A visit with the Burmese

One of our top priorities when we got home was to go see our Burmese friends. Looking at my Scotland pictures.

I was excited to see my friend that had moved back.

I got to meet a new family that had recently arrived.

We've been busy this week helping the families fill out school paperwork. You should have seen Caroline and me on Thursday night at a picnic table with paperwork for 11 different children on a windy night! It was an adventure! Can you believe I didn't take a camera!?

Leslie and Zach's wedding

We were home less than 24 hours before we headed to Mayfield for Leslie and Zach's wedding. Lesiie is Jeff's niece. Everything was beautiful and it was great visiting with his family. Jeff with Zach and Leslie...he performed the ceremony.

The Carlisle clan

Our Carlisle clan. After helping with some of the clean-up, we headed back to his sister's house and crashed so hard that we didn't later hear Jeff's brother-in-law knocking on the door because he was locked out...oops! Sorry Ronnie!

Trouble Getting Home

During our 4 hour layover in Pittsburgh, we saw flight after flight get cancelled due to storms. Our 10:10 p.m. flight met the same fate. There were no hotel rooms available, so we, along with tons of other travelers spent the night at the airport. At least the girls got some sleep!

After hours of work, Jeff secured us tickets on the 10:10 p.m. flight the following evening, which would have put us in Bowling Green in the wee hours of the morning on the day of his niece's wedding rehearsal...which Jeff was leading...which was in Mayfield. Thankfully our stand-by status on an earlier flight turned into spots on a plane, so we were able to get home, sleep a few hours, repack (our luggage didn't make it home until Friday morning), and head to Mayfield just in time to go straight to the rehearsal!
Jeff trying to get a hotel room.The girls crashing at the airport.
Maddie made a friend, which helped her pass the time.

Going Away Party

Thanks to all of your prayers, we were able to spend the evening laughing instead of crying. We made some special friendships over the past 5 weeks, and it was nice to have one more night together. Here are a few pictures:

I'll put the rest of the pictures on Facebook!

Girl Trip Part 2

Lillias was amazing...we were able to stop at six different spots (and then some). On this blog post, Blackness Castle was the only one we were able to go in...all the others were closed, but they were wonderful to see.
Blackness Castle
House of Binns
Houptown House
Cairnpapple Hill
Torphichen Preceptory
This is the well where people from East Kilbride used to get their water. After looking in it, we are thankful that practice has changed!

Heading to dinner in Jackie's Convertible

All Girl Road Trip

Jeff needed to work on Saturday and it was a nice day, so we called Lillias to see if she'd be up for a road trip with us girls! We ended up going to Linlithgow because I've wanted to see the inside of the castle since it was closed last time we were here. We got a tour and learned lots of information...much of which made us thankful that we did not have to be a servant back then or someone not in good graces with the castle owners...pretty scary stories. Going to all these castles has temporarily shattered my "Cinderella romanticized" ideas that I like to believe about castles! Jackie, Lillias' daughter, came along which made the girls day! They adore her and she always keeps us laughing! We did so many stops that I'll do post the rest on another link...I don't know how many more photos I'll get uploaded before we need to leave for our going away party.
Picnic Time!
This is inside Linlithgow Castle. The outside shot of it is at the corner of the blog at the top right hand side. This is where Mary Queen of Scots was born.
There was a wedding going on at the castle.

Linlithgow Town Centre

Glasgow

We were going to climb the mountain Ben Lomand today, but the weather forecast was 4 degrees C with 25 mph winds...as you can imagine, we changed plans. We needed to find one item that had been requested from the states but had been unable to find yet, so we decided to head to Glasgow. Thankfully Alan was willing to drive us there instead of to the mountain and was able to help us find the item as well as see the following great sites. It was a great day!Glasgow Cathedral
People's Palace
Oldest house in Glasgow
Museum of Modern Art...some pretty strange exhibits!
We found a fun playground for the girls.

Alan and the church where he got married.