The house seems pretty empty without them. We have been looking forward to Nate and Robyn visiting us with their children for months. It was every bit as fun as we thought it would be. Didn't get much sleep but we had alot of fun. Some of them were sick when they arrived, some of us were too. When they left some of them were sick and some of us were too. We hardly left the house. With nine children between us I think we have finally learned that home is a good place to stay. David and Nate had some vacation days so we had almost a week with the dads and then a week without them. The kids played and fought and really made friends with each other again (or enemies, as the case may be...Anne and Todd never learned to appreciate each other. On the way to the airport they sat next to each other and argued the whole way "you are bothering me" "no I am not"...I couldn't stop laughing).
Near the end of the second week Robyn and I decided that we should get everyone out of the house and headed into Amish Country. All nine of them lined up in the top row at the animal auction surrounded by Amish farmers was quite a sight. They behaved really well, but the auction left a mark on Halley. She fell and nearly broke her nose. Todd and Anne kept busy arguing about which cows were boys and which ones were girls. They finally figured it out "Oh, the FAT ONES are girls!"
We had a great snowstorm and played out in it a little, but the kids had coughs and the dry cold weather set them all off so we had no choice but to stay inside most of the time. I was pleased that so many little children could live together in a pretty orderly fashion. It is encouraging to see the work of the Holy Spirit in the older children who are Christians, and it is something to look forward to in the younger ones. Robyn made it down to the hospital for a couple of hours one night to walk the floors with David and be a mouse in the corner at a trauma.
I couldn't mention all of the ways that we were blessed by the Coppers while they were here. It doesn't seem real, even after nearly two years, that we don't live close enough to see them at least once a week.
Robyn flew home yesterday, her birthday, with all five children. The baby was sick to start with and two more got sick on the way home. Happy Birthday Robyn!
Jan had her 6th birthday this month and the kids and I got out today so she could spend a few birthday dollars. The store we went to gave her a crown and a balloon and announced her name and birthday over the loudspeaker while we shopped. It was pretty exciting.
It is nice to have Easter to look foward to this weekend. We don't have big plans, but the kids think they are big. Alec is going to chop our Christmas tree trunk in half and nail it into a cross and Jan is going to decorate it (it is snowing right now and is supposed to keep snowing for several days, so maybe we will dig out some fake flowers for decoration). We have eggs to boil and color, pictures to make for our walls, Sunday dinner to plan and the house to clean. David will be post call on Sunday so we will try to keep him awake for our Easter dinner celebration. It will be something to celebrate if we make it to church since we have been too sick to go for several weeks.
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