Wedding in Mexico (a series)

Part One:  The Journey...

This past week we traveled back down to Magdalena, Mexico!  Remember the last time we went down there, in April?  Well, we were so glad we did that April trip, because this time our kiddos were all familiar with Jenna's kids.  It was such a wonderful time!

(note:  you might wonder why I am making this a series?  Well, if I put all of the pictures into one post it would be the most massively huge blogpost I have ever written.  I took a TON of pictures.  That's why it's a series...don't want to overwhelm my readers!)

Anyway.  For those of you who don't know, Nathan's sister Jenna has lived down in Magdalena for the past 9-ish years.  She takes care of 5 adorable kiddos, and this past weekend she got married (to a guy named Adam--he is from our hometown in IN). Thankfully for those 5 kiddos, they now have a mom AND a dad!  They are blessed.

Okay.  So here is the first blogpost from our past week...

We flew out last Wednesday.  Our kids were very excited to fly in an airplane!  It had been 3 years since the last time.

The wait started to get a bit long...these crazies :)

While we waited, we got to know Adam's good friend Connor.  He is a super cool guy, and our kids really loved him by the end of the trip!  Connor was flying down the same time as us, and he was the best man in Adam and Jenna's wedding.

Kaine and Halle sat behind me on the airplane...

And the 2 little girls sat with me.  Nathan had to sit across the aisle from Kaine and Halle...

Lol.  I got a picture of him, snoozing away in the "dad section" while I entertained our 4 kids!  (Actually, I'm just kidding...he only slept for like 10 minutes).  :)

We arrived in Phoenix around 2 or 3 in the afternoon.  Adam and Jenna were there to pick us up, and I am mad at myself for not having a picture of that!  Oh well.

Since we flew into Phoenix, we had a bit farther to drive to get to Magdalena.  I think we had a 5.5 hour drive (after all of our flight time).  I think our kids were a bit disappointed that we had to drive so far to get there, but they made the best of it!

We arrived on the CVE campus at night.  (obviously, this picture was from another day.  And CVE stands for Casa Vida y Esperanza, the name of the orphanage where Jenna lives).  We stayed in the yellow house that you see in this picture.

This house was really nice inside!  It is new, just getting finished.  Actually, there were a few people who worked furiously to get it ready for our family to stay in.  Nathan's parents, Adam's parents, and a great guy named Denver worked hard on this (among some others, maybe).  Nathan's dad even got stung by a scorpion while working on it...thanks guys!

Our bedroom:

Our living room:  (notice our "couch"...lol.  That blanket was our living room furniture!  It was fine, though.  It is good for us to "rough it" a bit!  We are going to live in a jungle, after all.)

It was so great to be back at CVE!  What a great place to visit.  We unpacked a bit the first night and pretty much fell into bed.  Our kids were so excited to see their cousins the next morning!