Retreat 1

It's been a busy couple of weeks here. We went on a church related retreat over the weekend, only our second overnight with the babies (which, you may recall, kind of killed off Emily). This one went better.

The trip there was long-ish but uneventful. It took about eight hours of travel between cab, train, and bus. We did a lot of stops, which has pluses and minuses. Our neighbors said they actually like more stops on longterm air travel, and I can see some advantage. I wish on the way home we could do medium-long legs rather than one medium and one long.

Sam was able to sleep in Emily's parents' room, which meant he didn't wake up the babies or get woken up by the babies. Sam had a blast on the trip. He enjoyed seeing everyone, there was a great playroom he could play in, and he got to go to the beach and to go swimming in the pool (he played "robot" with his goggles on). Sam wasn't great at the first meal, but he soon had an older Korean mom take him under her wing. He ate almost exclusively shrimp and fish for dinner. I think he must have been starving. It's nice that he can speak local language now, and makes it easier for him to play with others. There was one other boy, but communication was a little hard. We had dinner in the disco room of the (awesome) hotel, and Sam loved running around, dancing, and being swung. He's at a high-energy, exciting age.

The babies got backpacked a lot, which they like. They slept in mini-cribs or in their double stroller. They loved the time around others. Eva's more reliably standing up and Eli's a champion crawling. He's beginning to walk. Emily says he looks like "a drunk penguin" walking, which is a quite accurate description, I would say.

The retreat was very good for me also. On the last retreat I didn't get to participate much, but this time Emily and I were able to lead the opening worship and one or both of us were often able to participate in things. I think we probably have a long time where it will be hard for us to participate in things as a family, but now if we have to one of us can take Sam to a talk or service and he can last through at least part of it.

My plan for the coming weeks is really to bunker down and to write as much as humanly possible. I'll have to see how it goes. We're planning on submitting a book manuscript in the first week of December.

In terms of daily life, there are some small trials. Emily's screen on her laptop broke, without a major fall. So that is frustrating. We have a fair amount of computer redundancy, but it makes sense that she wants a good machine as she dissertates.

That's the news! Pictures to follow...