Yesterday was a wonderful whirlwind!  The kids all needed to renew their passports, so we drove to get pictures made before we met some out-of-town friends at White Rhino Coffee House.  

Even though our friends had driven down to Dallas because of a funeral, we were still so thankful to spend a few minutes with them.  Our kids chugged through their math like champs.

Spunky Clara followed their example.  Love that girl...

and her Mama!  After a quick trip home to clean out the fridge and finish the leftovers for lunch, we drove to the nearest place (twenty minutes) that would let us renew the passports without an appointment.

Evidently, everybody else had the same idea since school is out for most students.  One of the employees told us that the whole process usually takes about ten minutes.  Ours took almost two hours.  Two of the kids had to retake their picture because of shadows in the pictures taken in the morning.  But I bought my Christmas stamps while we waited!  So proud of my kids, they finished their school work and waited patiently through the whole process.

Then we finally made it over to a birthday party.  Time with this family always refreshes us, no matter whether we are in the Solomon Islands or the United States.

We got to help finish up the food decorating,

then we headed over to the park for a rousing game of coconut shells.

The basics of the game?  Your team has to stack up the coconuts in the middle of the field before each of your team members get hit by the ball and knocked "out".  

This game is very common in the villages of the Solomon Islands, and the kids in both families have grown up playing.  In our village, the ball is usually a coconut leaf that has been folded and twisted into a compact ball.

The competition was fun and fierce!

 "Uncle Aaron" told the kids a story to settle everybody down when we returned.

And we celebrated eight years of life with good food 

 and good friends.

We ended the day with Southwest Children's Choir practice for the kids.  The holiday concert season is about to begin!

So now, we're getting ready to hit the road for Thanksgiving travels.  Grabbing school books and making sure the clothes we need are clean.  Yay for living close to family again!