Full Hearts

In this past month, we have had several visits with special friends and significant markers in our journey to Peru. Tony worked his last day with FedEx last Tuesday (hooray!!) and I had my last day in the Women of the Harvest office on Thursday. Now I'm headed to California for my last event with Women of the Harvest, and then I'll be officially done next Sunday, July 15. It is hard to believe that these events have come so quickly - they felt years away when we decided on ending dates last spring.

We started the month of June with a great visit in southern Colorado with David and Adrienne Lisenby and Krista Reedy. It was a wonderful weekend of relaxing, catching up, and discussing world issues with dear friends.

Krista, Adrienne and Thomas, Julie

Adrienne, Thomas and David Lisenby (with Norman their dog!)

The next weekend we were off to Buena Vista with a group of friends from our time at Denver Seminary. We camped out and then rafted the Arkansas river - and no one fell in! I don't think I had realized how much I was missing those dear friends until we were all together again for a few short days. We're now starting to plan our next reunion, hopefully in Peru next year!
Here are a few highlight photos from our rafting weekend:





Last weekend my adorable niece was born (see post below) and we (or I, to be more accurate) have been spending every possible minute over with Jon, Lin and Nora. She's doing great and has allowed them to get a decent amount of sleep at night. It has been an incredible experience to watch my older sister go through this amazing process of giving life to a child. I have known all along that it would be difficult to leave for Peru with this new life in our family, but now that Nora is actually here and I've been able to bond with this precious girl, I can't express how difficult it will be to leave. What a joy the arrival of this little girl has been for our family! Here she is in the cute pink hat we gave her for her 2 day-old birthday. : )

Lastly, we just said goodbye to Alan and Marisol Dennison, friends of Tony's from college. They flew in from L.A. to spend a few days with us in Denver before we leave for Peru. It was particularly fun for me to get to know Tony's friends from college and to hear more about those years of his life. A few pictures of Alan and Marisol's visit:

It's been a fun, full month of friends and exciting steps towards leaving for Peru. Hard to believe we'll be leaving in a month!