Good To Go Back Home

A couple of weekends ago we went back to Abilene for our ten year college reunion at ACU. Yes, we are that old! I will always consider Abilene as one of my homes. (I guess I have three homes, Kenya, Abilene, and Denison.) I will always have fond memories of the 11 years I spent in that great town. (Notice I said "great" town not beautiful.) It was especially neat to take the girls and show them where I grew up and to show them ACU's campus. We even showed them one of my Christmas trees that we planted in our front yard when I was in middle school. It is really tall now and it brought back sweet memories of Christmas with my family. Wes and I drove them by different places we lived during our college years and shared stories of different things that had happened during our time in Abilene. It was pretty sweet that they actually cared and seemed interested.

When we arrived on Friday I headed to the Queen's Tea, an event that honored the homecoming queen nominees from 10 years ago, as well as this year's nominees. My good friend and old roommate, Holly, was being honored. The nominees got to invite friends and family. It was fun catching up with friends that I hadn't seen in a long time.

The nominees from our year and friends.

Soon after that I met up with Wes and the girls for some shopping at the ACU Bookstore, dinner with Paul and Audrey, Summer and Chad, Julia and Cory, and all their little kiddos. It was pretty fun watching all the kids get along like they had known each other for a while.

Julia, Baby Lila, Summer, Kristin, and I in the Campus Center.

Ava, Emma, Addie, Avery, and Abby had more fun pushing each other in the stroller and sliding in the Campus Center.

After dinner we went to the carnival. Yes, ACU does homecoming very well with lots of family oriented activities. The carnival was lots of fun! I was glad the girls were in good spirits despite the long day and no naps. The petting zoo was the biggest hit. The girls thoroughly enjoyed holding chicks and a bunny and feeding the goats and llama.

Abby trying to get the bean bag into the wildcat's mouth.


Let's try fishing!


Can we take it home, Mom?


What do you like better, the lollipop or the chick?


Could we at least take the bunny with us?


What a sweet bunny. I was afraid she was going to take off from Abby.


Goats with bandannas? Really?


Reaching up to the llama who is sporting a bandanna, too.

The carnival didn't wear us out too bad, so we kept the good times rollin'. We headed over to Taylor and Heather's house to visit and see even more friends. On a side note, Heather and I were in the same youth group at Hillcrest from 6th-12th grade. I am so thankful that they provided a place for all of us to get together and hang out and just catch up.

We headed back to the hotel pretty late that night which made me even more thankful that I had decided not to wake up for our club breakfast. Sorry ladies!

The next morning we met up with Alexis and her gang and Amy and Ginny for the homecoming parade. We had a good time watching the parade go by. It seemed like a bigger deal when we were actually in it. It seemed like we put an awful lot of effort into our floats for club. Ha!

Watching the parade.

After the parade we headed to Chapel. It was wonderful to worship once again in Moody Coliseum. We felt a little bad skipping out towards the end to meet our Denison ACU students at Betty Rose's Bar-B-Que. Amy and Ginny got to come with us, too. The girls had fun playing while we visited. Seeing all our old youth group members in Abilene brought my heart a lot of joy. Just knowing how much my experiences at ACU helped shape me made me happy that they were getting to experience some of the same things. The relationships and experiences are truly priceless!

I gave in to Wes and went to the football game. Thankfully, Amy and Ginny were there too, and we met up with some other friends once we got there.

Willie the Wildcat and some random boy who wanted to be in the picture. Was he hitting on our girls?

That night we had a special dinner just for our class. Childcare was provided which was a nice plus. About 180 people from our graduating class made it, which is awesome! We had some good laughs and shared some good times.

Best friends since middle school and high school. Lauren we missed ya!


It was wonderful to see Amy again. Her and her family are only in the states for less than a year before they head back to Paraguay where they are medical missionaries.



Hall-mates, roommates, we sure had a lot of fun together!


Cory and Julia - I have fond memories of doing our Bible study together and going on a Spring Break Campaign.


Summer and Chad - lots of fun times with you all, too.


Greg Jones and Wes - these two could get into some serious trouble together.

Crazy guys!

It was was truly a wonderful weekend! It was such a blessing to meet up with everyone again. There have been births, deaths, sickness, health, hard times and good times. But through it all we recognize that God is good. He does have a plan and He will take care of us. Sharing that belief with a large group of friends through the years provides strength and encouragement that really cannot be explained. Thank you God, for blessing us with great friends!