house!) I think we will have to ship some things to PNG in order to avoid gobs of overweight charges. It was nice to arrive in Houston on Thursday and stay in a house that we lived in before. The church here prepared the house so nicely for us. Hannah was especially excited to see her room decked out with little stuffed animals all over her bed. Our kind church family here even left food in the kitchen for us so we would not have to go shopping right after we got here. We love our Champions Church family and are looking forward to spending the next few weeks here.

Below are some pictures from some of our last few days in the Cheyenne area. We really enjoyed our time there.



Here we are at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. We had a great time with Jason, Teri, and Kaitlyn there.



When we get back to PNG, Hannah will sure miss playing at parks. She can spot one from a mile away. Here she is peeking out of a tunnel. A special message to her friend, Rochelle, in PNG -- Hannah is always pretending to talk to you on the phone. Lately she has been saying, I'm coming Papua Guinea soon. I think she is just about ready to go home!!

Here is our happy son, Caleb. He is proving to be such a pleasant baby.

Caleb enjoyed playing by his big cousin, Kaitlyn. In this picture, he is 6 weeks old and she is 6 months old. Good looking kids, eh?




Hannah will sure miss her cousin, Kelsey. (Kelsey is exactly one week younger than Hannah!) They loved playing with their babies together. They had such a good time and plenty of time to practice sharing!

Thank you to my family who hosted us for the past few weeks. We were so blessed to be with you. We will miss you, but are so thankful for the time we had together. Love you!