Birthday celebrations and a chance meeting!

The next morning after "Esther", we slept in.  Like until 8!  We never do that!  We usually wake up between 5 and 6.  So my first thought was "Is Al breathing?"  (At our age, you never know!!)  Well, he was.  We ate breakfast and got on the road.

It was pouring rain.

Later, I found this on Facebook.

Maps did not disappoint.  Set us off on a wierd path toward the kids' home.  We went south, west, north, back east, around and around windy roads.

Across several fingers of Tablerock Lake.

From 86, passed Dogwood Canyon onto road F 

We drove by Roaring River State Park.  It was breathtaking!!  Wish there had been places to pull over to take pictures!!  But the rain.  It was raining buckets!  It didn't stop this fisherman!

Here are some photos I found on-online.

Evidently it has great hiking!  We will have to go sometime!  We also drove through Mark Twain State Park.

Huge raindrops!

We met our kids at this place that seemed to be out in the boonies.  

We were served delicious, huge melt in your mouth homemade rolls.

The dinners were HUGE!  We each shared our meals.

The grandkids have birthdays 2 years and 2 days apart.  The waitresses sang Happy Birthday to them as they brought out tiramisu.

That afternoon the guys fixed and cleaned a window in Emeri's room.  Look at Eli's shirt.  It was a gift from his cousin, Sophia.  Her face all over it!

I had brought a DVD of Josh playing basketball when he was Eli's age.  

The next morning, we went to their church.  Eli was helping his dad with camera.

The guy on the right is Travis who grew up in our town.  Our families used to hang out together.  Josh even babysat him and his brother when they were little!   Travis informed us that his parents were going to come that morning as their church didn't have power.   Below is a picture of him and his older brother, Ryan.

Josh has many jobs at the church. That morning, he also was doing camera.  

I'm terrible at selfies, but here are Randy and Nedra, Travis' parents!

We used to go to church together and were in a Bible study with them. 

 Even lived in the same neighborhood.

Now we help support them as they work with Family Life.

They have friends they knew who now come to this church too.

Back at the house, Emeri opened her gifts as it was her birthday.  Her cousin called to wish her a happy birthday.

Good-bye kiddos!  Until Christmas!

As we were leaving, we noticed the flags at half-staff.  I looked it up.  Gov. Sanders asked flags to be flown at half-staff Oct. 10-13 because of what happened in Israel.  We noticed several businesses continued to keep them there.

It rained until we got closer to home.  We made it back just before dark.