Smiles and excitement at the dinner table tonight as we talked about the possibility of a visitor in January.

Talked to the potential visitor by phone after dinner. Mentioned the grins. Her reply: "Why, it's even better than a Christmas package."

That is more truth than she realizes.

Five Days

Five days. They breezed into our lives, coming from the ocean's coast to this diamond surrounded by lakes. Their journey took them more than fourteen days, over eighty hours of driving, covered over seven thousand kilometers, saw fourteen grandchildren. These dear ones who we see once a year, twice when God blesses us with that extra grace.


Five days of sleeping four to a room. Five days of giving up school, schedules, and regular bed-times (and rising-times). "It's been disruptive enough," they say. "Its' time we let you return to normal." But normal can happen the other 51 weeks of the year. What's 'disruptive' when it means walks with grandpa to the corner store, folding laundry and baking with grandma, sharing joys and struggles and sorrows with a mother seen so rarely?


Five days. Five days of laughter. Five days of smiles. Five days of creating new memories and reliving old. Five days of trying to make the time seem longer, yet knowing it was going to end.

Five days ended this morning and the tears flowed.